Suze’s Art News September 2022

Suze’s Art News September 2022

“Art ought to be a troublesome thing, and one of my reasons for painting representationally is that this makes for much more troublesome pictures.”  David Park (posted on the wall above his paintings in the Oakland Museum of California.)

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Carbon is a show at The Vestibule gallery in Seattle. I hung one of my burned tree paintings on the wall and installed a “fire pit” on the floor below it. The stone circle contains objects evoking the top carbon-emitting sectors: energy production, transportation, and agriculture, with a chunk of concrete for the built environment as one member of the ring of stones. There is an opening/performance 9/10 starting at 6 pm that I will attend.

Carved Out, Varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52”H x 10”W (shown rotated)

Fire pit, installation, ~30” in diameter (that is a gas pump handle, not a pistol!)

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I’m happy to be in Lynn Hanson Gallery’s annual ICON show again with both a burned tree painting and a bark beetle book. There is a Seattle reception there 2-4 pm, also on 9/10, that I plan to attend.

Left top and bottom: Bark Beetle Book Volume XXXIII: Hyphae Half-round log, handmade and commercial papers, abaca fiber; 14”H x 6”W x 8”D plus. extended fibers
Right: Twisted, Varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52H x 21”W

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I gave a virtual talk for The Bug Society (aka “Scarabs”) in July and have several coming up: Seattle’s Book Arts Guild at 7pm on 9/8, and, together with Lorena Williams, “Wildfire in Beloved Places” on 9/15 for the Wildling Museum’s Fire & Ice exhibit.

The Magnitude of the Problem, digitally printed on fabric in three layers: solid, transparent (left, seen from the front,) and text on black (right, seen from back). The text is Lorena Williams’ story of visiting the threatened Mariposa Grove.
(In the background is one of Amiko Matsuo’s innovative Phos-Chek paintings.)

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I had the pleasure of being a resident at the Mineral School in early August. I finished two new burned tree paintings and still managed to get out to nearby Mount Rainier for hikes and seven small landscape paintings.

Patrol Cabin at Lake George, The Mountain from Mineral Lake and The Mountain from High Rock, all watercolor on 11” x 15” paper

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In June I gave an in-person talk in Twisp, WA, as a 2022  Mary Kiesau Community Fellowship recipient. In September-October I will be heading back to the Methow Valley to begin my listening project: to community members, naturalists, and activists about the 2021 fires. I will also explore the burns themselves. I expect hearing from the people most involved and affected to influence my future artwork.

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“Art that Matters to the Planet” continues at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in upstate New York, and “Environmental Impact II” will move from Michigan to Southeast Missouri State University.

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At the end of October, I’ll be installing the Magnitude of the Problem painting in the Shunpike Storefront window at Mercer and Terry Streets in South Lake Union, Seattle, where it will be until the end of January 2023.

Here it is during my Six-fold Increase exhibit at Plasteel in July-August.

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After that I’m looking forward to a quiet spell into early 2023 where I can focus creating on new work!

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The saddest of ironies

Twelve years ago I began painting portraits of individual burned boles because of my anxiety about the impacts of what is now a climate crisis.

I heard two days ago that one of my burned tree paintings has been removed from the path of a California fire. I hope with all my heart that my purchasers’ home is spared–yet I am so moved that they chose to rescue the work in the face of what must be thousands of concerns.

Blazed, varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52″H x 20″W (2017).
The subject was a tree near Observation Point in Zion National Park.
This painting was #36 of what is now a series of 42.

Suze’s Art News September 2020

It’s still pretty strange times.

We are all adapting as best we can. Artwork and time in wilderness give me inner sanity; helping others, whether individuals or institutions, is another strategem.

In roughly chronological order:

Where we watched the eclipse, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

Bend, Oregon’s High Desert Museum’s annual fundraising competition, Art in the West, includes this landscape. The virtual auction is live 8/1 – 10/3/2020.

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Bathtub Lakes, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

I’ll be teaching an in-person, outdoor class, “Practical Plein Air,” for Gage Academy of Art 9/12-13 — masked and distanced of course. There’s still room! Here is the registration page.

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Artichokes, watercolor on paper on cradled panel, coated in epoxy, 11″ x 15″

Item # 228, Silent Auction 2: in The Museum of Northwest Art’s annual fundraiser. Bidding opens on 9/11 and closes 9/13.

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Bark Beetle Book, Volume XXX: Species Distribution. Douglas fir branch, laser-cut wood, laser-print transfers, viscose and silk, Kevlar thread, wood beads. 3.5″ x 32.5″ closed, 3.5″ x 19 *feet* open — the longest book I’ve ever made!

