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