William L. Fox to speak at Texas Tech

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: March 21, 2011

William L. Fox to speak at Texas Tech

Texas Tech University’s Landscape as Knowledge series will host William L. Fox, poet, author and director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno.

Fox will present “The Art of the Anthropocene: From Landscape Painting to Land Art” in Lecture Hall 202 of the Rawls College of Business Administration building at 7 p.m. April 7. The talk will examine landscape painting and land art since 1790 in light of 2000 Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen’s proposal that we have moved into the next geologic era, the Anthropocene, where humans are the most influential element on Earth.

Fox is known for visiting extreme environments to research his books. In 2001, he spent a season at the McMurdo Station and South Pole in the Antarctic as part of the National Science Foundation’s Visiting Artists and Writers program. During the summers of 2002 and 2003, he made three trips to Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic to join scientists testing future exploration protocols of Mars as part of NASA’s Haughton-Mars Project. He has since visited sites in the United States, Chile, Nepal and other places around the world.

Fox has published twelve books on cognition and landscape, fifteen collections of poetry and numerous essays in art monographs, magazines and journals. His nonfiction titles include: Aereality: On the World from Above, 2009, Terra Antarctic: Looking Into the Emptiest Continent, 2007, In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle, 2007 and The Void, the Grid, and the Sign: Traversing the Great Basin, 2005.

Fox is also an artist who has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in seven countries since 1974.

He is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club, a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation and has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Clark Art Institute, the Australian National University and National Museum of Australia.

Fox’s presentation is supported by Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech in the College of Architecture.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking is available after 5:30 p.m. in lot R5 and the Flint Avenue Parking Facility.

Call 806-742-1947 for more information.

###

Landscape as Knowledge

Landscape as Knowledge is a yearlong series of public lectures, conversations and events to examine embodied intelligence within the augmented environment. It is a multidisciplinary approach to investigate how people see, conceive and depict the earth and what people find or do on it. Artists, art historians and scholars from various disciplines question how both the landscape and individuals are continually shaped and reshaped by an array of natural and cultural processes.

The series was organized by the faculty of the School of Art in collaboration with faculty from the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University. Rick Dingus, professor in photography, Dr. Jorgelina Orfila, assistant professor in art history, Dr. Carolyn Tate, professor in art history, and Chris Taylor, assistant professor in architecture, are the core collaborating faculty organizing the year of events.

Support comes from the Ryla T. and John F. Lott Endowment for Excellence in the Visual Arts, the College of Architecture, Land Arts of the American West and Landmark Arts at the School of Art.

The exhibitions, speakers and related programs at the Texas Tech University School of Art are made possible, in part, by generous grants from the Helen Jones Foundation and The CH Foundation. Additional support comes from the cultural activities fees administered through the College of Visual & Performing Arts.

CONTACT: Joe Arredondo, Director of Landmark Arts
806-742-1947 or joe.arredondo@ttu.edu
http://www.art.ttu.edu/landscape-as-knowledge