Join Travis Neel, Erin Charpentier and Mark Menjívar in conversation about their practices and work in Texas, this May 28 at 7pm on Zoom!
Erin Charpentier and Travis Neel work at the unruly edges of art and urban ecology to explore the possibility of collaborative survival within the weedy entanglements of human-disturbed landscapes.
Currently, their work centers the Honey Mesquite tree—the charismatic and thorny protagonist of the Llano Estacado’s ecological theater in West Texas. In an attempt to understand the Honey Mesquite, they have become enmeshed in a symbiotic association with other artists, landscape architects, neighbors, Chihuahuan desert and Short Grass prairie plant communities, ranchers, arborists, insects, bacteria, rainwater, mycorrhiza, and the City of Lubbock. Together, this community of actors have manifested the Mesquite Mile, an expanding network of sites designed to provide solar cooling with gentle shade, irrigate drought-hardy plants with stormwater runoff through green infrastructure, and increase biodiversity in Lubbock, TX.
Their collaborative work has been supported and recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Interchange Artists Fellowship program, Headlands Center for the Arts, Southwest Contemporary, the British Cultural Council, Stoveworks Artist Residency, the Tallgrass Artist Residency, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Temple Contemporary, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the RedLine Contemporary Art Center, and numerous DIY art spaces across the United States and Canada.
Erin Charpentier + Travis Neel
Mark Menjívar is a San Antonio based artist and Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His art practice primarily consists of creating participatory projects while being rooted in photography, oral history, archives, and social action. He attended McLennan Community College, holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.
Mark has engaged in projects at venues including the El Museo del Barrio, Rothko Chapel, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, FOTOFEST, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Haverford College, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Puerto Rican Museum of Art and Culture, Sala Diaz, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum and the Krannert Art Museum.
Mark is a long-time artistic collaborator with the After Violence Project, a public memory archive that fosters deeper understandings of the impacts of state violence. He is also a member of Borderland Collective, which utilizes collaborations between artists, educators, youth, and community members to engage complex issues and build space for diverse perspectives, meaningful dialogue, and modes of creation around border issues.
📸 From left to right, Site Three of the Mesquite Mile, Spring 2024 by Travis Neel and Erin Charpentier. Artist led bird watching by Mark Menjívar. Courtesy of the artists