Opus 40
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Opus 40 is a large Earth art installation in Saugerties, New York, created by sculptor and quarryman Harvey Fite (1903--1976). It is comprised of a sprawling series of dry-stone ramps, pedestals and platforms covering 6.5 acres (2.6 ha) of a bluestone quarry.
Fite, then a professor of sculpture and theater at Bard College, purchased the disused quarry site in 1938, expecting to use it as a source of raw stone for his ordinary representational sculpture. Instead, inspired by a season of work restoring Mayan sculpture in Honduras, he began installing his sculptures in the quarry space itself.
To organize this exhibition, he quarried additional stone to build ramps and walkways to lead to the individual works. As the rampwork expanded, Fite abandoned the idea of merely showcasing smaller sculptures, and spent the rest of his life expanding the dry-stone assemblage as a sculpture in its own right.
All of the quarrying and walling work on Opus 40 was done by hand, using traditional hand tools; this includes the erection of a 9-ton (8.1-tonne) granite monolith at the highest point of the site. Many of Fite's tools, as well as others he collected, are exhibited at a small museum at the Opus 40 site. The sculpture is now owned by a nonprofit group, and is open to the public as a tourist attraction and a wedding and concert venue. In 2001 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The band Mercury Rev wrote a song about Opus 40, on their 1998 album Deserter's Songs.
