Hometown

Nancy Holt
1969
Ink on paper
11 x 8 1/2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm)

In this concrete poem, Holt explores a key concept that she would return to throughout her career: the intersection between language and place. In Hometown, names of towns in New Jersey are typewritten on a letter sized piece of paper, with their location on the page mirroring their physical location. Here Holt is testing the limitations and boundaries of a map by distilling the form down to its most basic elements. In Hometown Holt is also exploring her own personal geography; as a child Holt moved with her parents to Bloomfield, NJ and then later to Clifton, NJ, which is where she attended high school.

Featured in this work is the town of Passaic, New Jersey, which Robert Smithson considered two years earlier in his 1967 essay A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey and photowork The Monuments of Passaic.

See Also