Lita Albuquerque
As the world rotates on its axis,
to come to listen to the silence...
The shadow of the mountain in India
forming a perfect triangle…
The city as barren against the earth…
Rock and man as equals...

SEPTEMBER 1979 - DREAM I am flying over the surface of the earth. I see a large pole sticking deep into its center and extending upward. The pole is casting a huge shadow. On one side of the shadow are the first thirty-three years of my life, on the other, the next. The pole is the spine of the earth.

OCTOBER 1979 - DREAM I see a red pyramid submerged in the interior of the earth. I feel I must build one. Later I realize that perhaps it already exists and needs only to be discovered.

NOVEMBER 1979 - PROPOSAL
International Sculpture Conference Exhibition, Washington D.C. "This is an ephemeral work dealing with the alignment of time, motion, and energy. It will use the Washington Monument and its shadow as a poetic metaphor for Man's passage on earth. On June 7. 1980, I will trace the shadow of the tip of the Washington Monument as it falls due west, north, and east. I will then outline the shadows of the tip on the ground and will dig up the ground 8” deep. 24" wide, 80' long-the length of the tip's shadow. I will fill in the marks with red powdered pigment. On June 7, 1980, the first shadow is to align due west at 9:14 am: the second, due north at 1:02 p.m.: and the third, due east at 5:05 p.m. By walking from one pigment shadow to the next, the viewer will draw a triangle in space which repeats the triangle of the pyramid and shadow. This triangle becomes the "base" for an invisible pyramid which takes the point of the monument for its apex and the shadow triangles for the corners of its foundation."

FEBRUARY TO MAY 1980 - PREPARATIONS
Shadow and research calculations with astronomer. Trips to Washington D.C. to research site, secure Parks Commission approval. Trip to West Virginia. Maryland, and New York to pigment factories. Toxicity studies. Back to studio, Venice, California. Making sketches, maquettes.

JUNE 1980 - FROM NOTEBOOKS
"I am marking a point: the tip of the monument seen from the air. Locating a line: the shadows as they move across the ground. Adding color to reveal shape and hidden structure. "I will be the monument itself, a point in time, a stillness, a metaphor for our verticality, rooted in the earth, defying gravity."

I, the monument, container of memory, observing the movement of the earth around the sun, catching my shape, my shadow, as it falls on the ground. I, upright. Observing. As the world revolves around the sun, I listen to the silence.

JUNE 1980 - WASHINGTON, D.C.
Making red marks on the ground.