Owens Valley. Cast and blown glass, acrylic, brass base and light. 2026.
In 2025, the Geosynchrony Collective collected halite and trona crystals from Owens Lake in the Eastern Sierra of California and made molds of them. The project centers on California's water history. In the early 1900s, Los Angeles was a growing city in need of water. The city bought the land around Owens Lake and along the river feeding it, over 200 miles away. The city then built the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and by 1927, Owens Lake, which once had steamboats on it, had dried up. Soon after, it became one of the most carcinogenic locations in the United States, and it remained that way until the mid-1990s. After the 1990s, Los Angeles began dust mitigation measures, including tillage and shallow flooding, to reduce toxic dust. Because of the flooding, halite and trona crystals grow in the brine. Without the drying of Owens Lake and the dust mitigation, the crystals wouldn't exist. The crystals dissolve back into the water when rain and snow arrive in the winter months, then regrow as the water evaporates in spring and summer, concentrating into a more saline solution. A goal of this project is to share the history of Owens Lake and the Eastern Sierras and to shed light on an object that represents California's water history.
In this project, Landau used both blowing and casting processes. To make both molds, they still needed to create wax positives. From there, the process diverges for casting and blowing into different investment molds. In the casting process, after the molds are made and the wax is melted out, they melt billets (large chunks of glass) into the mold to get the texture. For the blowing process, they preheat the molds in the annealer and blow glass into the space once the wax has been melted out. Landau chose to make this project into individual lights. They wanted to explore how light would reveal the texture. Since the bases are made of acrylic and brass, they wanted to mimic the brine and the watery surface from which the crystals originated.
Owens Lake: Small Halite Crystal. Cast glass with acrylic, brass base, and light. 6.5”x4.5”x3.5”. 2026.
Owens Lake: Small Halite Crystal (In Color). Cast glass with acrylic, brass base, and light. 6.5”x5”x4”. 2026.
Owens Lake: Large Halite Crystal. Cast glass with acrylic, brass base, and light. 9.5”x8”x5”. 2026.
Owens Lake: Large Trona Crystal (in Color). Cast glass with acrylic, brass base, and light. 9”x6”x4.5”. 2026.
Owens Lake: Large Trona Crystal. Blown glass with acrylic, brass base, and light. 10”x7.5”x4.5”. 2026.
Project made by Geosychrony.
Photography by Oliver Rye and Maylight Studio.