Michael Heizer

Michael Heizer is a contemporary artist specializing primarily in large-scale sculptures and earth art (or land art). Heizer was born in Berkeley, California in 1944; and he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. Traveling to New York City in 1966, he began his career producing more conventional, small-scale paintings and sculptures. In the late 1960s, however, Heizer left New York City for the deserts of California and Nevada, where he began to produce larger-scale works that could not fit into a museum setting, except perhaps in photographs. This culminated in the production of Double Negative, a 1500-ft trench Heizer cut into the side of a mesa in the Nevada desert. Since then, Heizer has continued his exploration of earthworks,...