PROGRAM
Land Arts of the American West is an interdisciplinary field program expanding the definition of land art through direct experience with the full range of human interventions in the landscape, from the inscriptions of pictographs and petrogylphs to the construction of roads, dwellings, and monuments, as well as traces of those actions. Land art includes gestures both small and grand, directing our attention from potsherd, cigarette butt, and mark in the sand to human settlements, monumental artworks, and military/industrial projects such as hydroelectric dams and decommissioned airfields.
Each year Land Arts travels more than 8,000 miles to live and work for over fifty days in the landscape while visiting sites such as Chaco Canyon and Roden Crater, the Grand Canyon and Double Negative, the Wendover Complex of the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Spiral Jetty, Marfa and Mata Ortiz, the Very Large Array and The Lightning Field.
The land arts program was started by Bill Gilbert in 2000 and has developed as a collaboration between Gilbert and Chris Taylor since 2002.
BOOK
In 2009 the University of Texas Press published the book Land Arts of the American West presenting the ongoing collaboration in which artist Bill Gilbert and architect Chris Taylor investigate and create land art with their students. The book is organized around places they visit during a two-month journey each fall, which come alive through color photographs accompanied by descriptive information about the site’s natural and human history; student journal entries presenting first-person experiences; essays by William L. Fox, Ann Reynolds, J.J. Brody, and Lucy Lippard; and interviews with Mary Lewis Garcia, Graciela Martinez de Gallegos and Hector Gallegos, and Matthew Coolidge. Woven throughout the text is a conversation among Taylor, Gilbert, and writer William L. Fox, who draws the authors out about the land art program’s origins, pedagogic mission, field operations, interactions with guest lecturers, and future directions.
University of Texas Press, April 2009
8 x 10 inches, 384 pp., 441 color illus.
ISBN: 978-0-292-71672-8
TRANSITION
In the fall of 2008 Chris Taylor began teaching within the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University. Land Arts will continue and his return to teaching architecture brings welcome developments to the program. While Gilbert and Taylor negotiate this transition we are taking a break from the field in 2008 and using this time to update our website and archive. In the interim the archive has been relocated to: http://landarts.arch.ttu.edu/. Please note the University of Texas at Austin is no longer involved in the program.
LISTSERVE
Land Arts maintains a list serve to remain in contact with its extended community of participants and to communicate related events, news and discussion. To join the list send a blank email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
CONTACT
For more information contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at the University of New Mexico or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at Texas Tech University.