Texas Tech University
Huckabee College of Architecture
and Museum of Texas Tech University
announce the LAND ARTS 2024 EXHIBITION
An opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, February 28, 2025, 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 works by students Hallie Ayres, Levi Baruch, Viola Bordon, Ian Dippo, Isaac Dunne, Laura Friedman, Alexander Garza, Jennifer Loyd, and Caleb Mancillas.
Within the Texas Tech University Huckabee College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, historians, and writers camped for fifty-three nights while traveling 5,251 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, The Lightning Field—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 invited the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2023 field guests included Aurora Tang of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, artists Dionne Lee, Deborah Stratman and Steve Badgett, art historian Ann Reynolds, and Aaron Hegert and Eric Simpson of Tablelands Center for Bioregional Art, 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 2024 Exhibition will continue through 25 April 2025.
Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.
About Land Arts 2024
The Land Arts 2024 field crew includes participants Hallie Ayres, researcher, writer, and occasional curator who grew up in Austin, Texas, and lately lives in Brooklyn, New York, Levi Baruch, ultidisciplinary artist and aspiring craftsman based in Philadelphia, frequently returning to Western Massachusetts with a BA from Wesleyan University, Viola Bordon, artist working with craft and landscape, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ian Dippo, artist and landscape architect based in Austin, Texas, originally from the west coast of Michigan, Isaac Dunne, artist based in Brooklyn, New York with a BFA in sculpture from Hunter College whose work is primarily concerned with the possibility of queer architectures, Laura Friedman, greenhorn field botanist with University of Montana, co-author of A Point Reyes Herbarium, musician and founder of Hallowed Ground concert series, BFA Design + Ecology, SAIC, Permaculture Design Certificate, Natura Institute, Alexander Garza, architectural designer and aspiring creative individual at Texas Tech University, motivated by the historical and contemporary, the arts and sciences, the natural and artificial, Jennifer Loyd, poet, translator, and editor with an MFA from Purdue University, pursuing a PhD at Texas Tech whose writing appears in Best New Poets 2022, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, Swamp Pink, and elsewhere, and Caleb Mancillas, architectural designer, wanderer and thru hiker from Austin, currently based in McKinney, Texas.
Sites on the 2024 itinerary ventured from the Tablelands Center for Bioregional Art to Cebolla Canyon, Jackpile Mine, Muley Point, Goblin Valley, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Burnt Spring, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Double Negative, Trick Tank, Chaco Canyon, Marfa, Cabinetlandia,
Field guests for 2024 were Jo Harvey and Terry Allen, Joe Arredondo, Steve Badgett, Curtis Bauer, Wills Brewer, Gretchen Dietrich, Curtis Francisco, Alex Gates, James Harkrider, Aaron Hegert, Lukle Koenig, Jesse & Irma Larriva, Dionne Lee, Eliseo Martinez, Victoria McReynolds, Monty Paret, Ann Reynolds, Cordelia Rose, J. Eric Simpson, Deborah Stratman, Hills Snyder, Aurora Tang, and Kate Wingert-Playdon.
Land Arts 2024 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher, the James Family Foundation, Matti and Henry Brown, Rhotenberry Wellen Architects and Sean and Mary O’Brien. This was the third year with the Land Arts Support Vehicle possible with a gift from Owl Call Radio.
Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Talia Brown from Duluth, Minnesota.
About the Huckabee College of Architecture
The Huckabee 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 Digital Design Fabrication, Health Care Design, Historic Preservation, Urban and Community Design, and, Land Arts of the American West, as well as an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design.
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.
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 Huckabee 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/.