Planar Pavilions at A-Z West is a permanent public work sited on the land between Zittel’s residence and the adjacent highway. Ten Planar Pavilions are scattered across an area of about eleven acres. Each pavilion consists of a series of vertical planes that function as walls, boundaries, and divisions. These planes frame the surrounding landscape, isolate inside from outside, and provide physical and psychological forms of shelter. As the desert becomes increasingly developed, the pavilions function similar to ruins, or structures still in a state of construction, as an interstitial zone that is neither fully domesticated nor completely wild. In this instance the structures function both as architecture and as an extension of the landscape itself.

This site is the only part of A-Z West that is open to the public at all times. Viewers are invited to experience the Planar Pavilions in any way that does not alter or damage the structures, land, or surrounding vegetation. Support for the project was provided in part by a grant from the VIA Art Fund and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Flat Field Works #2 and #3, created for the Hortiflora area at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, traverses the boundaries between art, and architecture. These works examine the roles and potential of flat “panels”, or “fields” – in reference to the horizontal and vertical panels that comprise the most basic elements of our our domestic and urban environments.

Planar Pavilions for the Denver Federal Center is a series of ten identical platform stations – each station created out of both vertical and horizontal panels.  The stations are installed in an alternating grid across an undulating landscape – each turned a different direction, so they generate different spacial and social relationships between each other.

Planar Pavilion  is a free-standing architectural structure composed of rectangular planes. Variegated in texture and colour, these surfaces function – like proverbial ‘blank canvases’ – as open-ended and amorphous sites. While interlocking physically, they also slip between myriad associations and resonances. As a three-dimensional matrix, the structure echoes Constructivist sculpture, interior set design and  contemporary construction techniques.

Parallel Planar Panels evoke manifold types of physical fields: abstract paintings, walls, floors, furnishings – as well as offering metaphors for the multifarious ‘planes’ of human experience. They reflect an enduring interest in the porous boundaries between distinct modes or genres – whether between abstraction and figuration, or the decorative and the functional. Rather than seeking to deconstruct categories and taxonomies, strategy of careful syncretism are honed adopted.   The works ultimately reflect contemporary culture’s double-edged attraction to consumable art objects – our simultaneous desire for beautiful objects with which we can intimately engage on a day-to-day level, and, on the other hand, for objects that are charged with the authority of art history and ideology.

Parallel Planar carpets are cross-disciplinary, operating as paintings (when hung on the wall), sculptures (when installed on the floor), and functional objects (when used in the context of everyday life). They teases apart the concept of a ‘picture plane’ by offsetting floor and wall-based pieces, invoking both the verticality of paintings and the horizontality of sculpture.

The Hard Carpet series consist of sheet metal “carpets” with a nod to Carl Andre, who’s work similarly collapses the space between viewing and experiencing.

Bench (After Judd), pays tribute to Donald Judd’s “Bench”, a structure that is compelling in it’s ability to confuse to role of the horizontal surface – functioning at once as seating, table and ‘flooring’.  Bench was prototyped at A-Z West as described here and here.

A-Z Uniforms are personal “uniforms” that are made and worn for an entire season. The second decade of this project began in 2004, and includes AZ Fiber Form Uniforms, AZ Personal Panels, Smocks and AZ Single Strand Uniforms.  These garments, while both attractive and functional, question our associations of freedom or personal liberation with the market demand for constant variety.  The Uniform project proposes that liberation may in fact, also be possible through the creation of a set of personal restrictions or limitations.

The Institute of Investigative Living is an intensive eight day MFA seminar, held once a year at A-Z West.  The program focuses on the subject of “Life Practice” as the junction of art and life – asking of how one can live a life that is intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant, regardless of the market or other outside factors.  Following the moto “learning from what we are not” the program takes participants beyond the range of typical everyday experience as a means through which to reevaluate common assumptions about needs, values and social norms.

Each session hosts ten students who are housed in the Wagon Station Encampment at A-Z West.  Group discussions are led by James Trainor  (former US editor from Frieze Magazine and a frequent AZ teaching collaborator) – and an itinerary is crafted for each program by Andrea Zittel.

