When I received the news last week that Dennis Oppenheim had died, I was immediately transported back some thirty-five years to my first encounters with his art. I was eighteen, a freshmen studying art and philosophy at the SUNY College in Buffalo, New York, when I met two older students, the artists Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman. Both were just starting up an artist-run alternative space named Hallwalls at which they invited both local and international artists to show and discuss their work. Robert is the one who introduced me to art critic Lucy Lippard's just-released Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object From 1966 to 1972, a book I made my bible on contemporary art. Although there were hundreds of artists featured in the survey, there were two artists I came back to repeatedly--Robert Smithson and Dennis Oppenheim. The descriptions and depictions of Dennis' land art and body art were unlike anything I'd ever encountered and wanted to know more about. It was only a few months later that I received my wish of laying eyes directly on one of Dennis' earth works, and it turned out the work was among his most spectacular.