Drop City
Encyclopedia
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
in 1965. Abandoned by the early 1970s, it became known as the first rural "hippie commune".
Establishment
In 1965, the four original founders, Gene Bernofsky ("Curly"), JoAnn Bernofsky ("Jo"), Richard Kallweit ("Lard") and Clark Richert ("Clard"), art students and filmmakers from the University of KansasUniversity of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...
and University of Colorado
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
, bought a 7 acres (28,328 m²) tract of land about four miles (6 km) North of Trinidad
Trinidad, Colorado
The historic City of Trinidad is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Las Animas County, Colorado, United States...
, in south eastern Colorado. Their intention was to create a live-in work of Drop Art
Drop Art
In 1961, filmmaker Gene Bernofsky and artist Clark Richert, art students from the University of Kansas, developed an art concept they called Drop Art or droppings...
, continuing an art concept they had developed earlier at the University of Kansas. Drop Art (sometimes called "droppings") was informed by the "happenings" of Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
and the impromptu performances, a few years earlier, of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
and Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
, at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...
.
As Drop City gained notoriety in the 1960s underground
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
, people from around the world came to stay and work on the construction projects. Inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
and Steve Baer
Steve Baer
Steve Baer is an American inventor and solar and residential designer. Baer has served on the board of directors of the U.S. Section of the International Solar Energy Society, and on the board of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. He is the Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and...
, residents constructed domes and zonohedra to house themselves, using geometric panels made from the metal of automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
roofs and other inexpensive materials. In 1967 the group, now consisting of 10 core people, won Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion award for their constructions. The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre is an American comedy troupe consisting of Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Philip Proctor. Their brand of surrealistic humor is best known through their record albums, which acquired a cult following in the late 1960s and early '70s.The troupe began as live radio...
folks had a commercial ~"kids, tear the top off your daddy's car, and send it, together with 10 cents in cash or coin, to Drop City, Colorado..."
Soon the community grew in reputation and size, accelerated by media attention, including news reports on national television networks. The peak of Drop City's fame was the Joy Festival in June 1967, which attracted hundreds of hippies, some of whom stayed on. With the complex of eight domes and geometric buildings constructed, Curly and Jo, the only official owners of the property, signed it over to a non-profit corporation consisting of the entire core group (then about a dozen). The deed stipulated that the land was "forever free and open to all people". But tensions and personality conflicts were already an inevitable problem within the group, and soon became unbearable. By the end of 1968, some of the original occupants of the community had moved to Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
to start an artists' cooperative, "Criss-Cross
Criss-Cross
Criss-Cross was an artist's cooperative that formed in Colorado in the early 1970s. Having evolved out of Drop City, the 1960s artists' community, C-C focused on issues surrounding "pattern and structure" and became associated with the 70's art movement "P&D" .In 1974, the five founders, Gene...
", whose purpose, like Drop City's, was to function in a "synergetic" interaction between peers (no bosses) to create experimental artistic innovation. Among the innovative endeavors to evolve out of Drop-City are:
- in 1969, the early solar energy company – Zomeworks, in Albuquerque, NM;
- the artists' group "Criss-Cross", operative in New York and Colorado in the 1970s;
- the development of the "61-Zone System" by ZomeTool of Boulder, Colorado;
- and in the early 1980s, an important discovery of a cubic fusion of interpenetrating fractalFractalA fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
tetrahedra by Richard Kallweit.
Legacy
By 1970, many intentional communitiesIntentional community
An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They...
had developed in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, some of which were inspired by Drop City. Libre, north of Gardner, Colorado
Gardner, Colorado
Gardner is an unincorporated town and a U.S. Post Office in Huerfano County, Colorado, United States. The Gardner Post Office has the ZIP Code 81040.-External links:* *...
was founded by several ex-"Droppers", and was among the more well known. Some communities continue to exist in some form today (notably in the Taos, NM area).
At Drop City, debris
Debris
Debris is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, in geology, large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc. The singular form of debris is debris...
and building remnants from the original settlement remain at the site today, though it is not inhabited. By 1977 it was abandoned, and the members of the non-profit who were still in touch decided to sell off the site to the cattle rancher next door. The last of the iconic domes was taken down only in the late 1990s, by a truck repair facility which now occupies a portion of the site.
In 1993, an Indie Rock band from Melbourne, Australia formed using the name Drop City. In 2007, a different, Denver based, Indie Rock band formed with the same name.
In 1971, author, and Drop City resident, Peter Rabbit's novel "Drop City" was published.
In 2003, author T.C. Boyle's novel Drop City was published.
Sources
- Review
- John Q McDonald – 21 July 2006
- Miller, Timothy. Bringing It All Together: DROP CITY
- Zome-inspired Sculpture by Paul Hildebrandt
- Simon SadlerSimon SadlerSimon Sadler is Professor of Architectural and Urban History in the Art History Program at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Nottingham...
, “Drop City Revisited,” Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 58, no. 1, 2006, pp. 5–14 http://arthistory.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/publications/Drop%20City%20Revisited.pdf - Drop City information on the Center for Land Use InterpretationCenter for Land Use InterpretationThe Center for Land Use Interpretation is a non-profit "research organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues...
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