The series of billboards titled “How to Live?” depicts domestic settings that embody this question with the everyday.  The overarching question of How To Live? is derived from the essays of Michel de Montaigne, who’s life’s writings comprise a massive volume of essays and anecdotes on all the nuances of day-to-day living.  Like Montaigne’s essays, these questions evolve in a  personal and idiosyncratic manner, often being rewritten, or reevaluated in accordance to time and place.

This series of diaristic gouaches presents the “AZ Covers” in use around AZ West.

“A-Z Carpet Furniture” highlights the slippage between represented space and literal space. It hovers between being a representation of something (it can hang on the wall or lay on the floor) and the actual thing itself, and it is meant to be used just like any furniture. The newest and largest work of the series is “A-Z Carpet Furniture: Cabin,” which creates a functional space which fits exactly into a 12’ x 16’ cabin near A-Z West. 

A-Z Personal Panels are constructed out of rectangles of fabric – based on a Russian Constructivist dictate to not adulterate the “true nature” of the fabric, which is woven in long continuous rectangles.  The A-Z Personal Panels were made and worn as part of the ongoing Seasonal Uniform series, begun in 1991 and continuing into the present day.  Other garments in this series are the Six Month Uniforms,  A-Z Fiber Form Uniforms and A-Z Single Strand Uniforms.

“Lay of my Land”is a sculpture of the 35 acres that currently compose AZ West.  The history of the western expansion  is in large part a history of land and real estate. First divided up by the Jeffersonian grid ( a one mile square system meant to facilitate land distribution from Washington DC ) the land in the High Desert was then further divided by the “baby” Homestead Acts  which promised 5 acre parcels free to those who would  erect a small structure on it. Lay of my Land speaks to this history of division and subdivision by representing the seemingly endless desert as gridded chunks of segregated and conceptually isolated commodities.

Many of the day to day necessities at A-Z West are ordered on-line, each delivered each in its own carefully packed cardboard box. It seems like a a shame to discard out a perfect vehicle – especially if it has special proportions or clearly crisp edges and corners.  “Aggregated Stacks”  are composed of these boxes, fused into integrated units that reflect a pattern of life through consumption.  The end result is that of a fractured grid: we as humans aspire toward the orderly and systematic, however life itself is quite chaotic. The ultimate reality of these two forces is reflected in the dynamic of this imperfect system where patterns and shapes and rhythms fall in and out of order.

The tiles designed for the kitchen at AZ West were produced by Arena, Arte Contemporáneo, in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The Interlopers HC is a formalization of a loosely knit hiking club that began in the late 1990s as “The Feral Spaniels” in Los Angeles in 1998 for the purpose of pancake hikes in the LA Foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.    In the early 2000s the hikes migrated to the high desert around A-Z West, and it was in the isolation of these high hills that our hiking apparel transformed into a combination of utility and fashion, dazzling the tortoises, snakes and other desert creatures.   Combining costumes and sport was the perfect antidote to a practice of desert walking… when in costume, we looked as odd as joshua trees and blooming cactus, and our iconoclastic attire brought us closer to the desert’s alien environment.

Many of the day to day necessities at A-Z West are ordered on-line, each delivered each in its own carefully packed cardboard box. It seems like a a shame to discard out a perfect vehicle – especially if it has special proportions or clearly crisp edges and corners.  “Aggregated Stacks”  are composed of these boxes, fused into an integrated unit that reflects a pattern of a life through consumption.  The end result is that of a fractured grid: we as humans aspire toward the orderly and systematic, however life itself is quite chaotic. The ultimate reality of these two forces is reflected in the dynamic of this imperfect system where patterns and shapes and rhythms fall in and out of order, or flex to accommodate one another.

It is difficult if not impossible to hang a hook on a wall without placing something on it.  These objects become magnates for the detritus of life and living – and therefore they are Energetic Accumulators.  Though placed in casual and sometimes random and/or temporary arrangement, the collected objects are organized into a regulated system by the supporting accumulators.

