Saturday, July 30, 2011

Public art at Texas Tech University

Texas Tech University's Spanish Renaissance-themed campus was described by James Michener as "the most beautiful west of the Mississippi, until you get to Stanford," and part of that appeal today is its public art collection. That artwork was deemed one of the Top 10 university collections in the U.S. by Public Art Review magazine in 2006.

For the past three years, during my annual residencies in Lubbock, I have been trying to find all of the pieces throughout the campus, which is Texas-huge, the second largest contiguous campus in the nation. This past May, I finally was able to locate all of them. Here are a few photos from my HTC Thunderbolt of several of them, plus other sights from my time on the campus:

Self portrait, showing the sun color and terrain type


This sculpture is in the courtyard of the English building, where I spent most of my time.


The Masked Rider is one of the two TTU mascots (the other one looks like Yosemite Sam).


Book person in front of the union building


A detail from the Tornado of Ideas sculpture

The Tornado of Ideas

Prometheus Bound


Driftwood horse

Bell tower


One of the large portal sculptures around


Another portal


Will Rogers


People, frozen in time ...


More people

More shapes

More patterns and shapes


Former TTU president


This is probably the most interesting piece on campus


Masked Rider again


Details from a building


The big neon Double-T on the side of the football stadium


Another wild horse sculpture

This is a mosaic inside the football stadium; really cool in person, but hard to photograph; the size of a stadium wall


These only can be seen as symbols from above, looking out the football stadium windows


The view from the president's skybox


I'm in the reflection of this one

This old barn is in the middle of campus, a reminder of the ag days


One of the hardest ones to find; these are gigantic, too


The seal at the entrance to campus

6 comments:

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Sandra said...

Awesome pics like them I'm from LBK but live in Arizona :)

Website Design San Diego said...

look at these sculptures!

San Diego Web Design said...

Amazing pictures, good shoots!

Mayse said...

This is really good. keep it up!

Anonymous said...

Great collection of photos! Some additional information from an insider: There is a brochure somewhere that talks about some of the public art on campus. It's all fascinating. Here it is on the web: http://www.lubbockarts.org/ttupab.pdf

The Tornado characters are all over the Student Union Building, inside and out. You can see where they "damaged" the building and crawling around on the masonry detail. Each one has its own personality.

The book person's name is Read Reader, and if you look closely, the book he's "reading" is upside down. If memory serves, it's a yearbook from the 1950s. He lives near the library, of course.

The bell tower photo you posted is lovely work, but it's not THE bell towers of the Tech campus (those are on the Administration building).

The story about the Will Rogers statue is legendary and needs a whole article just for that.

The one you have marked "more shapes" (looks like the number 6, sort of) is actually part of a "relic garden" made up of crumbled masonry from a dismantled building (I think - my memory is a bit dim). Sustainable art!

The statue of the man tipping his cowboy hat - marked "Former TTU president" - is actually former Texas governor Preston Smith. He was a graduate of Tech, but never president. He's standing in front of a bench shaped like the school's Double-T logo.

I love the giant bulls in front of the meat lab. They used to be right along the street running through campus, but I guess they rerouted the street. It is, however, away from the main classroom buildings.

Did you see ironwork on the parking garage across from the Architecture building? It's a depiction of all sorts of things - the different seasons related to farming, the underground lake, I think there's something zodiac-related in there...basically, I see something new every time I look at it.