That rascally old philanthropist Patrick Lannan of the mind-bogglingly wealthy and far-reaching Lannan Foundation is a difficult dude to track down. Hell, it's tough to find a photograph of him, much less sit down and chat face to face. But know this: If I ever do see Patrick Lannan out roaming the streets and I'm able to get the drop on him, sneak up while he's unawares like, he's going to be startled when I stick my tongue down his throat in a passionate kiss of pure gratitude. His namesake foundation is an entity unto itself with loads of good people working on important things around the clock, like a more sophisticated version of Santa's Elves, so Lannan himself isn't single-handedly responsible for all the generosity done by the foundation, but it's a symbolic thing. His throat. My tongue. Honest appreciation.
The Lannan Readings and Conversation Series at the Lensic is something we almost take for granted at this point. It takes some serious thinking to remember how depressed and desperate we'd be without it. So, I'm thankful for that, for sure, but this latest move is a doozy, one that seals the deal on Lannan's commitment to this community in my eyes. Lannan has pledged $250,000 dollars to the Center for Contemporary Arts (1050 Old Pecos Trail, 982-1338) for the renovation of its warehouse space. On top of that, Lannan is giving CCA another $200,000 in general operating funds. Such funds are, of course, the most difficult to come by for non-profits. Someone's always willing to fund a sexy program, but no one wants to pay for sewer and trash pickup, so to give that kind of dosh with no strings attached is a generous act indeed. Pucker up, Patrick-you're getting $450,000 worth of smooching. Also, we might pause here to voice additional thanks to Rep. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, Rep. Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, and State Secretary for Cultural Affairs Stuart Ashman for working to secure a long-term lease situation for CCA, without which support on this level is just this side of impossible.
And then there's thanking CCA for deserving it. When the non-profit art center's warehouse space, the same one due to be renovated partly with the assistance of these Lannan funds, was shut down by the fire marshal around two years ago, it was a case of a
community institution on the brink of disaster. Again. But in the push to resolve lease issues, CCA has rallied around its Executive Director Steve Buck and become a trim and focused organization once more. Director of Visual Art Cyndi Conn and her four-member curatorial committee have matched Buck's fiduciary focus with an increasingly ambitious and resonant series of exhibitions leading up the current display,
LandMinds
(through June 10), which most appropriately defines CCA's role and worth in a city fairly bristling with galleries, museums and other contemporary organizations like SITE Santa Fe.
LandMinds
is a carefully culled selection of works representing five years of the Land Arts of the American West program directed by Chris Taylor of the University of Texas, Austin, and Bill Gilbert of UNM (whose title, not so coincidentally, is Lannan Chair of the Land Arts of the American West).
A simple explanation of the program is: a sort of field trip through the region's famous land art installations such as Robert Smithson's
Spiral Jetty
, James Turrell's
Roden Crater
and Walter de Maria's
Lightning Field
. These works are here; art students in the region ought to have a chance to see them. The inclusion of sites such as "Precontact Native American" sites like Chaco Canyon and Paquime seems like the culturally sensitive thing to do. In practice, however, the program is radical, innovative, unstructured and brilliant. The work coming out of Land Arts is perhaps the first recognizably developing contemporary art movement to spring wholly from this region. Land art and all its iterations, from massive, permanent installations to ephemeral, performative works, has an established history and practice. But in removing students from the physical hegemony of campus life and hauling them through eight weeks of primitive camping in locales that stretch from the cusp of civilization to the cutting edge of culture, and adding industrial and scientific tweaks like Hoover Dam and the Very Large Array, there is a coagulation of information and experience that informs each artist's motivations beyond what is expected and the work unfolds with equal, surprisingly broad presence.
Who would expect to find Gloria Haag eating locust shells in a gritty video performance that feels like Ann Hamilton and Kiki Smith's freak offspring was raised by wolves and then filmed on Mutual of Omaha's
Wild Kingdom
? Who would expect to find Gabriel Romero lyrically rapping on a canyon rim in a pink bunny suit equally prepared to forage for wild martini supplies or to use the skin of Matthew Barney as a lean-to? How could Julie Anand's intricate, printed topographies, whose altitudes are described in a burbling supply of air and water, have sprung from anything other than plumbing her own wild interface with land and matter, away from anything and everything else?
LandMinds
is a glimpse at an evolving and flexible map where science, history, urban planning, poetic experience and experimental education are overlays in an atlas of the here and now. The artwork is as worldly and informed as anything out there, but it just plain means more. If something of a movement does flow from this spring, some self-important ass of an art critic will give it a name soon enough, but what it really needs is to remain formless, to keep building steam and sinuosity, carving its own path through a multitude of landscapes, like the great western rivers, making its life in response to vast and incalculable encounters.
It is an auspicious juncture indeed when Gilbert and Taylor's vision combines with a set of students with the intuition to take advantage of it, a philanthropist who wants to see what happens and an arts organization that knows recognizing the importance of just such a thing is what it does and why it is.
