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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > April > 21 > Entry
So much for ‘Dust Storm’
What looked to be a compelling site-specific installation by Austin artist Jeff Williams has been cancelled before it even opened.
Williams, a UT art professor, planned to transform 13,0000-square-feet of long-empty ground floor space at 400 W. Cesar Chavez St. into a Texas landscape within walls. Since the space has never been built out and occupied — even though the building, which is now home to Silicon Labs, was built in 2000. Hence it still has a dirt floor.
Taking the long unfinished dusty space as artistic fodder, Williams conceived a durational piece that, through fans and blowers, created a 30-minute dust storm inside. Viewers were to watch ‘Dust Storm’ from the sidewalk outside.
But it’s past tense now. After a test run, building managers told Williams that dust seeped through cracks and into neighboring spaces. And so, ‘Dust Storm’ was shut down.
‘Dust Storm’ looked to be an interesting comment on the state of downtown development, gentrification vs. nature and more. And it was planned under the auspices of Art Alliance Austin’s Art Week Austin, a part of ‘One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer, an ambitious set of temporary installations that indie curators Claire Ruud and Rachel Cook organized.
Williams was on hand last night for the opening of ‘One Swallow.’ He managed to document the one time that ‘Dust Storm’ blew through and made a poster of the photos which is being distributed free during the remainder of ‘One Swallow.’
The singular ‘Dust Storm’ happening.
All that now remains of ‘Dust Storm.’
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