FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 10, 2003
FOR MORE INFORMATION: please call (512) 322-2099
Cynthia Camlin, Director, Creative Research Laboratory
EXHIBITION DATES: January 16 - February 6, 2003
RECEPTION: Thursday, January 16, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tues.-Sat., 12 – 5 p.m.

To Tell the Difference
Work by Six Faculty Artists at the University of Texas at Austin

Land Arts of the American West
Work by Design/Studio Students at the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at Austin

January 16 - February 6, 2003 at Creative Research Laboratory

January 10, 2003, Austin, TX: Creative Research Laboratory brings in the new year with an exciting double exhibition, opening January 16 and continuing through February 6, 2003. “To Tell the Difference” presents new work by six artists and designers on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin: Cynthia Camlin, Kate Catterall, Bill Lundberg, Angela Rodgers, Chris Taylor, and Mel Ziegler. “Land Arts of the American West” features the work of students engaged in a new studio-based field study program at the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at Austin. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, January 16, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

To Tell the Difference

Each of the works in “To Tell the Difference” address discrepancy and disjunction. The exhibition will debut a 2003 video installation by Bill Lundberg, titled, “Game,” which was funded in part by the City of Austin under the auspices of the Austin Arts Commission and by the Texas Commission on the Arts. In “Game,” Lundberg continues his practice of mind-binding formal experimentation with work that explores human interaction and communication. Recipient of fellowships including the Fulbright (1992), the National Endowment for the Arts (1991), and the Guggenheim (1981), Lundberg has had recent solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (2001-2002) and at ArtPace in San Antonio (1998).

A new project by Mel Ziegler, “Beauty in the Beast,” includes 16 pipes used in the process of drilling oil wells, provided by Hazelett’s Drilling in Luling, Texas, painted to match the colors in a box of crayons. The colored pipes will be returned for use in oil well drilling. Often using visual irony to reveal a hidden history and political or social reality, Mel Ziegler’s work has been shown in recent solo exhibitions at Fri-Art Kunsthalle in Fribourg, Switzerland, Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, Doug Lawing Gallery in Houston, and will appear in an upcoming summer 2003 solo exhibition at the Vienna Succession. Ziegler is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1989 and 1993), a Creative Capital Grant (1999), and Pollack-Krasner Awards (1995 and 2001), among many others.

Also appearing in “To Tell the Difference” are three pieces by Kate Catterall, whose work was recently in a two-person exhibition at Women and Their Work Gallery in Austin. “Collapse: The Erasure of Time, History & Memory in the Urban Landscape” is the sketch for a system of public markers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which juxtaposes images from scenes of destruction in 1972 with current images of unblemished rebuilt sites. A new work by Angela Rodgers, “Family Plate #3,” presents a dinner plate design based on research about the contemporary family. Two ink wash drawings on panels by Cynthia Camlin continue her exploration of the seduction and ironies of the landscape genre.

“Slippery Boundaries,” by Chris Taylor, documents an architectural project he both designed and built in Tucson, Arizona, in 2001. The project, a bathroom addition, extends the domestic program into the landscape and inserts the garden into the house. The Steedman Traveling Fellow in Architecture in 1998, Taylor is an architect and designer whose practice is the Architecture Workers Combine.

Land Arts of the American West

“Land Arts of the American West” presents work by fourteen students who participated in Fall 2002 in a new interdisciplinary studio-based field study program. The Land Arts of the American West study program is a collaboration between Studio Art at the University of New Mexico and Design at the University of Texas at Austin, and is funded in part by the Lannan Foundation. This exhibit comprises work initiated in the field working in Grand Gulch, Goblin Valley, and Lake Powell in Utah; Chaco Canyon, Cebolla Canyon, Bosque del Apache, and the Lightening Field in New Mexico; Fire Point at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Roden Crater in Arizona; Double Negative in Nevada, and the Chinati and Judd Foundations in Marfa, Texas. For more information about Land Arts, visit the website http://design2.art.utexas.edu/land_arts

Land Arts Panel Discussion

On January 17, from 9:00 to 12:00 a.m., Creative Research Laboratory will host a public panel discussion with the Land Arts students. The panel will be moderated by Chris Taylor, Land Arts co-director and Assistant Professor of Design at University of Texas at Austin, with presentations by Land Arts co-director Bill Gilbert, Professor of Studio Art at the University of New Mexico, and Ann Reynolds, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, whose book, Robert Smithson: Learning From New Jersey and Elsewhere (MIT Press, 2003) will be released this February.

Students and presenters will explore the following topics:

• The studio-based model of education which requires students to work in the field, in physical contact with the subjects of their study and in direct response to site-specific conditions.

• The benefit of examining human interventions in the landscape over time and across cultures, i.e. pre-contact Native American to contemporary Euro-American.

• The relationship of work to site: conceiving work in the field instead of in the studio; executing work while exposed to the hazards presented by a particular site; and investigating the implications of bringing work from the field into the gallery.

• The development of an interdisciplinary dialogue bringing artists and designers together to examine sites and practices that are not defined solely as art or design, i.e. archeology, sculpture, architecture, mapping, pottery.

All exhibitions and programs at Creative Research Laboratory are free of charge and open to the public. Creative Research Laboratory is located at 2832 East Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard at Flatbed World Headquarters, one mile east of I-35, in Austin, Texas. There is ample free parking and bus service available on Capitol Metro's route 18.

Creative Research Laboratory was established one year ago in November 2001 by the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin as a site dedicated to research and production in contemporary art and design. The Lab presents a year-round schedule of exhibitions of work by students and faculty, and also facilitates workshops, performances, demonstrations, seminars and collaborations.

The Department of Art and Art History is one of the largest and most diverse art departments in the country; it currently boasts 71 faculty members, 743 undergraduates and 147 graduate students. U.S. News and World Report ranked the graduate art program among the top ten in the United States.

For further information about Creative Research Laboratory, contact Cynthia Camlin, Director, Creative Research Laboratory, crlab@uts.cc.utexas.edu, or 512.322.2099. For information about the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, contact Carolyn Porter, carolynp@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.3379.

Creative Research Laboratory
2832 East Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Austin, Texas 78705
phone: 512.322.2099
email: crlab@uts.cc.utexas.edu