LUBBOCK
As a lifelong resident of the Panhandle of Texas I have held least favorite in my heart the city of Lubbock. FLAT! DIRT STORMS! TORNADOS!!! COTTON! WIND, and did I forget to mention FLAT…..AS…..FUCK. But nice folks. CHURCH GOING FOLKS. TEXAS TECH.
Sometime in the mid aughts I traveled to Lubbock to attend a lecture by Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Interpretation. I went to a dinner afterwards, met professors from the school of architecture at Tech, I returned and met more people, made a friend or two. Met the art department people, and wound up with a key to The Combine and an open invitation to come and go and make use of the space. The architecture professors I met had degrees from Harvard and University of Texas, Cranbrook, Yale, places that accept smart people and produce graduates with intellects attuned to vigorous inquiry. People from all across America and from around the world wind up at Tech with untainted eyes and inquiring minds.
They taught me to look at Lubbock and its surrounding environs with fresh eyes, to see and appreciate the abundance of space and light, the horizon that seems to go on forever.
Lubbock has produced a disproportional number of artists in in ratio to its population and its relatively short existence. Musicians and Songwriters: Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Mac Davis, The Maines Brothers, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Guy Clark, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, The Flatlanders, Joe Ely. Musician and visual and preforming artists Terry and Joe Harvey Allen. This list is off the top of my head without doing any research. I think, one can only understand this phenomena when viewed through the lens that the SPACE must give people room to think. IMAGINE! In the absence of visual input our minds are given room to expand, grow and bloom. The horizon that Terry Allen claimed you could see 50 miles in any direction, 100 if you stood on a can of tuna fish.
As I met people and made friends people began to offer me opportunities to make work. Lubbock is not New York. Lubbock is the epitome of fly over country. However the lack of a spot light has given me a place to create work that is experimental and different to my sculpture and print making practice. To do work that is not commercial. The space is free, the community is supportive, and it is a cheap place to get things done. There is great freedom and low risk if the work doesn’t work.
This section of my website is a catalogue of work I have done in and around Lubbock. Some is better some is less so, but here are some of my works that inform my practice.
My sincere thanks to friends and institutions that have enabled my research, and made Lubbock a fun and interesting place, it took some doing. Apologies to anyone I left out.
People:
Chris Taylor, Ingrid Schaffner, Victoria McReynolds, Charles Adams, Chad Plunkett, Joe Arredondo, J. Eric Simpson, Savannah Simpson, Sarah Aziz, Lindsey Maestri, Cody Arnall, Will Cannings, Natalie Hegert, Arron Hegert, Peter Briggs, Alice Leora Briggs, Jon Whitfill, Nate Imai, Terah Maher, Peter Raab, and Dirk Fowler, Noémie Despland-Lichtert, Brendan Shea, Neal Lucas Hitch, Matt Coolidge, Sophia Von Ellrichshausen, and Marcio Pezo.
Places:
The Combine, CASP, Texas Tech University, The Huckabee Collage of Architecture, Land Arts of the American West at TTU, CO-OPt Gallery, Talkington School of Visual and Performing Art, The Museum of Texas Tech University, The AP/RC, Center Pivot Gallery, Tablelands Center for Bioregional Art, Landmark Arts, 5&J Gallery, LHUCA, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Pezo Von Ellrichshausen, and The Center for Land Use Interpretation.