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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > January > 22 > Entry
UT commissions David Ellis video for new Visual Arts Center
The University of Texas has commissioned New York artist David Ellis — known for his stunning motion paintings — to create an original video for the university’s new Visual Arts Center, slated to open in September 2010.
The VAC, which will be run by the Department of Art & Art History, will be in the existing Art Building in the former space once occupied by the Blanton Museum. Designed by Lake Flato Architect, the VAC is slated to offer greatly expanded exhibition space, student studio space and a new home for the Mesoamerican Center.
The Brooklyn-based Ellis merges an almost street art/graffiti sensibility to his sprawling paintings, installations and videos. Terrifically influenced by music, his multi-media work has a vibrancy to it, both literal and figurative. Artifice doesn’t try to hide in Ellis’s work either; He embraces the ersatz.
Daily from David Ellis on Vimeo.
The commission is being administered by UT’s Landmarks public art program officials form which wouldn’t report the exact amount of the commission. But according to the 2005 policy statement for UT’s Art in Public Spaces program, one to two percent of the capital cost of new construction and major renovations of UT building is to go to public art. The new VAC facility has an estimated construction cost of $7 million. We suppose that would make Ellis’s commission $70,000 to $140,000.
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