Much of Hutchinson's beautiful but fleeting work exists only in the photographs presented here, accompanied by his own handwritten notes providing insight, levity, and riddles spanning his more than four-decade career.Essays by fellow artist Bill Beckley and critic Carter Ratcliff round out this extraordinary,beautiful, and long-overdue portrait of one of the most underappreciated artists of our time.

Since the 1960s, Peter Hutchinson has beenworking with land art alongside his friendsand contemporaries Robert Smithson,Dennis Oppenheim, and Michael Heizer.With the publication of Thrown Rope, hisevanescent work has finally been given itsproper due. Like those of his peers, Hutchinson'sconceptual pieces-whether trails of moldingbread strewn about a volcano in Mexico or strings of calabashes stretching beneath the waters of the Caribbean-exist outside the gallery walls. His delicate, ephemeral works are subject to chance and the whims of nature.Many of them are the product of his "thrown rope" method-literally throwing ropes across an expanse of land, then placing lime or planting flowers along the lines determined by the ropes, resulting in a snakelike garden or swerving lines of bleached land.

Much of Hutchinson's beautiful but fleeting work exists only in the photographs presented here, accompanied by his own handwritten notes providing insight, levity, and riddles spanning his more than four-decade career.Essays by fellow artist Bill Beckley and critic Carter Ratcliff round out this extraordinary,beautiful, and long-overdue portrait of one of the most underappreciated artists of our time.