Sacramento Meditations

A display of three large maps of California mounted side by side on a wall, showing different geographic and topographical representations of the state. Small blocks of explanatory text appear above the maps.
Two people stand in front of a large, detailed geographic map. One has a beard and wears a light-colored jacket over a dark shirt, while the other wears dark clothing. The image has a grainy, archival photograph appearance.
A close-up of a printed map featuring an outline of California with faint geographic boundaries and waterways, surrounded by dense explanatory text and additional map illustrations on a yellow-toned background.
Title
Sacramento Meditations
Artist
Helen & Newton Harrison
Collaborators
San Francisco Art Institute students (poster installation)
Date
1976-1977
Short Description
Through posters, billboards, sidewalk chalk, performances, and radio spots across San Francisco, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison staged an early artistic critique of the green revolution, linking intensive irrigated farming in California’s Central Valley to the loss of biodiversity. Commissioned by the Floating Museum in 1976 and first exhibited in 1977, the work also proposed an early bioregional approach to the valley.
Description
The work’s nine texts and a series of mappings of California, combining drawings, satellite photos, political boundaries, water resources, irrigable land, and topography, were shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1977. Around the city, the artists and San Francisco Art Institute students posted eleven street posters asking “What if all that irrigated farming isn’t necessary?”, alongside two large “Water” billboards, sidewalk chalk texts, performances, radio spots, and newspaper personal ads offering water officials advice drawn from the Buddha’s eightfold path. The project grew out of six months of research at the Berkeley Water Resources Library. A revised version was later shown at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 1980.
Artwork Type
Performance
Public Art
Text / Creative Writing
Materiality
Mixed Media
Paper
Photographic Materials
Climate & Ecology Themes
Biodiversity and Species Loss
Industrial Agriculture
Water and Drought
Ecological Domain / Habitat
Agricultural / Working Lands
Watershed
Methods & Approaches
Activism / Direct Action
Archival Research
Mapping / GIS
Audience / Engagement Type
Public / General Audience
Location
San Francisco, California; Central Valley, California
Geographic Scope
Bioregion / Ecoregion
Rights
Rights held by artist or creator
Website
https://www.theharrisonstudio.net/sacramento-meditations-1977
Affiliated Organizations
The Force Majeure
Item sets
California Art & Climate Archive
UC San Diego
Media
A display of three large maps of California mounted side by side on a wall, showing different geographic and topographical representations of the state. Small blocks of explanatory text appear above the maps.Helen & Newton Harrison, Sacramento Meditations 1
Two people stand in front of a large, detailed geographic map. One has a beard and wears a light-colored jacket over a dark shirt, while the other wears dark clothing. The image has a grainy, archival photograph appearance.Helen & Newton Harrison, Sacramento Meditations 2
A close-up of a printed map featuring an outline of California with faint geographic boundaries and waterways, surrounded by dense explanatory text and additional map illustrations on a yellow-toned background.Helen & Newton Harrison, Sacramento Meditations 3