“Token Exchange” explores the role of the gallery as a site of exchange and opens up the activity of exchange in a way that reveals the subjective value that is the true measure of art.  The work consists of three series of  table- like trays each presenting a corresponding series of simple hand made tokens.  One grouping  is a series of small round handmade coins or discs made by pressing the artist’s thumb into a piece of black polymer clay, another is a simple crocheted chain that can be hung on the wall or worn as a necklace, and the third is a small abstract felted “pelt” of wool.  The audience is invited to take a token in exchange for something that they deem to be of equal value.  “Token Exchange” calls into question the assumed intrinsic monetary value of art by touching upon a larger range of values.  Ultimatley these tokens are intended to carry some sort of intangible “weight” and to float casually through the world.      

The Wall Sprawls are generated from areal of photographs taken of the fringes of urban development as it creeps out into open desert land.   Mirrored and repeated the images are tiled to create an overarching pattern that charts the frontiers of urban development. The pattern could be continued infinitely, just as one might imagine that this suburban sprawl continued rapidly progressing even after the photo was taken. 

Sufficient Self is a diaristic documentation of life at A-Z West, a thirty acre compound that integrates the production, use and viewing of work into a single location.  Developed around the notion of an “intimate universe” the video presents a vision of the desert region as well as events and philosophies that inspire new prototypes for living.

One of the ongoing missions at A-Z West has been to come up with new materials and fabrication techniques that cost less, and make more sense in this extreme desert climate. Probably the most plentiful natural resource available out here is garbage – especially paper waste. Product packaging, shipping boxes, newspapers, magazines, mail order catalogs and junk mail all had to be hauled to the dump until I started developing Paper Pulp as a material.

The Paper Pulp Panels are dried in a grid of racks called the “Regenerating Field”.  People think that they look like solar panels or modernist sculpture, they are also intended to function a little similar to an agricultural field where one can set out a batch of pulped paper each day, then harvesting it several weeks later when it is dry.

In 2002 Zittel began hand felting wool directly into the shape of shirts, tunics or dresses.  Eash resulting Fiber Form Uniform was made as a single piece with no seams.  These garments were produced the auspices of A- Z Advanced Technologies – bringing complexity of form together with pre-industrial know-how. A-Z Advanced Technologies comment on progressive designs that hark back to lost primitive ideals.

In the A-Z Single Strand Uniforms (1998-2001) Zittel abandoned pre-woven fibers and created clothing directly from a single strand of yarn, which she crocheted into various forms.  She chose crochet because it required the least number of implements possible (a single hook) to make a garment.

Eventually Zittel taught herself to crochet only with her fingers and hands.  The technique is simple, but it required practice and precision to control the tension correctly.  As she gained skill she started to make the patterns less linear and more abstract so that they resembled the webs of uneven netting.

The A-Z Cellular Compartment Units turn a single standard sized apartment room into a complex of ten interconnected chambers.  Each unit is dedicated to the satisfaction of a single human need or desire from sleeping to eating to reading to watching TV.

As a comment on the increasing divisions and compartmentalization’s of time space and function in both our interior living spaces and in our day to day lives, the Cellular Compartment Units function as an exploration into the division of space and function as well as a test dwelling for exploring the bodily experience of living in such a space.

A-Z West is an artwork located on over seventy acres in the California high desert next to Joshua Tree National Park. Since it’s inception A-Z West has functioned as an evolving testing grounds for living—a place in which spaces, objects, and acts of living all intertwine into a single ongoing investigation into what it means to exist and participate in our culture today. “How to live?” and “What gives life meaning?” are core issues in both Zittel’s personal life and artistic practice. Answering these questions has entailed exploring complex relationships between our need for freedom, security, autonomy, authority, and control—observing how structure and limitations often have the capacity to generate feelings of freedom beyond open-ended choices.

Works and projects at A-Z West include: Zittel’s home/testing grounds, the Wagon Station Encampment, Regenerating Field, shipping container compound, A-Z West studio and weaving studio, A-Z West satellite cabins, the Planar Pavilions, a ten-acre parcel for High Desert Test Sites projects, and several adjacent parcels slated for future projects.

