What is the art of rock and dirt?  This is the question we ask when we consider "City," a sculpture/amalgamation/creation of artist Michael Heizer in the hinterlands of Nevada. Heizer began working on "City" in 1972, and is still not finished.  It is a massive formulation of rock, sand, and concrete, best viewed from the air.  At present, it is over a mile and a half long.
     To our initial question, well, the more poetically minded of us will reply that, to name one example, mountains represent artwork, artwork of rock (of all kinds, though often granite) and dirt.  Or we might cite a formless beach, its nearly infinite particles of sand, worn and polished over many, many years, shimmering in the sun, waiting for the rising tide morning after morning.
     Heizer's "sculpture" asks us to look at rock and dirt differently.  It asks us to consider its beauty when it is shaped not by natural forces but by the human imagination. Moreover, it invites us to ponder the meaning of transformation:  Heizer took what many people might dismiss as ancillary to their lives and elevated it to an object of scrutiny and meditation.  He makes us look harder at what we think we already know.
     And perhaps that's one point.  We often do not see what things can fully be until we are willing to see them as we had not imagined them to be.
     So did Augustine observe many centuries ago about faith in God that, "I understand that I might believe."