Alan Sonfist
Creator of New York City’s Time Landscape
By Carol Yost
ALAN SONFIST’S TIME LANDSCAPE, on the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, is a living work of art that consists of a forest of native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and grasses that once existed in Manhattan. Photo by Bob Cooley.
Alan Sonfist, born March 26, 1946, is an artist based in New York City who founded the Land or Earth Art movement. His first creation was the Time Landscape, completed in 1978, which still exists today. It is located at the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village. Now a New York City landmark, it is the first urban forest of its kind. Sonfist conceived of this project as a re-creation of what the natural area of New York City was like before colonization, complete with the original trees, grasses and flowers. His artistic works include other landscapes as well as paintings and metal sculptures. The Time Landscape is his first art work, called a sculpture in its own right without any carving, painting or shaping of his own. In a recent talk, he described the remarkable events which led to the creation of the Time Landscape, as few city officials enthusiastically supported his idea. It was by no means easy and took more than ten years to complete. In The New Economics of Environmental Art, Jeffrey Deitch wrote of Time Landscape as “an example of the artwork as a major urban-design plan…To complete the La Guardia Place site, he had to weave his way through community groups, local politicians, real estate interests, several arms of city government, art patrons, and their lawyers…Sonfist managed all of this without a patron or a sponsoring organization.” Then-Mayor Ed Koch said the project was “fresh and intriguing and is desperately needed for our city.” Sonfist went on to create a network of sites throughout the five boroughs based on the same concept of recreating their original natural environments in the 17th century, before colonization.
The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation describes this artwork: “When it was first planted, Time Landscape portrayed the three stages of forest growth from grasses to saplings to grown trees. The southern part of the plot represented the youngest stage and now has birch trees and beaked hazelnut shrubs with a layer of wildflowers beneath. The center features a small grove of beech trees (grown from saplings transplanted from Sonfist’s favorite childhood park in the Bronx) and a woodland with red cedar, black cherry, and witch hazel above groundcover of mugwort, Virginia creeper, aster, pokeweed, and milkweed. The northern area is a mature woodland dominated by oaks with scattered white ash and American elm trees. Among the numerous other species in this mini-forest are oak, sassafras, sweetgum and tulip trees, arrowwood and dogwood shrubs, bindweed and catbrier vines, and violets.” Wikipedia adds: “Sonfist’s intention was to create a natural memorial akin to war memorials.”
Since he was a small boy, Sonfist has felt more than a closeness to nature. Many other people have felt this, but he is unique in having created widely various art works intended to honor nature — in Germany, Italy, France, and other parts of the United States. For example, rock monuments have been created for permanent installations in museums. He has created paintings from dirt collected in different parts of Houston, Texas, showing the surprising variations of color in the different earth samples. The outdoor works are designed to change naturally over time, for instance, Time Landscape is changing as the trees and plants have grown.
Another of his very unique works is the Lost Falcon of Westphalia, intended to represent the change from the last Ice Age to the modern forest. Wikipedia says: “The artwork is an allegory for the perils of climate change as seen through the vanishing and migrating species of flora. Trees are planted within a neolithic fortification shaped like a native falcon.” Since after 100,000 years, falcons no longer live in the area, this is a call to the past. Aerial photography shows a very large, graceful image of the falcon as it seems to fly where it did in the past.
A search of Sonfist’s website and other online resources shows a thrilling variety of artworks on environmental themes, along with a recorded talk in which, among other things, he details at length what it was like to create the Time Landscape.
Many years ago, I worked briefly as a typist for Sonfist as he went about advocating for, planning and creating the Time Landscape. I had no idea how important this project would be. I wish I had appreciated it more then, as I do now.
Alan Sonfist is one of those who serve as the conscience of our world as we face the terrors of climate change.
