Famous artist to lecture on upcoming exhibits

On Wednesday, world-renowned artist Christo will be giving a lecture at Bennet Audtiorium at the University of Southern Mississippi at 7 p.m. The lecture focuses on his upcoming works and is titled Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Two Works in Progress: Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, Colorado, and The Mastaba, Project for the United Arab Emirates.

An artist known for his grand scale and use of cloth as his primary material, Christo has created several pieces of environmental art in America and around the world. The event will be open to the public and is free of charge. More information for the event can be found at usm.edu/news.

Christo is responsible for the Running Fence, which, according to his official website, was an 18 foot high, 24.5 mile long stretch of woven nylon fabric created in 1976. In 2005, he garnered attention with The Gates, a project that consisted of 7,503 vinyl and nylon gates running through 23 miles of Central Park in New York City. Christo funded these and all his other projects privately, without the help of government grants or outside sponsorship.

The Lauren Moore Museum of Art is currently hosting Christo’s plans, sketches and models for both finished and unrealized projects. Among pictures of the Sydney Opera House and several skyscrapers in New York wrapped in cloth can be found Charles Owen, a member of the museum’s board of trustees.

“We are extremely fortunate to have him here and excited about the caliber of artist we can bring to Laurel and the surrounding area,” Owen said.

Christo, a Bulgarian native, was born in 1935 and attended the Fine Arts Academy of Vienna, Austria. He moved to the United States in 1964 with his wife and creative partner Jeanne-Claude, who is now deceased. Together they realized 20 different projects. Christo’s current project, Over the River, will consist of “5.9 miles of silvery, luminous fabric panels to be suspended high above the Arkansas River along a 42-mile stretch of the river between Salida and Cañon City in south-central Colorado,” according to his website. The project is scheduled to begin February 2013 after several legal disputes have been settled.