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    • XVII

      • Colleen Asper Labor with Rectangle
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Monument Working Strategies LLC: Structuring Creative Freedom
      • Triple Candie Exhibition Preparations
      • Sean Raspet 2GFR24SMEZZ2XMCVI5L8X9Y38ZJ2JD…
      • Owen Kydd Handheld
      • Dan Levenson Notes From Jessica
      • Julia Rommel Easy Tacker
      • Jordan Kantor MAN(ET/DE)GAS
      • Sreshta Rit Premnath The Last Image
      • OJO The Adventures of Nuclear Wad & How He Learned To Stop Dreaming
    • XVI

      • Julia Sherman Re-Claiming Susan B. Anthony
      • Robert Hult Hasidic Street Posters in Brooklyn
      • Runo Lagomarsino Pedro’s Story: An Unsuccessful Transatlantic Traveller
      • John Houck Pine Ridge: An interview with Jim Houck
      • Brian Zegeer Dragoman of Little Syria
      • Sidney Russell Kuna Yala Swag
      • Desirée Holman Outer Spaces: Part I
      • Faith47 The Unexpected Present
      • Carmen Winant Personal Best
      • Philip-Lorca diCorcia Red Bull Snake
    • XV

      • Jessica Green & Tom Griffiths Terra Incognita (A Video Game Folly)
      • Prem Krishnamurthy The People’s Representation: On Staged Graphics in Klaus Wittkugel’s Work
      • Cian O'Day N/A, or On the Dark Stores of Brian Ulrich
      • Yasmeen M. Siddiqui Avatar Gone Analog: Musings on The Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh
      • Emily Larned ARTS 02–2011: The Artist-Created Institution as Art Practice
      • Yoonjai Choi & Ken Meier Interview with Metahaven
      • Aaron Kunin Space and Place in Two Video Installations by Amie Siegel
      • Tom Griffiths Interview with Barbara Griffiths
    • XIV

      • Colleen Asper & Justin Lieberman In Conversation
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report To The Committee On Periodical Group Exhibitions
      • Ryan Mrozowski & Mike Womack Before-Biennial-After
      • Kay Rosen Waiting for Michael Asher
      • Kate Gilmore Drag
    • XIII

      • Talia Chetrit Van Hanos’s Harlem Studio
      • Mieke Marple The Lives of Objects at The Suburban
      • Laurel Nakadate Island Light
      • C.D. Parker Draw Me a Pie Chart Powerfully
      • Alan Reid Despondent Babysitter
      • Lucy Kim & Leeza Meksin Art Crimes
    • XII

      • Anonymous On Looking at Nature: An Untitled Petition on Crapomimicry
      • Paul Huf Musical Box with a Dancing Ballerina
      • Lance Wakeling Voluntary Sculptures: Photographing the Unmonumental
      • David Kennedy-Cutler Possession Obsession
      • Nine Budde Stopping by at a Friends’ Place
      • Cody Trepte Untitled (Something Clever Here)
    • XI

      • Adam Helms Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery
      • David Scanavino Fact or Fiction
      • Jason Tomme The Voodoo of Robert Irwin
      • Kristin Posehn The Rocks of Rocklin
      • In a long line east from Sacramento, exits along Interstate-80 link the sprawling suburban developments that bloom on the periphery of the state capital. Finally free of the commuting traffic that plagues this asphalt artery, I descended at one such off-ramp. I was here to investigate a curious example of civic signage, a cloverleaf beautified and branded by the residential city of Rocklin, California.

        Exiting, I slowed to a red light and looked left to the awkward patch of land caught between the interstate and its outlet. In contrast to the dirt and dead grass easements that line the freeway elsewhere, this cloverleaf was elaborately landscaped. A shiny, low, polished and etched granite sign read “City of Rocklin, Established 1893.” To the left of the sign stood what appeared to be a cluster of monumental granite boulders. Some rose thirteen feet high and six feet deep, with a tracery of mineral veins and the impressions of blasting holes for dynamite.

        The City of Rocklin sign

        Pulling into the adjoining gas station, I parked and set out on foot for a closer look at the sign and monument. The only other pedestrian was walking toward the local community college, his backpack in hand and iPod earplugged against the steady din of traffic. There is no city center for the ballooning suburb, yet twenty-five thousand cars per day pass this sign on Rocklin Road — the highest traffic volume in the area. It makes sense considering these numbers to mark the city at such a point of convergence, but it is a strange way to make a place.

        Something was vaguely unsettling as I stepped off the sidewalk and onto the redwood bark that covered the ground of the cloverleaf. The massive boulders were a little too grey, and overly textured. In fact, they weren’t actually granite. This “faux monument,” as members of the City Council referred to it in conversation, was actually concrete that had been elaborately molded and painted, giving it the astonishingly realistic appearance of stone.The simulation was exposed by the contrast of many small chunks of real granite, only about one to two feet in diameter, which dotted the feet of the looming fakes.

