User:Jrfarling

Areas of Interest: Art History, Contemporary Art, Museum Education, Community Engagement, Museums and Technology

Project: Todd Stewart, Associate Professor of Art, Technology and Culture at the OU School of Art and Art History, approached the museum director and I about a collaborative, multidisciplinary, conceptual art project inspired by Ed Ruscha’s painting, No Man’s Land, and the 50th anniversary of his landmark book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations. The central element of the Road to Ruscha project was a road trip from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, following in reverse order Ruscha’s original trips of 1962. After arriving in Los Angeles, the group met Ed Ruscha at his studio. Primary participants included 20 students and faculty from the University of Oklahoma representing diverse fields of study such as art, art history, environmental sustainability, and geography.

Along the journey, participants engaged in a variety of collaborative projects and site visits derived from the original 26 gasoline stations pictured in Ruscha’s book. The project existed in both physical and virtual space with real-time collaboration between those “on the road” and visitors to the project’s website. Museum visitors could track participants’ progress on the journey inside the museum’s Sandy Bell Gallery. Media and technology were used to facilitate this collaboration and emphasize the nature of contemporary experiences of land, place, and culture. The 3,000-mile road trip took place over 10 days in May 2013. The students’ journey and multimedia responses have been archived on the project’s website: www.roadtoruscha.com/2013.