Drop City was a counterculture artists' community that formed near the town of Trinidad in southern Colorado in 1960. Abandoned by 1979, Drop City became known as the first rural "hippie commune".[1]
The Ultimate Painting, by Drop Artists, 1966, acrylic on panel, 60" × 60"Pythagorean Tree, by Drop Artists, 1967, acrylic on panel, 48" diam.
Establishment
In 1960, the four original founders, Gene Bernofsky ("Curly Benson"), JoAnn Bernofsky ("Drop Lady"), Richard Kallweit ("Larry Lard"), and Clark Richert ("Clard Svenson"), art students and filmmakers from the University of Kansas and University of Colorado, bought[2] a 7-acre (28,000m2) tract of land about four miles (6km) north of Trinidad, in southeastern Colorado. Their intention was to create a live-in work of Drop Art, continuing an art concept they had developed earlier at the University of Kansas. Drop Art (sometimes called "droppings") was informed by the "happenings" of Allan Kaprow and the impromptu performances, a few years earlier, of John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Buckminster Fuller, at Black Mountain College.
As Drop City gained notoriety in the 1960s underground, people from around the world came to stay and work on the construction projects. Inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer, residents constructed domes and zonohedra to house themselves, using geometric panels made from the metal of automobile roofs and other inexpensive materials. In 1967 the group, now consisting of 10 core people, won Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion award[3] for their constructions. The Firesign Theatre folks had a commercial—"kids, tear the top off your daddy's car, and send it, together with 10 cents in cash or coin, to Drop City, Colorado..."
Aftermath
The community grew in reputation and size, accelerated by media attention, including news reports on national television networks. Gene "Curly" Bernofsky later wrote that nationwide attention contributed to the commune's demise.[4] The peak of Drop City's fame was the Joy Festival in June 1967,[5] which attracted hundreds of hippies, some of whom stayed on. Matthews writes that Bernofsky hid in his dome throughout the Joy Festival, and quit, disgusted, the very next day.[6] With the complex of eight domes and geometric buildings constructed, Curly and Jo, the only official owners of the property, signed it over to a non-profit corporation consisting of the entire core group (then about a dozen). The deed stipulated that the land was "forever free and open to all people".[7] But tensions and personality conflicts were already a problem within the group, and soon became unbearable.[citation needed] By the end of 1968, some of the original occupants of the community had moved to Boulder, Colorado, to start an artists' cooperative, "Criss-Cross", whose purpose, like Drop City's, was to function in a "synergetic" interaction between peers (no bosses) to create experimental artistic innovation. Among the innovative endeavors to evolve out of Drop City are:
the artists' group "Criss-Cross", operative in New York and Colorado in the 1970s;
the development of Baer and Richert's discovery, the "61-Zone System," by Zometool Inc. of Longmont, Colorado;
and in the early 1980s, an important discovery of a cubic fusion of interpenetrating fractaltetrahedra by Richard Kallweit.[citation needed]
At Drop City, debris and building remnants from the original settlement remain at the site today, though it is not inhabited. By 1979 it was abandoned, and the members of the non-profit who were still in touch decided to sell off the site to the cattle rancher next door.[8] The last of the iconic domes was taken down only in the late 1990s, by a truck repair facility which now occupies a portion of the site.[citation needed]
Legacy
By 1970, many intentional communities had developed in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico, some of which were inspired by Drop City. Libre, north of Gardner, Colorado, was founded by several ex-"Droppers", and was among the more well known. Some communities continue to exist in some form today (notably in the Taos, NM area).
In 1971, author, and Drop City resident, Peter Rabbit's memoir "Drop City" was published.[9]
In 1993, an Indie Rock band from Sydney, Australia formed using the name Drop City. In 2007, a different, Denver based, Indie Rock band formed with the same name.
In 2010, inspired by the Drop City commune, COMUNE opened a Drop City gallery space in the Los Angeles area.[10][11]
In 2012, the documentary Drop City was released, directed by Joan Grossman.[12]
In 2014, the indie rock band Ultimate Painting released its first album.[13] The band and its eponymous first album are named after one of the paintings made by the Drop City community.[14]
↑ Miller 2006; Miller writes that the land was bought for $450 on May 3, 1960. Matthews agrees on the date but puts the price at $750. He writes that Bernofsky and Richert paid cash derived from sale of some marijuana.
↑ Matthews 2010, p.165; The most important part was a check for $500. Matthews writes, "The Dymaxion award has never been heard of since."
↑ "Feedback". The Lay of the Land: The Center for Land Use Interpretation Newsletter. Culver City, CA, US: Center for Land Use Interpretation. Summer 1996. OCLC728045237. Archived from the original on 2007-03-02.
Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion", "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during or around 1964 and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
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Lama Foundation is a spiritual community founded in 1967, located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico, seventeen miles north of Taos. The original commune was co-founded by Barbara Durkee, Stephen Durkee, and Jonathan Altman.
In 1961, filmmaker Gene Bernofsky and artist Clark Richert, art students from the University of Kansas, developed an art concept they called Drop Art or droppings. Informed by the "happenings" of Allan Kaprow and the impromptu performances a few years earlier of John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Buckminster Fuller at Black Mountain College, Drop Art began when Richert and Bernofsky started painting rocks and dropping them from a loft roof onto the sidewalk of Lawrence Kansas's main drag — watching the reactions of passersby. Early Drop Art included such pieces as Egg Drop and Pendulum (pictured).
Drop City is a 2003 novel by American author T. C. Boyle. The novel, set in various years from the early 1960s to late 1970s, describes the social evolution of a group of eight counter-cultural nudists in a commune based on the real Drop City, Colorado. However, Boyle's fictional group initially live in California and later move to a remote part of Alaska, and the group shares many qualities with the real Sonoma County Morning Star commune. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award.
Morningstar Commune was an active open land counterculture commune in rural Sonoma County, California, located at 12542 Graton Road near Occidental.
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Clark Richert was an American contemporary artist largely known for his colorful geometric paintings, but whose practice included animation, video, intervention, happenings, and publishing. He also developed Drop City, an artist community near Trinidad, Colorado. He is considered to be one of Colorado's most important artists.
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