A-Z West is an 80-acre compound and artwork by artist Andrea Zittel , located in the Mojave Desert in Joshua Tree, California . Zittel conceived of A-Z West as a project to explore psycho-social aspects of day-to-day living, "what it means to live," and functional systems for desert life. Zittel lived in A-Z West from 2000 to 2022. Artworks previously created by Zittel on the A-Z West compound include The Wagon Station Encampment , Regenerating Field (2002), and Planar Pavilions at A-Z West (2017).
8-494: In 2002, Zittel and a group of collaborators - Lisa Anne Auerbach , John Connelly, Shaun Caley-Regen and Andy Stillpass - formed High Desert Test Sites (HDTS). Zittel stayed as the primary producer and supervisor for two decades. The nonprofit High Desert Test Sites assumed the management and stewardship of the land and artworks around 2022, and currently runs residencies, educational workshops, and art exhibitions on and around A-Z West. There are four original homestead cabins on
16-740: A satellite project in Wonder Valley, California with two homestead cabins, The Experimental Living Cabins. Lisa Anne Auerbach Lisa Anne Auerbach (born 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan ) is an American textile artist, zine writer, photographer, best known for her knitting works with humorous political commentary. Born in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan Auerbach currently resides in Los Angeles. Auerbach has been making knitted pieces since completing her undergraduate degree at
24-593: The A-Z project. In 1994, the project moved to 150 Wythe Ave. in Brooklyn, a 3 story row house, which Zittel turned into a showroom testing grounds for her experimental structures for living, opening to the public for weekly viewings, while she continued to live in it. In 1999-2000, Zittel moved to Joshua Tree and purchased a 5 acre parcel that slowly grew to the 80 acre A-Z West compound. From 2018-2020, A-Z West also included
32-538: The Art Center of Design in 1994. Photography was the discipline she studied for her MFA, however, due to lack of access to a darkroom, she used knitting as a cost-effective way to make art. Knit works, zines, newsletters and a 5-foot-tall magazine titled American Megazine are all part of her body of work. Her Knitting patterns are often created digitally and created with a knitting machine. "While Auerbach's slogans and signs are politically blunt, her humor infuses
40-432: The compound that Zittel converted into The A-Z West House, a library, a caretaker’s house, and additional dwelling units. The A-Z West House contains artworks based on Zittel’s idea of “life practice” - functional aesthetics for everyday living, from furniture to a chicken coop. Functional artworks in the home include Aggregated stacks , Linear sequence , and Hooks, energetic accumulators . Art writer Terry Myers discussed
48-546: The philosophy of artist Robert Rauschenberg - known for exploring the space between art and life - as an inspiration to Zittel. Others have brought attention to Zittel's focus on the elemental aspects of life and environmental thinking, Every part of Zittel’s environment, from the home she lives in to the clothes she wears and the bowls she eats from, is intentionally designed to align with a unique mode of existence that draws on Modernist utopianism, contemporary environmentalism and progressive self-sufficiency. The A-Z West Studio
56-453: The work with subtlety, goofiness, mockery, and self-depreciation—sometimes all at once." Lisa Anne Auerbach's Body Count Mittens depict a gun with a date and a number that is the accumulative number of American soldiers killed in Iraq. There is a different date and count on each individual mitten for the day knitting started on each. The instructions and the pattern for the mittens, along with
64-813: Was built in 2010-2011, and includes a ceramics workshop, wood shop , and weaving studio with seven floor looms , in addition to an office and the A-Z West Works Studio Store. A-Z West Works produces ceramics, textiles, and clothing products at the A-Z West Studio. A-Z West was a continuation of the model established by A-Z East in Brooklyn, NY . A-Z East originated as a 200 square foot storefront at 72 S. 8th St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn , where Zittel first began experimenting with living structures and started to gain recognition for
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