I’ll be giving a virtual talk for Puget Sound Book Artists 9/10 from 4 -5:30 pm. Anyone is welcome to register for it on their site. I’ll be discussing the inspiration and processes of many of the 30 books that sat in the silent and empty exhibit “Gathered from the field: art provoked by the climate research” from early March to mid August this year.

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State of the Forest installation (fabric prints of my burned tree portraits). Image courtesy The James Museum, St Petersburg FL and David J. Wagner, curator.

Environmental Impact II, which includes State of the Forest, has moved to Fort Hays State University in Kansas, where it will be on display for the academic year 9/18/20 – 5/15/21. See also my home page and individual artwork page.

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Enlichenment watercolor on paper on panel, 8″x8″  SOLD

I was one of 50 contributors to a clever fundraiser called Square Deal–50 Artists for a Fair Vote. While mine is gone, there are still 12 left here.

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Bark Beetle Book Volume XXXI: Beetle Graph. Douglas fir branches, laser-cut wood, laser-print transfers, bronze rings. 86″H x 18″W x 3″D. Each branch is a bar from a bar graph of the most destructive bark beetles in Washington State from 2008-2018. 

I’m pleased to be part of the annual ICON competition at Lynn Hanson Gallery. There is a virtual First Thursday artwork on her site 9/3 at 5:30 and a virtual artist reception 9/12 at 2pm. 

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Bark Beetle Book Volume XXXII: Obligate Mutualism. Branch, laser-cut wood panels, iron-oxide-dyed and industrial wool felt, linen threat, embroidery floss 8.75″ x 6.75″ x 3″. Certain bark beetles that kill trees carry with them a staining fungus which helps them digest wood. Their characteristic patterns are shown on the covers. The fungi reach into wood with microfilaments, evoked by the lines of embroidery. 

I am once again part of Mighty Tieton’s 10x10x10 competition, on display 8/8 – 10/11. The virtual exhibit is here.

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In Headlight Basin, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

This painting will be part of Schack-toberfest, the Everett museum’s fundraiser 9/17 – 11/7.

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Lastly, I’ll be giving a talk for Seattle Co-Arts at noon on October 27.

It has been a surprisingly rewarding summer despite everything there is to worry about. Painting outdoors on the Northwest Watercolor Society’s plein air days (which I help organize) has been a real treat. Small alpine landscapes remind me of the most joyous times of my life. This missive is already too over-long to show them here–but if you want to see some of this year’s small pleasures, let me know and I’ll send you a selection. 

Thanks for your attention to all my efforts to support our local art institutions!

Art in the Time of Coronavirus, or, “The Big Tree”

It will not surprise you to hear I made myself a massive, hunker-down, shelter-in-place project, now nearly three-quarters completed.

In January I received the people’s choice award at a local juried show. One option for the award is an exhibit on a large wall above the checkout counter at a nearby public library. Before the lockdown went into effect, I made it over there to check out the space. One side of the wall is 24 feet wide, with about 6 feet of vertical space. There is also a smaller wall on the other side of a central doorway.

I’ve always meant to try one of my burned tree paintings on the lengthwise axis of a roll of watercolor paper — but been intimidated by the time commitment required. With my beloved wilderness off-limits, I knew I needed something demanding to do.

When completed it will be 22 feet long (not quite an entire roll  of 30 feet : -) Since I don’t have room to work on something that big in my studio, I’m doing it in sections that will hang abutted. I figure if John Grade’s immense Middle Fork sculpture was created in sections, I can do it, too.

I’ll mount them so they can be hung either vertically or horizontally, though I expect most venues will need it to be horizontal.

Panels 1-6: I don’t have enough floor space in the largest room I have to lay them out!

Two friends independently dubbed it “Water Lilies of the Anthropocene.” While it’s nowhere near the size of Monet’s largest water lily paintings, it’s the largest of my 12-year preoccupation with wildland fires, as their remains increase in frequency and severity in our warming climate. The library is excited about it and plans to do some programming around it. I’m excited because lots of people will see it — whenever we can visit libraries once again.

I’ve just starting panel 7 of 7, at ~18.5 feet now. Between that and varnishing and mounting, I think it will take another 3-4 weeks. The animation at the top of this post represents 28 painting days, with 7 panel prep days as well.

We have all had plans and dreams interrupted by the virus. I wish us all good health, an easing of the stresses and strictures, and a chance to show what we’ve been working on during this pandemic siege.

UPDATE May 1, 2020:

The painting portion is finally finished (there’s still varnishing, creating shaped boards to mount them on and mounting them to do).

My photos don’t quite do it justice — it is too large to lay out in any contiguous space in my studio, so each panel has been photographed separately and digitally composited. The color-matching across panels is more accurate in the painting than in these photos.

“The Big Tree,” Watercolor on torn paper, 49″ x 262″ (21’10”)

It’s fun to see it in its possible vertical orientation, too. One thing that surprised me: the panels also look surprisingly meaningful as separate side-by-side pieces.

