Andrea Zittel
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Joshua Tree Dream- building in the American West Andrea Zittel Portraits by David Benjamin Sherry 179 Joshua Tree Dream- building in the American West Andrea Zittel Portraits by David Benjamin Sherry 179 Andrea Zittel her own interests and investigations.” Through her network of galleries, Andrea sells sculptures, installations, a variety of compact living units includ- ing customised trailers – which go for between $60,000 and $250,000 – and works on paper ($15,000 to $30,000). The funds she raises are pumped back into her artistic practice in the desert. She moved to the Joshua Tree National Park nearly 15 years ago and has built a compound called A-Z West at the foot of a hill of massive jumbled rocks on a slope overlooking a wide valley. There she lives with her 10-year-old son Emmett, runs a busy studio, and hosts students, artists and other like-minded One hundred and forty miles east of guests. There are dogs, too. Los Angeles on the fringes of a vast na- The nearby town of Joshua Tree is tional park, where two deserts meet and home to nature lovers who want to live packs of coyotes roam free, an artist near the national park; Andrea goes called Andrea Zittel has embarked on there often. Less frequently, she goes a unique experiment. In this landscape to Twentynine Palms, the next town on, of ancient rounded boulders, she’s exa- which is home to one of the largest mil- mining every aspect of day-to-day liv- itary training areas in the United States, ing – from clothing, furniture, food and complete with a fabricated Middle shelter to personal relationships and Eastern village where troops train be- our interactions with the outdoors – in fore deployment to Iraq. It also has a an effort to understand human nature drug problem: local youths, struggling and tackle the biggest question we can to find work, turn to selling crystal ask ourselves: Why are we here? meth here, although the situation has If this sounds overly ambitious, it improved in recent years with the arriv- may be because our notions of what art al of people from Los Angeles looking can be have become inextricably linked for second homes. Andrea has friends to the market and the commodifica- in all these different groups. “I wanted tion it imposes. Which means Andrea to have friends who aren’t artists,” she The rightly celebrated US artist Andrea Zittel, 49, wears the has pulled off a rare feat: she has dis- says. “Over the years, I’ve dated a lot associated herself from many of the of local people here, like a radiator me- same clothes every day for weeks on end. It’s part of her art world’s values and chosen to live chanic and a guy who worked at the lo- ongoing examination of our daily lives, aimed at discovering far from its centres of power, yet she cal hardware store, and so I felt I was is acclaimed in those very same cen- able to fit in really easily.” what we can live without. Her anti-consumerist project A-Z tres for her unwavering artistic vision. This March, the Palm Springs Art She’s represented by top galleries in Museum, an hour’s drive in the other di- West lures all sorts of travellers and creatives to the tawny New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin rection, will exhibit new textiles made and Milan. “Over the years, her work in a weaving workshop in Andrea’s California desert to join in her pioneering study. Andrea’s an has never compromised itself in terms studio, along with others chosen by enthusiastic blogger of her fully disclosed life: visit Zittel.org of the market or shifting public taste,” the artist from the museum’s modern says the London dealer Sadie Coles, and Native American collections. Also to see what her newly bruised knees and this spring’s skirt will who has collaborated with her for near- on show will be her A-Z Aggregated ly two decades. “Andrea has remained Stacks: shelving and storage units built look like, and to find out exactly what krok bragd is. extremely constant and authentic to from assortments of cardboard boxes Text by Cristina Ruiz 181 Andrea Zittel her own interests and investigations.” Through her network of galleries, Andrea sells sculptures, installations, a variety of compact living units includ- ing customised trailers – which go for between $60,000 and $250,000 – and works on paper ($15,000 to $30,000). The funds she raises are pumped back into her artistic practice in the desert. She moved to the Joshua Tree National Park nearly 15 years ago and has built a compound called A-Z West at the foot of a hill of massive jumbled rocks on a slope overlooking a wide valley. There she lives with her 10-year-old son Emmett, runs a busy studio, and hosts students, artists and other like-minded One hundred and forty miles east of guests. There are dogs, too. Los Angeles on the fringes of a vast na- The nearby town of Joshua Tree is tional park, where two deserts meet and home to nature lovers who want to live packs of coyotes roam free, an artist near the national park; Andrea goes called Andrea Zittel has embarked on there often. Less frequently, she goes a unique experiment. In this landscape to Twentynine Palms, the next town on, of ancient rounded boulders, she’s exa- which is home to one of the largest mil- mining every aspect of day-to-day liv- itary training areas in the United States, ing – from clothing, furniture, food and complete with a fabricated Middle shelter to personal relationships and Eastern village where troops train be- our interactions with the outdoors – in fore deployment to Iraq. It also has a an effort to understand human nature drug problem: local youths, struggling and tackle the biggest question we can to find work, turn to selling crystal ask ourselves: Why are we here? meth here, although the situation has If this sounds overly ambitious, it improved in recent years with the arriv- may be because our notions of what art al of people from Los Angeles looking can be have become inextricably linked for second homes. Andrea has friends to the market and the commodifica- in all these different groups. “I wanted tion it imposes. Which means Andrea to have friends who aren’t artists,” she The rightly celebrated US artist Andrea Zittel, 49, wears the has pulled off a rare feat: she has dis- says. “Over the years, I’ve dated a lot associated herself from many of the of local people here, like a radiator me- same clothes every day for weeks on end. It’s part of her art world’s values and chosen to live chanic and a guy who worked at the lo- ongoing examination of our daily lives, aimed at discovering far from its centres of power, yet she cal hardware store, and so I felt I was is acclaimed in those very same cen- able to fit in really easily.” what we can live without. Her anti-consumerist project A-Z tres for her unwavering artistic vision. This March, the Palm Springs Art She’s represented by top galleries in Museum, an hour’s drive in the other di- West lures all sorts of travellers and creatives to the tawny New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin rection, will exhibit new textiles made and Milan. “Over the years, her work in a weaving workshop in Andrea’s California desert to join in her pioneering study. Andrea’s an has never compromised itself in terms studio, along with others chosen by enthusiastic blogger of her fully disclosed life: visit Zittel.org of the market or shifting public taste,” the artist from the museum’s modern says the London dealer Sadie Coles, and Native American collections. Also to see what her newly bruised knees and this spring’s skirt will who has collaborated with her for near- on show will be her A-Z Aggregated ly two decades. “Andrea has remained Stacks: shelving and storage units built look like, and to find out exactly what krok bragd is. extremely constant and authentic to from assortments of cardboard boxes Text by Cristina Ruiz 181 Andrea Zittel covered in layers of white plaster. Like tights she wears underneath – she owns many of Andrea’s works, these are both multiple versions of both. “I try to cut sculptures that play with the language of down the time I do unnecessary things,” modernism and its ordered grids by in- she explains. “I only wash my hair once troducing an organic quality, and func- a week; I only take a shower every other tional objects intended to be used by the day. We don’t sweat that much here be- collectors who live with them. cause it’s so dry.” Andrea started designing her own I visit A-Z West on a perfect sunny win- clothing and wearing a seasonal uni- ter’s day. On arrival, I’m greeted by form more than two decades ago. “What Andrea’s pack of rescue dogs – Mona makes us feel liberated is not total free- Winona, Maggie Peppercorn and dom, but rather living in a set of limi- Owlette – who dart in and out of her tations that we have created and pre- studio and patrol the compound. Two scribed for ourselves,” she writes in more dogs, whose owner works in the These Things I Know for Sure, a personal nearby community of Yucca Valley, manifesto of sorts that she devised in come here during office hours.