Land Arts 2015 Exhibition
Texas Tech University College of Architecture and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA) announce Land Arts 2015 Exhibition. An opening reception will take place from 6-9 p.m. April 1, 2016 at the LHUCA Warehouses at 1001 Mac Davis Lane in Lubbock, Texas.
The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech in the College of Architecture and presents documents, objects and constructions by Whitman College art and geology student Fiona Bennitt from Bellingham, Washington, artist and Rhode Island School of Design MFA Henry Brown from New York, artist/writer and Bard College MFA Nick Keys from Sydney, Australia, artist and University of California at Riverside graduate student Ashley May from South Deerfield, Massachusetts, and Texas Tech architecture graduate students Mark Freres from San Antonio, Caleb Lightfoot from Midland, and Sadie Richter from Corpus Christi.
Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Emily Rabinowitz from Taos and New Jersey. Land Arts 2015 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and student support from the James Family Foundation.
Students traveled 6,000 miles visiting locations across the Southwest camping for two months as they explored natural and human forces that shape contemporary landscapes—ranging from geology and weather to cigarette butts and hydroelectric dams. The itinerary included: Chaco Caynon, Muley Point, Moon House, Cedar Mesa, Epicenter, Green River, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation — Wendover, Double Negative, Las Vegas Piece, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Cebolla Canyon, Jackpile Mine, Laguna Pueblo, Adobe Alliance, Marfa, Plains of San Agustin, Very Large Array, The Lightning Field, Mimbres River, Chiricahua Mountains, Cabinetlandia, Twin Buttes, White Sands, and Lubbock.
The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, 1 April 2016 from 6 – 9 pm during the First Friday Art Trail. The exhibition will be on view Saturday afternoons from noon to 4pm and by appointment through Friday, 6 May 2016 when the exhibition will close with another First Friday Art Trail reception. To set up an appointment contact Chris Taylor by phone at 806-834-1589 or by email at chris.taylor@ttu.edu.
About Land Arts
Land Arts of the American West is a field program investigating the intersection of geomorphology and human construction. Land art or earthworks begin with the land and extend through the complex social and ecological processes that create landscape. Encompassing constructions that range from petroglyphs to roads, dwellings, monuments and traces of those actions, earthworks show us who we are. Examining gestures small and grand, Land Arts directs our attention from potsherd, cigarette butt, and track in the sand, to human settlements, monumental artworks, and military-industrial installations. Land Arts is a semester abroad in our own back yard investigating the American landscape through immersion, action and reflection.
Land Arts 2015 field season at Texas Tech was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and student support from the James Family Foundation. The 2015 field crew was composed of three architecture graduate students and four artists. Future years will continue to broaden the transdisciplinary involvement from students across the Texas Tech community and participants from beyond the university.
About the College of Architecture
The College of Architecture at Texas Tech University is located in Lubbock where architectural education has been offered since 1927. The college includes 650 undergraduate, graduate and PhD students and 50 faculty members. Graduate certificate programs are offered in Historic Preservation, Visualization, Community Design, Rural Health Care Design, and Digital Design Fabrication, as well as an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design. To extend the academic offerings on campus every undergraduate student participates in directed summer study abroad offerings in places such as Paris, Seoul, Seville, Valparaiso and Verona. The presence of Land Arts within the college expands the range of field study connecting teaching and research directly to landscapes we inhabit.
About the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts
The mission of the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts is to inspire and enrich our community by being a catalyst for the arts. Celebrating eleven years of serving our community, LHUCA is proud to announce this fabulous addition of the Warehouses on Mac Davis Lane and Studio Flats as part of the expanding LHUCA Campus. Our campus, located on a two city block area of downtown Lubbock, is the heart of the cultural district. The campus includes the FireHouse Building with a state-of-the-art theatre and four exhibition galleries, the Helen DeVitt Jones Clay Studio, and the IceHouse that provides rehearsal, event and gallery spaces. The Graffiti Building, equipped with a classroom and teaching gallery space, will open in April of this year. The newly acquired Warehouses will provide alternative exhibition and studio spaces for creative works that reach beyond the traditional gallery presentation. Land Arts 2014 Exhibition will continue to demonstrate the flexible use of this space and serve as a magnet for the cultural growth and educational dialog between creator and viewer. The Board of Trustees and staff of LHUCA invite you to join us in celebrating the redevelopment and renovation of the cultural heart of Lubbock.
If you would like more information about Land Arts or to schedule an interview with Chris Taylor contact him by phone at 806-834-1589 or by email at chris.taylor@ttu.edu. Additional information about the College of Architecture is at http://arch.ttu.edu, and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts at http://lhuca.org.
Image: Pivotal footprints, Cabinetlandia, New Mexico, 25 October 2015, by Chris Taylor.