PAF016Jenny Holzer, Carved Boulders & Living Rock, 2026

For Powder Art Foundation, Jenny Holzer has conceived an evolving commission centered on the poetry of May Swenson (1913–1989), the Utah-born American poet celebrated for her formal experimentation and acute observation of the physical world. The project begins with a single boulder, the first in an ongoing group of carved stones to be encountered across Powder Mountain.

Holzer selected a native quartzite boulder already embedded in the site, nestled among existing vegetation and aging trees. Rather than relocating the rock or clearing its surroundings, the work preserves the conditions in which it has long existed. Inscribed into its surface is a passage from Swenson’s 1956 poem The Promontory Moment: “…the eye, also a sun, wanders, and all that it sees, it owns…” The words become part of the mountain itself, with minimal disturbance to the surrounding terrain. Future boulders will extend this approach across the landscape.

Born in Logan, Utah, Swenson returned throughout her writing to the forms and rhythms of ordinary life, from bodies and objects to animals, weather, and the natural world. Her poems often test the relationship between seeing and knowing, using typography and spatial arrangement to extend meaning beyond the words themselves. Her description of existence as “breathing change” takes on particular force here, where her language is inscribed into the geology of her native state.

Holzer has long moved language beyond the page and into shared space. At Powder Mountain, reading becomes physical and durational: words are discovered through movement, attention, and pause. Carved into rock yet exposed to changing light, snow, vegetation, and the passage of time, Swenson’s language gains permanence within a setting defined by continual change.