        Closer view of the monument

        But for me, the real surprise came in realizing that this faux-granite cluster of imitation boulders sat on top of, and covered, a fully real and original massive granite outcropping. The hillock of redwood bark that rose up behind the artificial monoliths decoratively concealed the original granite for which Rocklin was so named. An actual granite outcropping was apparently not rocky enough to signify Rocklin, and so the city simulated itself.

        I placed a call to the Rocklin Historical Society to see if they had any information on this sign-cum-quasi-public sculpture. The first words from the kind historian who answered the phone were, “We had NOTHING to do with that thing.” Digging deeper, I learned that the City of Rocklin sits on one hundred square miles of granite — so, clearly, you never have to look far for the stuff. In 1880, six quarries were shipping granite out of Rocklin and around the state for imposing architectural projects, including the San Francisco Mint and San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. At a peak of production, there were twelve quarries operating simultaneously. However, the availability of cement-based concrete in the early 1900’s began to make granite an increasingly less popular material for builders and architects, and by 1920 most of the quarries had closed permanently.

        View from across the off-ramp looking toward the sign and Interstate 80. Images courtesy of Kristin Posehn.

        Rocklin’s roadside synthesis of signage, branding, landscaping and public sculpture is a curious sample of civic postmodernism – perhaps fitting as a wry testament to the history of the city. As demand for concrete replaced granite and led to the demise of the city’s industrial quarries, Rocklin grew into a residential suburb that now has one of the highest population growth rates on the west coast. There is a touch of poignancy that these civic emblems are made of the same material as the concrete overpass they sit next to, as if the city was no different from the interstate, but instead an extension of its trafficking fluid. Granite is Rocklin’s past, but this concrete virtual rock may better mark its present. The rocks of Rocklin are a patch of government-funded Disneyland to welcome visitors or weary commuters, most of whom will mistake them for the real thing, or more likely, simply pass them by.

        Born in Northern California, Kristin Posehn now lives and works in Maastricht, the Netherlands, as a research fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie. In 2009 she completed an architectural installation relating to the ghost town of Metropolis, USA, which was realized outdoors, in public space, with Museum De Paviljoens in Almere, the Netherlands. Her work was recently included in the exhibition "Chanting Baldessari" at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, and “Parlor and Roseville” at Kate Werble Gallery in New York City.

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      • Joanne Greenbaum Decorating the Void: On Clay and Dirt on Delight
    • X

      • Jennifer Dudley Interview with Daniel Bozhkov
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report to the Committee on Decentered Practices
      • Shana Lutker Artists Are Not
      • Steve Cairns & Isla Leaver-Yap Blind Carbon Copy
      • Katarina Burin Rooms No One Lives In
      • Jonathan Bogarin What’s Your Context?
      • Sara Greenberger Rafferty Master of None
    • IX

      • Andrea Hill Fact, Factoid, Factotum
      • Nicholas Weist We’re Interested in Your White Horse
      • Tyler Coburn Ronnie Bass at I-20
      • Allison Kave Doa Aly and Juan William Chavez
      • Gillian Sneed Interview with Adam Pendleton
    • VIII

      • Jacob Hashimoto Interview with Luis Gispert
      • Lilly McElroy Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg
      • Kevin Zucker Thematic Apperception Test
      • Ian Cooper That’s What He Said
      • Colleen Asper Interview with Matt Borruso
    • VII

      • Mieke Marple Interview with Michelle Grabner
      • Farrah Karapetian Reframing Mirrors and Windows
      • Ruby Sky Stiler That’s What She Said
      • Spencer Finch New Zealand Light
      • Dana Frankfort John Walker: Text in/and Painting
      • The Editors Whitney Biennial 2008
    • VI

      • Katie Herzog Bay Area Figurative Language
      • Matt Connors Teignmouth Electron by Tacita Dean
      • Connelly LaMar New Photography 2007 at MOMA
      • Ethan Greenbaum Inside Lights
      • Matthew Lancit Cleaning Magritte’s Pipe
    • V

      • Roger White Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Interview with Michael DeLucia
      • Erin Shirreff Michel Auder: The Feature
      • Jessica Lansdon Interview with Brian Bress
      • Lisha Bai Suzanne Song at Michael Steinberg Fine Art
    • IV

      • Mariah Robertson Conditions in Time
      • Jacob Feige Psychopathia Pastoralis
      • Eric Golo Stone Interview with George Kontos
      • Skyler Brickley Keith Tyson at PaceWildenstein
      • Lumi Tan Curatorial Project with Jo-ey Tang
    • III

      • George Rush Wayne Gonzales at Paula Cooper
      • Jacqueline Cooper Margaret Wall-Romana at Bucheon Gallery
      • Ana Wolovick Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein
      • Skyler Brickley Nicholas Krushenick at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Peter Young at PS1
      • Ethan Greenbaum Daniel Gordon Interview
    • II

      • Christine Frerichs Rebecca Morris at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
      • Skyler Brickley Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
      • Ethan Greenbaum Kristen Baker at Deitch Projects
    • I

      • Mark Barrow On Abstraction
      • Tova Carlin Superstudio
      • Julia Weist Johannes Vanderbeek at Zach Feuer
      • Skyler Brickley Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern
      • Ethan Greenbaum Cement Garden at Marvelli Gallery