The seven students in the Land Arts of the American West class began thinking about the course’s finale from the first day of their two-month outdoor classroom. And some say the experience will continue to imbue their work in the future.
“I know there are things that will seep in later as I’m just sitting in my studio and working and ideas flowing in,” artist, Kellie Flint, says. “I’ll be like, that’s Land Arts.”
Beginning this evening, she and the other six students in the Land Arts of the American West class will showcase their creativity on how the two months traveling across the Southwest affected and influenced them.
Chris Taylor, an associate professor in the College of Architecture, brought the Land Arts program to Texas Tech in 2008 from the University of Texas. There, he and artist Bill Gilbert of the University of New Mexico developed the program in 2000.
Taylor called last fall’s class “very satisfying.”
“The crew this year was very diverse, both geographically and from the disciplinary perspective,” he explains. “At the same time, the issues all interconnected very well and fed on each other. Everybody today is concerned with what we’re doing, the shape of the planet, how we’re responding and behaving with each other, how that group dynamic supported one another and helped advance the work—it was quite exceptional this year and the crew was a real pleasure to work with.”
The exhibition will feature documents and constructions that examine a range of human-land interactions of the students in the 2017 program. Applications for the 2018 course are being accepted until March 7.
The College of Architecture and the Museum of Texas Tech will host an opening reception for the exhibition from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight in Leonardo’s Kitchen inside the museum. The exhibition runs until April 29 and is free to the public. It will be open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays.
The students last fall came from far-flung places. One came from Madrid, Spain, another from the University of Pennsylvania. Lyza Baum came to the program from the Rhode Island School of Design. She brought her curiosity about textile production and took it through the landscapes, her own body and into performative documentation. She’s now considering grad school.
“”I knew it was going to push me and make me explore new ways of working and new ways of thinking,” she says. “And I wanted to go into it being like, I’m not just going to make a textile and think about textiles. I wanted to explore different ways of working and different mediums. But now I’m really happy because I think I want to explore different processes. I’m really interested in sculpture now, and I’m interested in video work and performance. I feel excited about that because it’s something new.”
The trans-disciplinary course led the students, who traveled for two months in two large vans and camped every night, over 6,000 miles in five states. Students were immersed in diverse landscapes, including Micheal Heizer’s “Double Negative” in Nevada, and Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, both in Utah.
Baum says she gained much talking with others in the group. “Being able to talk to an architect, or a painter, or a ceramicist, getting those different perspectives, opened my mind a lot more,” she says.
Taylor points to students’ strong return on their educational investment. “The participants are developing work that’s going to fuel and feed them for a long time to come,” he says. “And the depth of their questions and conversation are long lasting.”