Looking down at camp and out to White Sands, Twin Buttes, New Mexico. Photo by Chris Taylor.

2017 Admissions

Opening The Cultivated Wilderness, or, What is Landscape? architecture critic Paul Shepheard reveals that “This book is about seeing things that are too big to see.” He goes on to provide three clear frames to orient our recognition: “The Wilderness of the book’s title is the world before humans appeared in it, and the Cultivation is everything we’ve done to it since. Landscape is another name for the strategies that have governed what we’ve done.” Investigating earthworks or land art is a way of mapping the intersection of geomorphology and human construction. Earthworks begin with the shape of the land and extend through the complex social and ecological processes that create landscape. Including the full array of human activity marking the planet, from petroglyphs to roads, dwellings, monuments and traces of those actions, earthworks show us who we are.

Land Arts of the American West has developed since 2001 as a transdisciplinary field program expanding the definition of land art and our relationship to landscape. Land Arts is a semester abroad in our own back yard. Connecting the pedagogy of travel with the rigors of field research.

Land Arts at Texas Tech University seeks to cultivate collective energy within an expanded disciplinary range of examinations from architecture, the built environment, public culture, science, and geography to explorations of literature and contemporary art.

WE ARE RECRUITING STUDENTS FROM ACROSS TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY AND BEYOND IN ALL DISCIPLINES FOR LAND ARTS 2017.

Application information is available here: 2017 Admissions Information.

The following schedule will facilitate the application and selection process:

Information Meeting on Wednesday, March 8, 2017, 5:30pm in the Architecture and Art Courtyard. This meeting is for all students interested in applying to the program. We will review the program overview and application details. Applicants outside Lubbock can schedule an individual meeting via video chat.

Application Deadline is on Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 5:00pm in Room 709 of the Architecture Building.

Contact Chris Taylor with any questions. Additional information is available at Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, in the Land Arts TEDx presentation, and the Land Arts feature in the New York Times.