GREEN RIVER -- To all you artists out there, imagine getting an email that went something like this:
I am the lawyer for an incredibly wealthy man who's a big fan of large pieces of art. He'd like to hire someone to create a series of sculptures and transform his 30-acre estate into a public sculpture park. There are no rules, guidelines or budget for the artist to adhere to. He may design and imagine the works however he pleases. Reply if you're interested.
Australian artist Andrew Rogers found an email almost exactly like that in his inbox last June. He was interested and he did reply.
Rogers later got a phone call from the lawyer who told him his client was a blind, 88-year-old retired school teacher who had been wisely purchasing large parcels of land since he was 20 years old and had plenty of money to compensate Rogers.
Rogers agreed to the job that gave him free reign to build what he pleased on a 30-acre plot in Green River, Utah. Rogers got to work and created what he calls Ratio.
The monument sits on the otherwise empty 30-acres and is made up of 53 concrete blocks weighing in at six tons a piece. Ratio is as tall as a four-story building and is topped off with a block plated in 23-carat gold.
So why build a giant concrete monument in an empty area of Green River? The client wanted it there as the first in a series of sculptures that will eventually cover the 30 acres of land. Each piece will draw on mathematical and scientific series.Ratio is arranged according to Rogers' divining of the Fibonacci sequence. Rogers' client, who lives in Seattle, was a high school math teacher and has had a life-long passion for numbers and equations.
Rogers will design another 10 works, and the park is scheduled to be completed in two years.
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