Evaporating Environments

For last October's Manhattan sculp ture festival, Artist Claes Oldenburg hired two professional gravediggers to shovel out a coffin-sized hole in Central Park, then fill it up again. Olden burg thereupon solemnly proclaimed the result a buried, invisible sculpture. Last month it was time for the West Coast's retort. At Los Angeles' Century City, three young artists constructed a sculpture that disappeared slowly before the spectators' eyes, vanishing without a trace within 24 hours. The form: a 110-ft.-long, 15-ft.-wide, 22-in.-high labyrinth. The material: dry ice, shaped into blocks and costing $1,200, which was contributed by a subsidiary of Union Oil as part of an outdoor show of more permanent pieces.

Far from turning a cold shoulder, the public responded so enthusiastically that last week the disappearing-environmentalists were summoned back for a return engagement. This time the artists built nine pyramids out of 20 tons of dry-ice blocks over a period of three days. By the time the last was up, the first had already evaporated from its original ziggurat perfection down to a jumble of tipsy marshmallow forms.

To create their disappearing environments, Lloyd Hamrol, 30, Eric Orr, 30, and Judy Gerowitz, 28, donned white jump suits, white gloves and white sneakers. As Orr explained: "Making the sculpture is just as important--in fact, the same thing--as the art work itself." Visitors could join in the esthetic experience by meandering between the smoking pylons of art. "What makes it so weird," said one visitor with a shiver of delight, "is that you can't see your feet through the vapor." "What makes it so wild," mused another, "is that a combination of art and ice ineluctably becomes arce."

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