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National Institute of Chicago [School of the Art Institute of Chicago]
Robert Smithson, artist, Q & A with audience after showing films, "Swamp" (made with Nancy Holt) and "Spiral Jetty"
Exact date unknown - just after finishing Broken Circle/Spiral Hill in 1971

Question from audience: How much did it cost [to build the Spiral Jetty]?

RS: about $9,000. It's about the cost of a gallery show in New York, or it's not quite as expensive as some people would imagine it to be. The film actually cost about $7,000. [Sigh.] Any other [questions]?

Q: [Have you seen the Spiral Jetty since you first made it?]

RS: Actually I was back in Utah in August, and during the months of June and July there was sudden rise in the lake, so that the Jetty was under about two to three inches of water for those two months, and then in August it started to evaporate. Since it's made out of almost solid basalt rock, it's completely intact. It's about 80% basalt. Toward the mid-part of August of this year, the crystals started growing on it so that it looked like a kind of archipelago of crystals, and then as the water evaporated more, the entire Jetty was just solid white crystals, like the still shots in the center of the film. There are two types of crystals that develop on it. One is a kind of square crystal, and then there's another kind that looks like melted wax, and that depends on the climate. It's very much into the sediment that it's on. It's like a very hard clay, like a very crusty clay. The salt comes and goes according to the kind of temperature.

[Inaudible question from audience about the film]

RS: Yeah, well they're separate but they interrelate with each another. I find that with film, it gives you a way of perceiving the scale of sculpture, let's take in terms of film, long shots, medium shots, and close-up shots and there's different ranges there. It's a way of locating scale. Then of course you have your own experience, which would be going out there and seeing it and tit would always be different in terms of the climate. If you go out there in the winter, it can be very cold.

Q: How long is it [the Jetty]?

RS: From the very beginning of the road part on the land it's about 1500 feet.

Q: How deep is the water?

RS: The water varies. Right now I guess it's about two feet. The lake went up the highest it's been in 15 years, and it was its most sudden increase in a hundred years, and that was because the water comes out of the mountains. They had a very hot spring and a very heavy snowfall, so the farmers couldn't hold back the water in irrigation ditches, so it just really came right in there. So it fluctuates. Actually, this time last year there was no water in it at all. It was more like a white mush, a very thick salt.