“The Water School has grown out of thinking about what role art making can play in building community and culture.”
—Oscar Tuazon
In 1968, engineer and inventor Steve Baer self-published the Dome Cookbook, a treatise on mathematics, do-it-yourself architecture, and off-the-grid living. Three years later he created his Zome Home in the foothills overlooking Albuquerque. The house remains one of the earliest modern examples of passive solar architecture; the sun’s energy is collected during the day and stored in drums of water installed in large, bay windows, which then provide heat during the night.
This unique structural system, and the larger countercultural DIY building and environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s, form the basis for Oscar Tuazon’s latest conceptual and material research. For his exhibition at the MSU Broad, Tuazon continues his investigations of the relationship between art, architecture, and environmental sustainability, with specific consideration of the exhibition’s immediate context: Michigan and the Great Lakes region.
As the title suggests, Tuazon will initiate the latest version of his Water School, while also bridging the conversation in Michigan with the artist’s schools in California and Minnesota. These schools are spaces for formal and informal learning, opportunities to specifically address water, land rights, and other socio-environmental issues, connecting local concerns with national and global conversations. A robust schedule of programs will unfold over the course of the exhibition, the Water School acting as a platform for a plurality of expressions concerning water politics today.
Oscar Tuazon: Water School is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Steven L. Bridges, Associate Curator. Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Guardian Glass LLC and MSU Federal Credit Union. Additional support is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Eli and Edythe Broad endowed exhibitions fund.