If you would like to visit, A-Z West hosts monthly tours as a fundraiser for High Desert Test Sites—because of our busy studio schedule individual visits are not possible. Specially scheduled tours can sometimes be organized for groups of 12 or more. We also offer week-long stays in the Experimental Living Cabins, a satellite location 40 miles east of Joshua Tree. To find out more about visiting A-Z West, please email azwest@zittel.org.

Please note—because A-Z West is a private residence we ask the public to respect the designated ways to visit. Visitors may not show up on A-Z West grounds unannounced or without an appointment under any circumstance.

The Personal Panel Uniforms later evolved into the A-Z Raugh Uniform (1998), made of fabric literally torn from a bolt.  This reduced the activity of making a garment to a few minute modifications, such as using safety pins to fasten a strap to fabric, or stitching a single strategic seam.  While the Raugh garments required no expertise in either conception or construction, it took skill to make designs that look sophisticated and attractive.

The “Bofa” (a cross between a box and a sofa) was one of the most successful prototypes made for the comfort room at A-Z East.

The Russian Constructivists created garments created predominantly from geometric shapes. They felt that fabric that is woven into flat rectangles should not be cut and sewn into shapes alien to its origin.  Zittel’s Personal Panel Uniforms (1995-98) pushed this principle to it’s most extreme conclusion by creating rectangular garments pinned and tied to fit.  

The AZ Enterprise first took root in 1991 in a tiny 200 square foot storefront on South 8th Street in Brooklyn New York.  In January of 1994 the project migrated to a small three story row house with a storefront at 150 Wythe Avenue. Wares and prototypes rotated in and out of the space as various experiments evolved, the storefront serving as both a showroom and a test site. In 1996 and 1997 the A- Z Personal Presentation Room opened to the public for Thursday Evening Personal Presentations at A-Z East. These cocktail parties facilitated socialization amongst a Brooklyn community of artists and neighbors and allowed guests to explore the building and witness new prototypes in use. This period also spurred the creation of the A-Z Personal Profiles Newsletter featuring stories about owners and users of A-Z products and prototypes.   

The A-Z Container is a single shape that serves many different containing needs, for example both drinking and eating.  The original prototype was spun out of copper and then chromed.  A subsequent design produced for actual use at The A-Z was spun out of copper and silver-plated.  The final version of A-Z Container now in use is actually an appropriated commercially made glass bowl – a fact that self-reflexivity comments on the nature of the experimental fabrication process.

The A-Z Breeding Unit for Averaging Eight Breeds was an experimental housing unit for chickens controlling the reproduction of its inhabitants.  The Unit was built as an experiment to reduce eight domestically created breeds back to a single bird with more original traits.   Successive crossbreeding demonstrated that the unique traits were recessive, vanishing as a more “average” chicken was achieved – raising issues of control, organization, and notions of progress and creativity.

When thinking about the necessities of bodily function, the focus is primarily on the kitchen and the bathroom.  These two rooms feature many of the same fixtures but attend to opposite aspects of the same process. The Body Processing Unit integrates these functions into a single integrated system.  The intake functions are on the top, and the outtake functions are on the bottom.  It provides security by making sure that the body of the owner/user is attended to, and is portable enough to travel to any situation necessary.

These are developmental models

Zittel began creating Six Month Uniforms in 1991 as a response to the social dictate to wear an entirely different change of clothes every day. By wearing a single uniform for six months, she no only eliminated the stress of choosing a daily outfit , but also generated an alternative to the mandate of  perpetual variety mandated consumer culture. More then seventy variations of the A-Z Personal Uniform now exist.

The first A-Z Six Month Personal Uniforms were cut and sewn.  They ranged from basic wool dresses to silk adorned tulle and wool petticoats.  For her job in an art gallery and the working the studio, the artist needed an attractive yet flexible uniform (1992); for her work maintaining a chicken coop and other more strenuous daily activites, the uniform design added pants (1993).  

1991BreedingBantams