Sol LeWitt was a conceptual artist who never touched his own walls. He wrote instructions and other people executed them, the original prompt engineer! I bookmarked a project called "Solving Sol" seven years ago and made a repo in 2018. Committed a README. Never pushed anything else. Fast forward to 2026, I finally built it. |
Also, if you do end up going out to the Berkshires I’d recommend going during the mid/late summer, everyone comes up in the fall to see the leaves but I think the summer is much more beautiful :)
It does loose a little of the “immersiveness” (large walls are covered by the patterns)but makes up for it in the fine details.
The mass moca exhibit is good if you find yourself in north Adams ma. One of my profile photo is in front of a Sol Lewitt wall.
I recommend the Route 2 path into Troy because it passes through the Tacoma Ridge State Forest and offers plenty of nice twisties. If you travel from Troy back to Williamstown in mid to late spring, you see a vivid demonstration of how seasons vary with altitude. At the bottom of the mini mountains, you'll see the leaves with the rich green color of spring, and as the altitude climbs, you'll notice that the trees become the pale yellow of early spring, and sometimes the trees at the top are just buds.
If you're coming from Boston, I highly recommend stopping in Shelburne Falls to visit the Bridge of Flowers. Downtown Greenville has some nice antique stops. Tucker Falls. Theoretically, it has fossil beds in the area, but I've never actually gotten around to visiting them. Zoar has a nice zipline setup, but it's sufficiently popular that you'll need to make reservations.
The trip from Boston via Route 2 to Williamstown is a great way to spend a weekend. The North Adams/Williamstown area is a great place to spend a weekend. I've always enjoyed doing that.
Although, come to think of it, we are approaching maple sugaring season, and there are some good places out there to blow out your pancreas with fresh, rich Grade A dark New England maple syrup.
Brings back amazing memories from when I was in high school. A friend invited me to come to the museum for some drawing thing, turned out I got to participate in making a Sol Lewitt drawing. Had no idea who he was at the time but it was such a unique experience.
We were in an empty gallery room with a (I believe) BLACK painted wall with a faint grid on it and we were given an old hat with a bunch of cards in it. There were 4 or 5 highschool kids and we each took turns drawing a card out of the hat and drawing the shape from the card on consecutive grid squares on the wall. The shapes were basic lines and semi-circles. It was lots of fun and the end effect was a very beautiful line drawing mural.
Thank you so much for creating this!
In case anyone hasn't visited the Sol LeWitt installation at MASS MoCA in North Adams MA, do check it out. They usually have some other good stuff there too.
This is rad! Thanks for the reminder!