Since 1994, The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)--a research organization based in Culver City, California--has studied the U.S. landscape, using multidisciplinary research, information processing and interpretive tools to stimulate thought and discussion around contemporary land-use issues. During a residency at the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the CLUI established a field station on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou, revealing aspects of the relationship between oil and the landscape in Houston that are often overlooked--even by the city's residents. The CLUI's findings are presented in this volume and a concurrent exhibition at the Blaffer Gallery, titled Texas Oil: Landscape of an Industry. The book documents the CLUI's methodology in a series of interviews and includes a photographic essay on land use in Houston featuring a panoramic, foldout section and a comprehensive chronology of the CLUI's projects and publications over the past 14 years.

On the Banks of Bayou City: The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Houston

Arts & Photography

Painting

Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of Houston

"The sizzling, scintillating juice that flows between viewers and the works in this show may seem to be magic because none of them has to be plugged in," writes Los Angeles Times critic David Pagel, extolling the media featured in Electric Mud, which is published concurrently with an exhibition that Pagel organized at Houston's Blaffer Gallery. Pagel's "juice" and the "electric mud" of this volume's title refer to paint and clay, which are examined here for their physical similarities and fluid boundaries. Six full-color illustrations are given to each artist included: Brian Calvin, Anna Sew Hoy, Ron Nagle, Michael Reafsnyder, James Richards and Patrick Wilson--all of whom collapse the fictitious distinctions between art and craft, painting and ceramics, form and function, leisure and labor, still life and real life, confounding the boundaries between each. The edition includes essays by Pagel and Sara Cochran, Phoenix Art Museum curator.

Electric Mud

PAGEL, David

Cochran, Sara

History & Criticism

Canadian artist Jon Pylypchuk (born 1972) has a unique talent for marrying the abject and the sublime. In his work, desperation and exhilaration, ugliness and beauty, tragedy and comedy are joined in images and words that declare that that life is a messy affair and we are the ones making it so. Like many before him who playfully expose the darker side of existence, Pylypchuk delves into the world of children's books and characters, where inanimate objects come to life or animals live the lives of people. Endowed with human attributes, the creatures populating his paintings, drawings and sculpture speak powerfully of the pathetic banality and stubborn optimism that define our path through life as a tragicomedy of epic proportion. Copublished with the Austellungskunsthalle zeitgenössiche Kunst Münster on the occasion of a ten-year survey of Pylypchuk's work, this book provides a comprehensive look at an artist who movingly summons the frailty of human existence.

Jon Pylypchuk

Gail Kirkpatrick

Claudia Schmuckli

Individual Artists

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of Houston publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of Houston