Tom Lea: Explorations in Landscape

Soundscape / Poetry Project · 2022

SOUNDSCAPE COMPOSITION

A soundscape project inspired by the work of El Paso artist Tom Lea, bringing together poetry, prose, and sound to explore landscape as a spatial and sensory experience.

Tom Lea, *Southwest*, 1956. Mural. El Paso Museum of History, El Paso, Texas.

Tom Lea: Explorations in Landscape was created as part of the 2022 Tom Lea Fellowship, awarded by the Tom Lea Institute and UTEP’s College of Liberal Arts to Iliana Pichardo Urrutia.

The project takes three works by Tom Lea as points of departure: the murals Pass of the North and Southwest, and the painting Great River of the North. Through poetry, prose, and sound, the piece approaches Lea’s work not only as visual representation, but as an experience of space, movement, and sensorial emotion.

Three Ways of Entering the Landscape

The project unfolds through three complementary dimensions—prose, poetry, and sound—allowing the landscape to be approached through language, listening, and spatial imagination.

Rather than translating the paintings literally into sound, the soundscape creates an acoustic response to their sense of place, scale, and atmosphere.