Agnes Denes. Photo by Stefan Ruiz, courtesy of the New York Times.

In 2005, Earthwork artist Agnes Denes, known — according to Interview Magazine — for her “stunning and environmentally confrontational public works,” created her large-scale work Pyramids of Consciousness for Ballroom’s exhibition Treading Water. Three of the pyramids were filled with various substances –– clear water, oil, and polluted water from the Rio Grande. The fourth pyramid was a mirror that allowed viewers to see themselves, and consider their relationship to water and its current environmental concerns.

Last Sunday, Denes presented another large-scale pyramid project, The Living Pyramid, installed on the East River waterfront at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. The work was created using several tons of soil and planted grasses, and stands 30 feet high and 30 feet wide with the city skyline as its backdrop. Visitors at the opening were invited to participate in planting wildflowers along the outside of the structure, contributing to the pyramid’s growth as it remains on view until August 30th.

In a May interview with Maika Pollack in Interview Magazine, Denes discusses the function of pyramids in her work, as well as the process for her other iconic works such as Wheatfield–A Confrontation (1982) (where she planted and harvested a wheat field on a landfill in lower Manhattan) and Tree Mountain-–A Living Time Capsule, a manmade forest she planted in a mathematical pattern in Ylöjärvi, Finland.

Ballroom alum Agnes Denes will be exhibiting alongside Monika Grzymala and Cecilia Vicuña as Les Immémoriales opens tonight at in Metz, France.

“Nourished by the living memory of Andean, Native American, and Australian Aboriginal people, Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala and Cecilia Vicuña, three artists of different generations and horizons, invite you on a sensuous and poetic journey into the heart of political issues affecting our first-world societies.

In 1968, Agnes Denes (b. 1931, Hungary) made her first “eco-logical” intervention in the state of New York, announcing her commitment to environmental questions and human issues. In 1977, near the Niagara Falls, she re-enacted the ritual Rice/Tree/Burial—an “allegory of the life cycle” which associates the planting of a rice paddy; chaining together of trees in a sacred forest, formerly an Indian burial ground; filming from the edge of the Niagara Falls; and burying a time capsule addressed to “Homo Futurus” of the year 2979.”

More information at .

If you’re staying here in the Big Bend this weekend, the outsider art haven of Terlingua will host another of its open-call group shows this weekend, as Funky Junk returns to the Starlight Theatre on Saturday night at 7pm. Beneath the aggressively wacky facade the curious viewer will find an array of landscape photography, abstract painting and found sculptural art as well as the opportunity to dance and hula hoop with a crowd of epicurean river guides, trail crew workers, borderland ranch hands and field biologists gone to seed. Your blog editor, Ballroom’s Communications Coordinator Daniel Chamberlin, will also have new work on display. Find full event details on the Starlight’s website, or Facebook.