“Lofty Art: The Story of CentralTrak” THE magazine. March 2009.

“Lofty Art: The Story of CentralTrak” THE magazine. March 2009.

Photographs and text by Michael Ward

Ruben Nieto with his art.

If you are heading to UT-Dallas’s Centraltrak anytime soon, give yourself some extra time to get there. You might pass it the first go-around. It is a sleepy looking grungy tan building located on a peaceful section of Exhibition Drive. But once you get inside, you will soon realize just how wildy innovative this place really is.

“I want to help make new ideas and get Dallas into the global discourse,” said Dr. Charissa Terranova, perched atop an IKEA chair in her office. She just might do it. A professor at The University of Texas at Dallas (UT-Dallas), Dr. Terranova is also the director of CentralTrak, the only artist residency program in the DFW area attached to a university; nine artists from around the world—from The Netherlands to Saudi Arabia to Mexico—live together in this 10,000 square foot collection of lofts and gallery space. It is kind of like one of those silly reality shows but with more paint and less drama—and far more true to life.

Located where Deep Ellum meets Fair Park, the program is the latest effort by UT-Dallas to bring to the fore the intersection of art and academia. Dr. Terranova embodies that intersection. An architecture theorist by training, her forthcoming book “Automotive Prosthetic”, discusses the infamous Hummer SUV as a symbol of domestic militarization.

If that sounds heady, just wait. CentralTrak is a very different place.

Graduate student and artist Jeff Yerger bounced from Dallas to Houston and back to Dallas before entering the residency program. “I needed the structure of school,” he tells me while beginning to explain his massive project leaning against a wall in his loft. A neuron-like form with organic appendages engulfs the canvas. It seems just as much science fiction as science fact. Yerger’s fascination with the relationship between natural and manmade forms is partly influenced by Dr. Terranova’s course in cybernetics, which has him reading everything from N. Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Strewn across his desk are digital photographs of the canvas at various stages of development, reflecting not only his interest in technology but also the changing methods in which artists work in the 21st century. He takes the images and runs them through Photoshop, adding and subtracting layers, and experiments with different ideas before he places them on the final canvas. “Kind of like word processing for painting?” I ask. “Exactly,” he says as he takes another sip of beer.

In 2002, the program did not exist. Instead, UT-Dallas had a loose affiliation with the Southside Residency Program located at South Side on Lamar. “It was wonderfully ill-conceived,” says UT-Dallas professor Dr. Richard Brettell, who is by all accounts one of the chief architects of university’s art program. The relationship between UT-Dallas and the Southside program dissolved amicably, but Dr. Brettell says it was missed once it was gone.

Jeff Yerger in front of his newest work.

In the interim period, UT-Dallas set to work on finding a new residency. But finding a home that would embrace the program’s interest in being on the fringe of art and technology proved difficult.  Dr. Brettell also wanted autonomy and self-sufficiency for the program. “We were paupers at Southside,” he says, “without reliable access to gallery space.”

Enter Dallas developer David Gibson. In the financial world, he’d be called an angel investor. In the art world, he’s called a patron. First, Mr. Gibson offered UT-Dallas a large-enough building in which to allow several artists to live, an old candy factory near Fair Park. Then he offered something more. “Gibson wanted us to write our own program,” says Dr. Brettell. Finally, UT-Dallas had an independent artists’ residency.

Next Dr. Brettell stole away then-SMU professor Dr. Terranova by offering her the opportunity to teach at UT-Dallas and coordinate the CentralTrak program. “She put energy into the Dallas art scene,” he says. “She provided the program a sense of global ambition.” In early 2008, the program moved to its present location, a three-story building comprising a main gallery and eight residences for artists.

For many, mentioning art and UT-Dallas might raise eyebrows. After all the school has its roots as Texas Instruments’ very own intellectual garden of sorts. Three of TI’s founders left indelible marks on the campus in the form of buildings or lucrative scholarships. For years, the university provided a place where local talent was fostered in the technical disciplines, providing fertile ground for engineers but not necessarily artists. That is what makes CentralTrak so different; the artists embrace the school’s techie roots. At a recent Open Studio session, the artists opened up their lofts to the public.

“Picasso said we should go back to childhood and paint like a kid,” says Ruben Nieto, one of Mr. Yerger’s neighbors and a visiting artist from Guanajuato, a town in central Mexico. In November 2008, his work was on display in CentralTrak’s main gallery. Titled “Ludic Spaces,” Mr. Neito uses his country’s ancient past to reinterpret the idea of the canvas. He answers Picasso’s call by melting down LEGO pieces to form pyramidal shapes—harking back to his Aztec and Mayan ancestors—and creating abstracted bird-eye views of major cities based on maps from Google Earth. The pyramids rush forth from the canvas, extending several inches into the gallery space.

Ayman Amoudi lives down the hall from Mr. Neito. His hands are covered with paint so we forgo the typical greeting ritual. Mr. Amoudi is Saudi Arabian, and his color choices speak to his exotic background. Infused in his work are deep earth tones and a beautiful khaki that looks as if he lifted it from the desert sand back home. His is about getting rid of the static visions that make up how we typically see things. “I’m trying to get the viewer to have the same emotion I’m having when I’m painting,” he says.

Then, of course, there is CentralTrak’s official unofficial mascot Moc Moc. Several months ago, Dr. Terranova brought this Vietnamese-raised Terrier/Chihuahua mix to the program. Quiet and inquisitive, Moc Moc roams the residency, greeting gallery visitors and journalists alike.

CentralTrak is doing exactly what it intended to—bring the arts and the university together in a more intimate environment. Thanks to a little professorial foresight and some local patronage, it also has the independence Dr. Brettell wanted. Private contributions—as opposed to a university budget—compose the bulk of the CentralTrak’s funding, which allows student artists up to 2 years in the residency and professional artists up 1 year. The grants are worth $15,000-$20,000 each.

But the program it is still young—not even a year old yet. “It’s like when you have your first baby,” says Dr. Brettell.  “You don’t know how to hold her or feed her. You learn.” Like the ideas that infuse many of the residents’ work, CentralTrak is both organic and manmade—who knows what could happen? Maybe no one needs to. “If you know the results,” says Mr. Amoudi, “if you know how it will be in the end, then it’s not art.”

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