Viewing page 1 of 49

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

15 October, 1979

Gov. John Jay Rockefeller
Capitol Building
Charleston, West Virginia

Dear Governor Rockefeller,

I have been working a series of sculptures that address themselves to the problem of land reclamation. We, my husband Curtis Bill Pepper and his mother Edwina Pepper, own much land in West Virginia and it occurred to me that you might find it valuable to consider using earthwork sculpture as a means toward land reclamation -- as well as calling attention to an official effort to redress major earth disturbances created by surface and deep mining.

I was recently part of a unique symposium sponsored by the King County Arts Commission in Seattle, Washington. Its goals were to establish public responsibility for abused lands as well as to support earthwork sculpture as a cost-effective alternative to recontouring both for publicly and privately owned sites.

It was shown that the cost of recontouring a 3.67 acre gravel pit was estimated at $190,000 -- merely to fill the site, without landscaping or planting -- as compared to a major earthwork done by Robert Morris at a cost of $149,000.

The Seattle symposium was made of completed earthworks as well as proposals for future works, and included public forums and panel discussions related to land reclamation. The benefits from this are extensive, turning a liability into an asset, stimulating community interest, tourism, and financial investments.

I believe it would be productive to use the Seattle experience as a model for West Virginia to organize a program of proposed works as well as a symposium composed of experts from related fields.

In Seattle, six artists of national and international reputation were chosen by a jury to spend a three week period creating earthworks reclaiming six different sites -- doing drawings, designs and maquettes. The projects were shown at the Seattle art Museum. The county purchased