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SALT PALACE WINDMILLS
Approaching the Entry Tower on West Temple, Patrick Zentz's Salt Palace "Windmills" catch your attention and remind us that although we may quickly enter the shelter of the Convention Center, the effect of the outside environment is still with us. Upon entering the Tower, you sense another effect of the "Windmills" through the acoustic sound boxes.
Montana artist Patrick Zentz's work is the most noticeable of the commissioned works. The 12 large windmills along West Temple are part of a machine that translates a facet of the Salt Lake City environment into sound. The rotational  movement of each windmill is electronically encoded. These signals are fed into 12 tonally distinct percussion instruments within the large tower. Patterns of wind activity are thus translated into shifting patterns of sound within the atrium space.
At a moment in American history when, for the first time, there are more people working in art related fields than on family farms and ranches, Patrick Zentz, Montana rancher and artist, occupies a unique position. His works take form from a series of recognitions related to his farming activity. Using seed drills, shredders, combines and other equipment to work his land in south central Montana, Zentz realized about two decades ago that there is in the mechanized activity of the farmer a significant frontier between man made, technological works and the work of nature. Farming is an activity where humankind uses tools to change the landscape. Zentz' artworks invert this relationship. Resembling pieces of scientific equipment, they exist to be acted upon by nature, not to transform it. Meticulously crafted and often delicately beautiful, Zentz' mechanisms are energized by the forces of nature wind, flowing water, changing temperatures, and register these elements in gracefully mediated graphic or musical forms.
Patrick Zentz grew up on a ranch southwest of Billings. He majored in biology (BA, 1969, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California) and sculpture (MFA, 1974 University of Montana). In 1978, he returned to ranching and farming. He develops ideas for sculpture as he works the land and has produced a long series of finely crafted instruments designed, for example, to translate the line of the horizon into a rhythmical passage of sounds or make a drawing based on the fluctuations of the wind.
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