Wanderers in the Desert of the Real, Part II, Latrobe Valley

William L. Fox

Photograph by David Leece
The Australian painter Mandy Martin and I ended our July trip through the industrial sites she’s painted in New South Wales and Victoria with a swing through the Latrobe Valley, which hosts some of the larger deposits of brown coal in the world, as well as several hu…

Wanderers in the Desert of the Real, Part I

William L. Fox

Mandy Martin
Wanderers in the Desert of the
Real; Wallerawang Powerhouse, 2009
Oil/Pigment/ on Linen
70.9 x 106.3 inches
Courtesy Australian Galleries Melbourne
www.australiangalleries.com.au


During each of the last th…

Art + Environment Cubed : The Blog

William L. Fox
The Museum has three “A+E” components-- Art + Environment Exhibitions and Programs, our A+E Conference, and the Center for Art + Environment (CA+E). Three of us lead the effort in collaboration with our colleagues at the Museum: Ann Wolfe, our curator of exhibitions and collections, Colin Robertson, curator of education, and myself, the director of the Center.

Our A+E Exhibitions and Programs range broadly through painting and photography, architecture and video, installation and…

URBAN CRUDE: NEW CLUI EXHIBITION

New exhibit open at the Center for Land Use Interpretation's Los Angeles location:

URBAN CRUDE:
The Oil Fields of the Los Angeles Basin
Open to the public starting October 30th, 2009

"The fabric of Los Angeles, a continuous cloth of development, draped on the surface of the land, is shallow, but its roots, thousands of meandering straws of oil, dig deep into the soil. Like tree roots, these veins extract the living essence of the ground, fueling this city of the car. Like historical roots, these oil fields are the progenerative substrate, the resource pool, where the economy of Los Angeles originated, driving the development and culture of the city. Today, it continues. Los Angeles is the most urban oil field, where the industry operates in cracks, corners, and edges, hidden behind fences, and camouflaged into architecture, pulling oil out from under our feet." - from the CLUI site, read more here.

Lecture and Book Signing by Bill Gilbert

The UNM Art Museum proudly presents a Lecture and Book Signing by Bill Gilbert, Lannan Chair and Senior Associate Dean of the UNM College of Fine Arts on Tuesday, November 10 at 5:30PM at the UNM Art Museum.

Following the lecture, Bill Gilbert will sign copies of his new book Land Arts of the American West, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009) co-authored with Chris Taylor. This event is FREE and open to the public. Please join us! Bill Gilbert began teaching sculpture at UNM in the Dept. of Art and Art History in 1987. The Land Arts of the American West Program, an interdisciplinary, field based studio curriculum was conceived by Gilbert in his interest to redefine the very nature of how students are educated in the visual arts. In 2000 along with Professor Emeritus John Wenger and a dozen eager students, Gilbert initiated the first Land Arts trip which covered five states and some 8,000 miles. He later collaborated with Chris Taylor from The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Gilbert will discuss this "experiment" in pedagogy, as he calls it, and how this has both affected and intersected with his work as an artist and a teacher. Image Right | Bill Gilbert, "For John Wesley Powell, Attempts to Walk the Grid, September 7, 2006," digital print, 2009

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Time Is Like The East River: William Lamson at Artspace

"In his new video, Time is Like the East River, Lamson takes New York’s East River as his subject matter, addressing the transitions that occur with the crossing of thresholds and boundaries. The video opens with Lamson and a friend paddling two small boats toward each other from opposite sides of a broad body of water. Upon meeting in the middle, the boats link together, revealing that each boat was in fact half of a seventeen-foot canoe. As the two paddle into the distance, the camera (located on the Manhattan Bridge) slowly zooms out, revealing a radiant Manhattan skyline. Shot at slack tide, the moments between the change in direction of tidal currents, the normally turbulent river appears as calm a lake. Only in this transitional state, when the river changes directions and time is seemingly arrested, is Lamson’s passage possible. The artist’s homemade props and artifacts from the performance will also be on view in the gallery." from Artspace. Read more.

Time is Like the East River is on view November 12, 2009 – December 19, 2009
The public opening is scheduled for Thursday, November 12th, 6-8PM
ARTSPACE is a non-profit organization presenting local and national visual art, provides access, excellence and education for the benefit of the public and the arts community