January 17 – March 29, 2009

A petrochemical system integrates the country through a continental network of facilities and pipelines. This network, assembled over the last hundred years, moves crude, gas, and chemical feedstock, from coast to coast, production areas to processing plants, tank farms to tanker ports, touching every state. It is a circulatory system of the American Land, moving the lifeblood of the economy, in this Petrochemical Age.

Though the complexity, scale, and forms of the industry resemble those of science fiction fantasy, they are real and present.

If the oil industry has a heart, then it is Texas. And Houston is its aorta.

       -- The Center for Land Use Interpretation

The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research organization based in Culver City, California, involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues. Texas Oil: Landscape of an Industry is the culmination of the CLUI’s study of Texas and shows how the extraction and refining of oil has sculpted the state’s terrain. The exhibition is divided into three sections.

At the opening of the exhibition is a screening room showing Houston Petrochemical Corridor: From the East 610 Loop to the Highway 146 Bridge. Filmed with a gyro-stabilized HD camera, this 12 minute “landscan” video is an extended aerial shot of petroleum refineries and shipping yards that shows their massive scale. Adjacent to the projection is The Companies with 40 photographs of the Texas offices of international oil businesses. The photographs are paired with descriptions of each company and statistics on its production and size.

The final gallery, Texas Petrochemicalscape: A Portrait Gallery of Selected Petrochemical Sites in Texas, consists of 56 CLUI aerial photographs and texts on many different sites across the Lone Star State from west Texas oil towns such as Odessa and Kermit to petrochemical processing centers on the Gulf Coast and everywhere in-between. This installation is complemented by a 42-gallon clear plastic barrel of oil and a selection of maps that chart locations of pumps, refineries, and processing plants as well as oil, natural gas, and other petrochemical pipelines in the United States.

More about the CLUI Houston project:

In spring 2008, the CLUI was invited to Houston as the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center’s first artist-in-residence. Over the past year, the CLUI has worked with University of Houston students in the School of Art, College of Architecture and the Creative Writing Program and established a field station on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. The field station is on the site of a former junkyard, located near a metal scrap yard at the juncture of the bayou and the Port of Houston Ship Channel, an important nexus for the refining and transportation of oil in America.

A fully-illustrated project catalogue highlighting and documenting the CLUI’s endeavors entitled On the Banks of Bayou City: The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Houston produced by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and Blaffer Gallery is now available for purchase. The publication includes images of Houston by CLUI photographer Steve Rowell and Rice University professor Geoff Winningham, interviews with members of the CLUI and University of Houston professors, and an essay by Blaffer Gallery’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow Rachel Hooper.

Related Programs:

The Mitchell Center and Buffalo Bayou Partnership present the following series of public programs in
conjunction with the exhibition and in anticipation of “Confluence: Points of View on Buffalo Bayou.” “Confluence” is a contemporary art project of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership that initiates the creation of innovation public art and related programming on, along and within the environs of Houston’s historic river, the Buffalo Bayou. For more information on these programs, please call the Mitchell Center Hotline: 713.743.5548, www.mitchellcenterforarts.org; or Buffalo Bayou Partnership: 713.752.0314, www.buffalobayou.org

• New commission from the CLUI and SIMPARCH
  
  

The Mitchell Center and Buffalo Bayou Partnership have co-commissioned a project from the CLUI and SIMPARCH, a design/build collective that utilizes paradigms of building, architecture, site specificity, ecology and transportation in their practice. The commission is a floating platform and multifunctional space – a small buoyant landmass that will serve as a creative context for related programs based out of the Buffalo Bayou field office, supporting interpretive programs along the waterway and serving as a work surface for salvage and transportation of artifacts. It will be a movable surface, for use on Houston’s interstitial waterways.

• “Junkyard Drive-In: Texas Oil on Film” film screening and artist talk with Matthew Coolidge
  Saturday, Feb. 28, 6 – 8 p.m.
  723 North Drennan Street (next door to Houston Biodiesel)
  

For more information, contact Aurora Picture Show: 713.868.2101, www.aurorapictureshow.org

The CLUI and Aurora Picture Show, a non-profit cinema house dedicated to non-commercial film, video and media, will co-present an outdoor screening of oil industry-related films on the bayou. Participants are invited to pack a picnic or buy dinner from the mobile taco stand, and then tune in their car radios to learn about the industry that makes Texas thrive. Drinks will be provided by Saint Arnold Brewery.

• “Downstream: A Center for Land Use Interpretation Tour of Houston’s Water and Oil” boat tour
  Saturday, March 21

  For more information, contact Buffalo Bayou Partnership: 713.752.0314, www.buffalobayou.org

The CLUI and Buffalo Bayou Partnership will host a boat tour from downtown Houston to the San Jacinto Monument. In the tradition of the CLUI’s land-based tours, the boat tour will be custom-designed and include pre-arranged encounters within the larger urban and industrial environments that surround the bayou.

Further Reading:

"Messing with Texas" in Modern Painters (2/1/09)
"CLUI Opens Field Office in Houston" in the CLUI's newsletter, The Lay of the Land (Spring 2008)
Bree Edwards in Artlies: "Immersion in the Land of Oil" (Summer 2008)
Carolyn Feibel in the Houston Chronicle: "Tour shows beauty in forgotten Houston" (1/1/09)
Nancy Wozny in Houston Modern Luxury: "Crude Behavior" (January 2009)

Podcast:
Matthew Coolidge from the Center for Land Use Interpretation with Bob Stevenson on KUHF (1/16/09)

The Center for Land Use Interpretation’s exhibition Texas Oil: Landscape of an Industry is organized by Rachel Hooper, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow at Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication are presented in partnership with the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, with additional generous support from Baker Hughes Foundation and Marita and JB Fairbanks, and in-kind support from Alexander/Ryan Marine and Safety Company and PennWell MAPSearch.