What's Your Sign? Creating an Authored Landscape
a gallery opening: 5pm, Brown Hall Gallery
The opening of "What's Your Sign? Creating an Authored Landscape" in the Gallery in Brown Hall will happen on Tuesday April 6th at 5pm. Refreshments will be served."What's Your Sign?" is an exhibit of city and regional planning assistant professor Jennifer Evans-Cowley's photography of Stanley Marsh's sign art. Marsh became famous during the 1970s with the introduction of Cadillac Ranch, a series of 10 Cadillacs planted nose-down in a row of concrete slabs in the middle of a wheat field, located adjacent to the Interstate in Amarillo, Texas.
Marsh's sign art takes a different approach. One day he was driving and saw a road sign that says road ends 300 feet. After seeing the sign he realized that most signage sends a negative message telling people not to do something. He decided that signs should send a positive message and could be in the form of art. He created a road sign that says "Road Does Not End" and placed it in his front yard. In 1992, Marsh formed the Dynamite Museum, a collection of artist who created more than 5,000 signs that were placed in lawns throughout Amarillo, Texas over an 8-year period. The goal of the project was to promote noncommercial art that is accessible to the people.
Come judge for yourself whether Marsh's work should be viewed as public art and perhaps you'll find out what's your sign.