The Blog

Photo from Summit

Ok, so this is crazy. NPR reported this morning that a group of entrepreneurs purchased an entire mountain, for $40 million, in Utah. The organization is called Summit, and from what I can gather online, they're trying to merge sharp business leaders with a sense of goodwill, or, to use their words, to create an "epicenter of innovation." But still, a ski resort? 

Summit has previously hosted invite-only events (which if you look at their promo video, have included cruises on giant ships, yoga classes, and speeches by Bill Clinton and Richard Branson), and now they want to put down roots at Utah's Powder Mountain to build a small village/ski resort that also has artist residencies. "The team wants Powder Mountain to be a new creative center to incubate ideas, host events and let smart people come together in a place where they can let their guards down," NPR reports. According to an earlier article in Forbes, this start-up town would be populated by people putting down homes here and hanging at a members-only lodge and events space. 

I'll be honest, my gut reaction to this piece was cynicism. From George Packer's brilliant piece in The New Yorker about the often self-serving ways Silicon Valley elite invest their wealth to the news reports about Sean Parker's lavish Big Sur wedding, I'm growing tired of all the stories of young wealth being tossed around with such senseless grandeur. The tech lifestyle news that floats to the top is often about entrepreneurs invested in helping their own. But there could be a deeper story here. 

Looking at Summit's site, I'm intrigued by the idea of a group founded on driving "positive disruptive innovation." They support a list of commercially-driven entities like Uber and Scopely, but they also work with the Clinton Foundation, Change.org, and groups focused on helping foster non-profits in Israel and developing countries around the world. So I'm equally curious what Summit will use their literal summit to do. 

I mean, yesterday I wrote in support of James Turrell, an artist who purchased a volcanic crater in Arizona to carve out his artistic vision, so I feel like I shouldn't be so quick to judge an alternative take on using private land to inspire people. And traditional artists residencies around the country are based on a similar basic concept of isolating people from the rest of the world so they can concentrate on building their ideas. If Summit does indeed help struggling artists, musicians, and non-profits bring their new things to life, their bold move could encourage a whole new breed of new money that invests in creativity and creative problem-solving.

I just hope that Summit's idea of supporting community is sensitive to the communities around it. The mayor of Ogden, the closest town to Power Mountain, told NPR the people who live there now value the small town feel; they appreciate their rural surroundings, and the fact that Ogden isn't pricey like Aspen or Vail. 

And there's also the issue of bombast. To use the residency idea again, most of those artist communities are built around more humble surroundings. Ski resorts and cruise ships raise the bar of where inspiration can take place to a celebrity level. 

In the end, the trend of young entrepreneurs spending crazy amounts of money on crazy ideas doesn't seem to be going away, and hell, it's their money to burn through in the end. But my hope is that with the dogged way the media is watching these expenditures that the people who hold the purse strings (in the Bay Area and beyond) will foster a culture where the well off seriously invest in creating positive change more than they invest in exclusive, fancy playgrounds for the wealthy. 

Photo from LACMA

I've been obsessed with artist James Turrell ever since I heard about the Roden Crater, a gorgeous stretch of land in the Arizona desert Turrell has spent decades turning into a gigantic art installation. Turrell works with light, space, and visual perception in highly unusual ways, and he has turned the cone-shaped remains of an extinct volcano into a labyrinth of rooms and passageways that reshape the underground landscape and sky above in his vision. The Sunday New York Times Magazine published an extensive profile of Turrell and a description of the Roden Crater, complete with a blueprint and photos. The article, which is a great read, only deepened my longing to hit the highway and be moved by such a massive and immersive work of art. 

Alas, the Times confirms that you can only visit Turrell's lifework if you're friends with the artist (for now), significantly reducing my chances of getting inside this masterpiece. However, Turrell has three retrospectives opening around the country this summer, so there's a chance to be immersed in his experiments in light and color at three different museums – the Guggenheim in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I'm aiming for the LACMA roadtrip myself. 

The LACMA show opened at the end of May and runs through next April, which is good, because tickets to part of the exhibit are already sold out through the fall. Crazy. But the reason for the advance ticket grab is Turrell's work takes time to experience, especially when it comes to his "Perpetual Cell" piece, which requires a waiver promising the guest is sober and sane. LACMA describes the cell as a solo deal, where, "Assisted by an attendant, an individual viewer enters a spherical chamber on a sliding bed. A program of saturated light surrounds the viewer for twelve minutes, allowing the visitor to experience the intense, multidimensional power of light and the complex seeing instrument of the human eye." Tickets for that one are sold out through October, but if you're able to plan in advance, it sounds like the best excuse ever to hit the road to LA.

In the meantime, a brief preview on Turrell and his crater below (or you can visit his "Skyspace" installation, a dome built into a hill in the de Young's sculpture garden).