'Levitated Mass' by Michael Heizer

Fairly often we have customers who come into our showroom and ask, "what is the biggest rock that you can get for us?"   Our typical response to this customer is, "with enough time and money anything is possible."  Artist Michael Heizer had this exact same question.  It turns out it took him over a decade to find the boulder he wanted.  Heizer found a boulder in a quarry in Riverside, California.  The dimensions  21.5 feet tall and 32 feet long and weighing in at 340tons.  The cost $10 million.  What was Heizer doing searching for a boulder this size?  That is about $30,000/ton, a little more expensive than the stones at Fieldstone Center.   

     The boulder is to be used as the focal point of Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass and will be the largest moved monolith in the Western Hemisphere.  The completed art piece is expected to go on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in November.  It's not just a rock, it will be suspended on two rails above an excavated slot at the museum.  Visitors will be able to walk underneath it with the boulder suspended 10 feet above their head. 



The boulder was carried on a trailer with 196 wheels at a max speed of 5 mph.  It traveled over 105 miles from the quarry to the museum in LA.  Most of the travel took place at night over the course of 11 days of travel to its destination.  Throughout its travel the boulder was treated as Rock Star status with a large following of fans and police escort. 

At one stop a man proposed to his girlfriend in front of the rock.  Later, when it arrived in Long Beach, that city threw a block party that attracted thousands of revelers.  There were a couple of small bumps along the way, however.  Because of its size, the rock could only be moved late at night and in the early morning, stopping each day at pre-arranged locations.  Two days into its journey it had to pull up two miles short of its destination when a transmission in the engine of the vehicle pulling it became balky. It was parked partially in the roadway of a highway just down the street from a freeway entrance in Diamond Bar, giving passing motorists an exceptionally good view of it.

It got back on schedule the following day, but as it navigated its way through South Los Angeles earlier this week, movers discovered two unaccounted for palm trees blocking its path. They cut them down and proceeded on, promising the community they would eventually return to replace them.  The rock came to rest at the museum on Saturday March 10 at 4AM.  I hope they roll out the red carpet for this rock star!