Land Arts of the American West
Land Arts of the American West is a studio-based field program that seeks to construct an expanded definition of land art through direct experience connecting the full range of human interventions in the landscape—from pre-contact indigenous to contemporary practice. Land art includes everything from constructing roads, to taking walks, building monuments, and leaving marks in the sand. The program seeks to expand upon connections between typically separate fields. Each fall a small group of participants spend two months camping while traveling nearly 6,000 miles to engage sites that range from the CLUI complex at Wendover, Utah to the Jackpile Mine site -- the partially reclaimed open pit uranium mine within Laguna Pueblo, from earth works like Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty to archeological sites like Chaco Canyon. They learn from the fact that Donald Judd surrounded himself with both contemporary sculpture and Navajo rugs; that Chaco Canyon and Roden Crater function as celestial instruments; and that the Very Large Array is a scientific research center with a powerful aesthetic presence on the land. Spending the semester living and working in the landscape with field guests that expand the range of definitions within disciplines that include archeology, art history, architecture, ceramics, criticism, writing, design, and studio art is central to the pedagogy. The immersive nature of how the program experiences the landscape triggers amalgamated bodies of inquiry where students have the opportunity of time and space to develop authority in their work through direct action and reflection. The Land Arts program "hinges on the primacy of first person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular."
Land Arts of the American West started at the University of New Mexico by artist Bill Gilbert in 2000 and developed as a collaboration between Gilbert and architect Chris Taylor since 2001. From 2002-2008 Land Arts was co-sponsored by the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at Austin where Taylor taught in the interdisciplinary design program of the Department of Art and Art History. In 2007 Taylor was invited by Incubo to bring together a group of students and professionals from Chile and the United States for a symposium in Santiago and a Land Arts excursion into the Atacama Desert. In 2008 Taylor began teaching in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University where Land Arts continues to develop in addition to programming at the University of New Mexico. The program operates autonomously at both institutions.
The book Land Arts of the American West documents the history and development of the program was published by the University of Texas Press in 2009.
Sites visited
- Arizona: Chiricahua Mountains, Coolidge Dam, Fire Point, Point Sublime, Grand Canyon, Roden Crater.
- New Mexico: Anaya Springs, Chaco Canyon, Bisti Badlands, Bosque del Apache Cabinetlandia, Cebolla Canyon, El Vado Lake, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Jackpile Mine at Laguna Pueblo, Madrid, Mimbres River, Otero Mesa, Plains of San Agustin, Sawtooth Mountains, The Lightning Field, Turkey Creek, Three Rivers, Twin Buttes, Mount Withington, Very Large Array, Wild Rivers.
- Nevada: Double Negative, Goshute Canyon Wilderness, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead.
- Mexico: Mata Ortiz.
- Texas: Boquillas Canyon, El Cosmico, Huaco Tanks, Land Heritage Institute, Lubbock, Marfa - Chinati Foundation and Judd Foundation, Presidio - Adobe Alliance.
- Utah: Blue Notch at Lake Powell, CLUI Wendover, Goblin Valley, Horse Tanks, Horseshoe Canyon, Intrepid Potash, Moon House, Muley Point, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels.
Past field guests
Past field guests include Nick Abdalla, C.J. Alvarez, Tori Arpad, Joe Arredondo, Sarah Aziz, Steve Badgett, Conrad Bakker, Katherine Bash, Curtis Bauer, Eric Bernard, Judith Birdsong, Betsy Blaney, Charles Bowden, Penelope Boyer, Jerry Brody, Trey Burns, Chris Calott, Ted Carey, Kurt Caswell, Raven Chacon, Erin Charpentier, Kevin Chua, Matthew Coolidge, Dagny Corcoran, John Davis, Gretchen Dietrich, Rick Dingus, Sam Douglas, Russ Draper, Rafael Beneytez Durán, Craig Dworkin, Boyd Elder, Clifton Ellis, Idoia Elola, Dora Epstein Jones, Kellie Flint, Upe Flueckiger, Jack Forinash, William L. Fox, Curtis Francisco, Hector Gallegos, Deborah Garcia, Elisandra Garcia, Mary Lewis Garcia, Alex Gates, Rebecca Gates, Joel Glanzberg, David Gregor, Walker Guinnee, James Harkrider, Amy Hauft, Aaron Hegert, Gretchen Henderson, Irene Hofmann, Ian James, Tamara Johnson, Tim Johnson, Joan Jonas, Cara Ray Joven, Duncan Kennedy, Nick Keys, Erik Knutzen, Ersela Kripa, Jana La Brasca, Mike Lagg, Eve Andree Laramee, Adrian Larriva, Jesse & Irma Larriva, Susan Larson, Don Lavigne, Lisa Le Feuvre, Dionne Lee, Zoe Leonard, Noémie Despland Lichtert, Caleb Lightfoot, Lucy Lippard, Hikmet Sidney Loe, Barry Lopez, Cesar Lopez, Jason Lukas, Jimmy Luu, Graciela Martinez, Megan McKenzie, Victoria McReynolds, Beth Menczer, Susannah Mira, Maggie Mitts, Sarah Ann Mockbee, Onézieme Mouton, Stephen Mueller, Shay Myerson, Sina Najafi, Daisy Nam, Andrea Nasher, Travis Neel, Zachary Norman, Colleen O’Brien, Patrick Casey O’Shea, Erika Osborne, Monty Paret, Matthew Passmore, David Pierce, John Poch, Kaitlin Pomerantz, Rob Ray, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Lea Rekow, Ann Reynolds, Jack Risley, Alexander Robinson, Zoe Roden, Cordelia Rose, Lori Ryker, Jack Sanders, Ingrid Schaffner, Michael Scialdone, Emily Eliza Scott, Brendan Sullivan Shea, Kathleen Shields, J. Eric Simpson, Chris Snowden, Hills Snyder, Marianne Stockebrand, John Stokes, Eric Strain, Deborah Stratman, Simone Swan, Maria Sykes, Aurora Tang, Whitney Tassie, Jennifer Yvette Terrell, Lucia Thomé, KT Thompson, Mary Tsiongas, Kade Twist, Jose Villanueva, Jesse Vogler, Henry Walt, Nichole Wiedemann, Jim Williamson, Paula Wilson, Chris Witmore, Blaine Young, Joe Zuni.
References
- Kennedy, Randy. “The American West as Classroom, Art and Metaphor” New York Times (4 May 2011) p. C1 and C9 (full page). https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/arts/design/land-arts-of-the-american-west-a-texas-tech-program.html
- Lippard, Lucy, William L. Fox, Bill Gilbert, and Kathleen Shields. Land/Art: New Mexico. Santa Fe: Radius Books; 2010.
- Taylor, Chris and Bill Gilbert. Land Arts of the American West. Austin: University of Texas Press; 2009.
- Taylor, Chris, Rodrigo Perez de Arce, Pilar Cereceda, William L. Fox, Gonzalo Pedraza, Andres Rivera, and Flora Vilches. Incubo: Atacama Lab. Santiago, Chile: INCUBO; 2008.
- Gilbert, Bill and Chris Taylor. Land Arts of the American West. Austin and Albuquerque: University of Texas at Austin and University of New Mexico; 2003.