Land Arts 2018 Exhibition
An opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Saturday, February 23, 2019, in Leonardo’s Kitchen at the Museum of Texas Tech University at 3301 4th Street in Lubbock, Texas.
The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West presenting documents and constructions by students Jessie Dodington, Elise Dupré, Amanda Jolley, Cara Rae Joven, Shay Myerson, Elijah Olson, and Hannah Rotwein. Within the Texas Tech University College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, and writers camp for fifty-four nights while traveling 6,424 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invite the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2018 field guests included Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matt Coolidge, art historian Ann Reynolds, and writer Barry Lopez among many others. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first-person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular. The Land Arts 2018 Exhibition will continue through April 22, 2019.
Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.
About Land Arts 2018
The Land Arts 2018 field crew includes Jessie Dodington, an artist working on an MFA at Texas Tech, Elise Dupré, an illustrator and art historian from Ghent University, Belgium, Amanda Jolley, an artist with BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Cara Rae Joven, artist and University of California, Riverside MFA candidate, Shay Myerson, artist with BA from Lewis & Clark College, Elijah Olson, University of Texas at Austin BA in geography candidate, and Hannah Rotwein, artist and historian with BFA and BA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Sites on the 2018 itinerary ventured from Cebolla Canyon and Jackpile Mine to Muley Point, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Double Negative, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Trick Tank, Chaco Canyon, Two Buttes, White Sands, Plains of San Agustin, The Lightning Field, Chiricahua Mountains, Mimbres River, Cabinetlandia, Marfa, and Lubbock.
Field guests for 2018 were SIMPARCH artist Steve Badgett, art historian Kevin Chua, Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matthew Coolidge, artist and alumna k. Flint, geologist Curtis Francisco, architects Sofia Krimizi and Kryiakos Kryiaku, writer Barry Lopez, cultural activator Andrea Nasher, art historian Ann Reynolds, and curator Whitney Tassie.
Land Arts 2018 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and the James Family Foundation.
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.
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 undergraduate, graduate and PhD students and over fifty 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 France, South Korea, Spain, and Chile. 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 Museum of Texas Tech University
Established in 1929, the Museum is an educational, scientific, cultural, and research element of Texas Tech University. It is a not-for-profit institution by virtue of being a part of Texas Tech University. The Museum’s purpose is to support the academic and intellectual mission of Texas Tech University through the collection, preservation, documentation, and research of scientific and cultural material and to disseminate information about those collections and their scientific and cultural topics through exhibition, interpretation, and publication for primary, secondary, and higher education students, the scholarly community, and the general public. The Museum aspires to provide the highest standard of excellence in museological ethics and practices, while pursuing continuous improvement, stimulating the greatest quantity of quality research, conservation, interpretation, exhibition, and education, and providing support for faculty, staff, and students. The Museum is a multi-faceted institution that includes the main building, the Helen Devitt Jones Auditorium and Sculpture Court, Moody Planetarium, Natural Science Research Laboratory, and Lubbock Lake Landmark, an archaeological and natural history preserve.
Land Arts 2018 Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech University will take place within Leonardo’s Kitchen, a gallery of new ideas, research, and creativity established to present a changing array of exhibitions that examine the research and creativity of Texas Tech University across science, technology, engineering, math, humanities, and the arts.
For additional information about Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech or to schedule an interview with Chris Taylor contact him by phone at 806-834-1589 or email at chris.taylor@ttu.edu. Information about the College of Architecture can be found at http://arch.ttu.edu, and the Museum of Texas Tech University by visiting https://www.depts.ttu.edu/museumttu/.