In Ranch Gates of the Southwest, Daniel Olsen and Henk van Assen present more than 100 full-color photographs of ranch gates taken across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. From rugged and functional to stylized and adorned, ranches with names such as F. V. Cuahope Ranch, High Lonesome, Felix River Ranch, and Rancho Quatro Hermanas reveal cultural history, landscape features, and individualism through language and design. Lucy R. Lippard's introduction offers historical and cultural context of ranches and their gates. Landscape architecture professor Kenneth I. Helphand explains the environmental history of ranches from land appropriation and naming to the impact of gates on the landscape. In their own essays, Olsen and van Assen tell the behind-the-scenes story of making the book and describe type design and language from their perspectives as designers and photographers. Ranch Gates of the Southwestis both a sumptuous documentary record and a tribute to a quintessentially American symbol.
Helphand, Kenneth I.: - Kenneth Helphand is a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon, where he has taught courses in landscape history, theory, and design since 1974. His other books include Colorado: Visions of an American Landscape, Dreaming Gardens: Landscape Architecture and the Making of Modern Israel, and Yard Street Park: The Design of Suburban Open Space, coauthored with Cynthia Girling. Helphand served as editor of Landscape Journal from 1994 to 2002. He is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and an honorary member of the Israel Association of Landscape Architects. He has received the Bradford Williams Medal and a Graham Foundation grant, as well as distinguished teaching awards from the University of Oregon and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.
Lippard, Lucy R.: - Lucy Lippard is a writer, curator, and activist. She is the author of twenty books on contemporary art and cultural studies, including Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multi-Centered Society, and On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place. She has written art criticism for Art in America, the Village Voice, and other publications and was the cofounder of Printed Matter. She writes and lectures nationally on issues of place, photography, environmental and public art, and Native American art. Lippard has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the College Art Association's Mather Award for art criticism, and honorary doctorates from the Moore College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Massachusetts College of Art, the Maine College of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, and Bowdoin College. She lives in Galisteo, New Mexico, where she is the founding editor of the community newsletter El Puente de Galisteo.
Olsen, Daniel M.: - Daniel Olsen is a designer and educator. He has worked on projects with Hard Werken in the Netherlands and Emigre Graphics, and he has exhibited at the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, the Stealcase Design Partnership in New York, and the Galería de la Municipalidad de Miraflores in Lima, Peru. His film work has appeared at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, the Aarhus Festival of Independent Arts, and the Vail Film Festival. He is an associate professor of design at the University of Texas at Austin.
Van Assen, Henk: - Henk van Assen's New York-based studio, HvADesign, focuses on book design and environmental graphics. He received his training in graphic design in his home country of the Netherlands from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague. After working for several years as a graphic designer in Amsterdam, he came to the United States and earned an M.F.A. from Yale University. Since 1999 van Assen has been a critic at the Yale University School of Art, and from 2003 to 2008 he was director of undergraduate studies. He has also taught at the University of Texas, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His work has won many awards, including the 1999, 2000, 2004, and 2005 American Institute of Graphic Arts 50 Best Books Awards.
