Mapping the Empty: Eight Artists and Nevada - Paperback

by William L. Fox (Author), Jeff Kelley (Foreword by)

Foreword by Jeff Kelley. Nevada's open spaces have long inspired complex responses from a population largely shaped by European sensibilities toward land and its uses. In Mapping the Empty Fox considers how eight of the state's most distinguished and innovative contemporary artists have responded to the harsh, enigmatic landscapes of the Great Basin and how, through their work, they have expressed and helped to define our attitudes toward the space we call the West. The artists are Jim McCormick, Rita Deanin Abbey, Dennis Parks, Walter McNamara, Robert Beckmann, Michael Heizer, Bill Barker, and Mary Ann Bonjorni.

Author Biography

Bill Fox remains stubbornly outside the ability of critics to label him. An independent scholar, a cultural geographer, an essayist, a poet, a travel writer, Fox consistently brings together unexpected fields of knowledge in order to illuminate the subjects at hand. He has been an arts consultant, curator, and visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He has written widely on the nature of deserts and the role of the arts in American culture. He is the author of numerous articles and books; his work on cognition and the landscape includes time in the Antarctic as a visiting writer with the National Science Foundation and work in the Arctic with NASA on the Haughton-Mars Project. He lives in Burbank.