It’s been a very busy fall and winter above and beyond my usual teaching load at Cal Poly Pomona. Just got back from presenting at #CELA2015 on DisplayScapes and organizing a panel on DIY sensing in Landscape Architecture design studios (with Lucia Phinney, Allison Lassiter, and Brad Cantrell) this past week, and creating a new 200 square feet sequence of Aqueduct Futures maps and drawings. These are on display at After the Aqueduct (curated by Kim Stringfellow) at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions through April 12, 2015. Excited to share some of the press (LATimes, KCET, and LAM) coverage of the exhibit!
Christopher Knight reviews After the Aqueduct in the LA TImes:
A detail of Peter Bo Rappmund’s “Psychohydrography” video (2010). (Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
California is not in danger of running out of water in the next year or two, but the climate-change situation is going from bad to worse as we enter the fourth year of drought. At Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, “After the Aqueduct” looks at one big piece of the state’s water puzzle.
Organized by artist Kim Stringfellow, the show includes works by half a dozen artists and designers that focus on the century-old hydraulic water conveyance system meandering more than 200 miles from the Sierra Nevada to Southern California.
Much of the display is documentary, such as a series of charts produced by Barry Lehrman and Cal Poly Pomona students – to date, more than 120 of them – who are mapping complicated land-use issues for the school’s Aqueduct Futures program. I would describe the charts as visually dry, although the pun threatens to distract from the seriousness of the task.
KCET’s Artbound also covers the exhibit:
Though the historical influence of the Aqueduct on California history is a weighty presence in the LACE exhibition, Stringfellow insists that, true to its name, “After the Aqueduct” also looks “toward the future. It’s not about being stuck in the issues and injustices of the past; it’s also about the progress. What are we as a community going to be doing over the next hundred years to resolve these issues?”
Occupying a long wall in the exhibition space, the information panels in Cal Poly Pomona landscape architecture professor Barry Lehrman’s “Aqueduct Futures,” originally displayed in L.A. City Hall in 2013, provide an ambitious “roadmap” toward creating a just and sustainable water policy now that “after a century of service, the Los Angeles Aqueduct is obsolete.” With an assertion that “recycling water and harvesting rain (even with our changing climate) [are] sufficient to supply water so Los Angeles can cut the umbilical cord created by William Mulholland,” Lehrman and his students are “focus[ed on] developing alternatives to the status quo for the Owens Valley and the next 100 years of Los Angeles.”
Lastly, the AF video was selected as the LAMCast at Landscape Architecture Magazine:
Today’s LAMCast features the Aqueduct Futures program at Cal Poly Pomona, which investigates the prospects for the Los Angeles Aqueduct and its slowly recovering ground source, the Owens Valley. Work from Aqueduct Futures is among the projects featured in After the Aqueduct, a new exhibition up at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. The exhibition looks at the Los Angeles Aqueduct and its impacts on the landscape of California. The participants include Barry Lehrman, ASLA, and Alexander Robinson, as well as Nicole Antebi, Lauren Bon (of Metabolic Studio), Chad Ress, Peter Bo Rappmund, Jon Christensen, Alan Bacock, and Kim Stringfellow, who curated the exhibition and accompanying public programs. After the Aqueduct will be on display at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Hollywood, March 4–April 12, 2015.
Hope you get to see After the Aqueduct!
Infrascape Design 