Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
California-based artist Samuel Yates, whose work has been described as simple ideas taken to an extreme, formal limit, will be working with Texas A&M students this coming spring as the College of Architecture's Artist in Residence.
He'll be making frequent trips to College Station to work with students in the three-hour credit class, "New Genre Sculpture: Building Social Objects," said Carol Lafayette, AIR chairwoman and associate professor of visualization. "When he's not on campus, he'll be keeping in touch with students through Skype."
The three-credit class is open to all students as VIZA 629 for graduate students or VIZA 485 for undergraduates; it's scheduled to met Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:50 p.m. – 3:20 p.m. in Langford C 414.
"His work is really obsessive," said Yauger Williams, assistant professor of visualization. "He puts an incredible level of involvement into making a project."
In "The Color of Palo Alto," an undertaking that began in 2001, Yates photographed every parcel of land in the Silicon Valley city, which has a population of approximately 60,000.
The project, which San Francisco art critic Glen Helfand described as "epic" and "monumentally American" served as a temporary installation on the front façade of Palo Alto's eight story-city hall, when prints of all the city's 17,729 parcels of land were installed on the building's windows.
"He dedicated his life to the project," wrote Becky Trout in the March 20, 2008 issue of the Palo Alto Weekly, "working 12-hour days, at least, living in his car or with host families."
The work received the Best Art Project in the Bay Area award from San Francisco Magazine in July 2004 and the Nice Modernist award from Dwell Magazine in March 2005, in recognition of its larger social mission and effect.
In "Untitled," Yates stacked file cabinets stacked on top of each other until they reached seven stories tall; inside its drawers were pieces of a 1974 MG Midget that was shredded, steamrolled, photographed, bagged, labeled and filed by weight from heaviest item to lightest.
"It's extreme, endurance-type work," said Williams, who experienced the piece firsthand. "It seemed like there might be some sort of perceptual gimmick involved, but then you realize you can open the drawers, that the parts are all there and labeled, and you think 'he really did this.'"
"Untitled," is listed by Guinness World Records as the tallest file cabinet on earth.
A short documentary about his painting, “Vern,” premiered in October 2004 at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
"Vern" is composed of the cremated remains of an unheralded painter named Vernon Koski who aspired to have his work exhibited in a museum; the piece is part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Yates' varied work includes elements of new media, site visit research, geographic information system and global positioning system mapping, digital fabrication, user interface design, and public art.
Yates has a background in English, earning a degree from the University of California-Berkelely in 1997. Williams said students will benefit from hearing Yates' ideas about art. "He speaks eloquently and specifically about what he does."
He has exhibited in America and Europe and his work has been written about in more than 40 U.S. and European publications. He has presented to gallery, museum, art school, university, private, and industry audiences.
In addition to private art collections, his artwork is included in public collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum, di Rosa Preserve, and Ballett Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany.
Yates received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2002.
For more information, contact Carol Lafayette, at lurleen@viz.tamu.edu.
Yates' website is http://www.samuelyates.com
The AIR program is sponsored by Texas A&M's Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, the College of Architecture and the Department of Visualization.
- Posted: Dec. 01, 2009 -
