April 18, 2010. This is the fifth consecutive day of eruptions of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull [pronunciation], spewing ash into the atmosphere and shutting down air traffic over much of northern Europe. The image above represents the situation this morning. Below are images from days four, three and one. Obviously the volcano, after being dormant for 200 years under its glacier, is now experiencing a very public moment of midlife crisis.

Eliasson is also planning his first permanent outdoor sculptural installation in the United States on the Bard College campus, in a field close by their Frank Gehry-designed performance arts center. Entitled The Parliament of Reality, its opening is scheduled for July 2008, roughly the same time as the Waterfalls.

I recently attended a press conference for Olafur Eliasson's New York City Waterfalls, which will be realized from mid-July through mid-October 2008 in four East River/Upper New York Bay locations: the Brooklyn Bridge anchorage, Governors Island, the Red Hook piers, the riverfront just north of the Manhattan Bridge. Presented by the Public Art Fund, these monumental, 90 to 120-foot tall free-standing installations of cascading water, created from scaffolding and pumps, will be Eliasson's first major public project in the city. They promise to continue his alchemical reference to natural elements and his abiding interest in the environment as both raw material and metaphor. Moreover, they will coincide with exhibitions of his work at MoMA and PS 1.