Proposed window display of 5 of 7 panels, side-by-side orientation

Any suggestion for a title welcome!

UPDATE October 1, 2020:

Panel 2 of what I finally decided to call The Magnitude of the Problem has been accepted into the Northwest Watercolor Society’s 80th Annual International Exhibit (online this pandemic year).  It will be viewable beginning the evening of October 27.

UPDATE July 2022

The painting was on display in the Kirkland Public Library October of 2021 to January of 2022. I was thrilled by how much the library was involved – we created an all-ages reading list and together author Lorenda Williams and forestry professor David L. Peterson and I gave a virtual talk.

The Magnitude of the Problem at the Kirkland Public Library

Then a fabric version of the painting was created with Arisa Brown‘s help and a new story by Lorena, featuring the threat to the Mariposa Grove. It has been on display at the Wildling Museum in Solvang, California, and we’ll be giving a virtual talk for it on September 15.

The fabric version at The Wildling Museum

With stories by Lorena Williams; Phos-Chek artwork by Amiko Matsui in background

Currently the original painting is in a solo show at Plasteel Frames and Gallery in Seattle. I am equally thrilled by how it looks wrapped around an inside corner.

Next up will be a large window display through Shunpike’s Storefront program October 2022-January 2023.

Playa Summer Lake

As part of the climate-change Surge exhibit at the Museum of Northwest Art, artist-scientist teams were invited to visit Playa art colony on the edge of the Great Basin, in south central Oregon. It’s the northern edge of the country so well described in one of my favorite of John McPhee’s geology works, Basin and Range.

Summer Lake is a shallow lake that in this Anthropocene warmer age goes almost dry in the summer, leaving behind a vast, flat playa of white mud in various stages of drying and cracking. West of Playa’s collection of cabins, studios and lodge, a volcanic uplift called the Winter Rim rises nearly 3000 feet above the lake.

“Skate skiing” on the playa

I spent a number of days exploring this landscape. Subject to a severe bark beetle outbreak around 2002-2003, much of the nearby forest burned not long thereafter. I even found examples of trees with both beetle galleries and char, neatly combining two of my most extensive bodies of work: painted portraits of individual burned trees and artist books incorporating complex galleries of bark beetles.

Both burned and chewed

The epidemic outbreak of bark beetles is the subject of the 9 artist books on display in the Surge exhibit; my project while at Playa was to complete an explanatory video to accompany the exhibit.

One problem with artist books on exhibit is they sit in a case and viewers can’t experience them directly (and given that they are unique and sometimes fragile, it’s appropriate). So I wanted to offer a way for viewers to understand what they were seeing, my motivations and processes and some of the science underlying the visual experience. You can see the 8.5 minute video here.

As is my habit wherever I am, I also painted small landscapes, trying to capture some of the sense of the sky and playa, which I later made into a small book that I sent back to them.

Playa 6, watercolor on paper, 11″ x 15″

I was deeply honored that entomology professor Dr. Diana Six came from the University of Montana to spend time on the project with me. My understanding of the issues and her work with them grew exponentially during our time together. Playa’s blog, Edge Effects, published a short article about us here.

July was predictably hot – and perhaps equally predictably, the forest that Dr. Six and I tromped through erupted with the Watson Creek Fire in the Fremont National Forest not long after we left.

Willowtail Springs Residency

I have spent the last 13 days in southwest Colorado, near Mancos, at Willowtail Springs – a charming, eclectic, idiosyncratic set of high-end cabins near the La Plata Mountains and Mesa Verde, founded by Lee and Peggy Melyssa Cloy. Their off-the-beaten-path venue is both a commercial B&B (with fresh eggs and wonderful bread!) and an artist retreat with an avowed goal of “integrating the arts and sciences.”

On the journey here, I found myself “time traveling:” when I crested high passes it was almost winter but, depending on its elevation, descent to the next valley brought me backward in time to anywhere from late summer to early fall to solidly autumn. I saw aspen, cottonwoods, willows, tamarisks and oak thickets still in full color and ones now bare to the last leaf.

For this time of year I brought clothes for both heat and snow. For example, I’ve got four tiers of long underwear – extra light, light, medium heavy and heavy. Ditto pile sweaters, gloves and rain gear. Most of the time, no foul-weather gear needed – but the last two days I’ve worn the medium heavyweight as snow is only a thousand feet above us.

In the higher places especially I saw inescapable evidence of our warming climate: complete beetle kill on the Continental Divide at Wolf Creek Pass (linked article is over a year old; I saw not a single living tree at the same location). Hiking in the La Platas offered vistas of rock glaciers and old lateral and terminal moraines, glacier-smoothed and grooved roches moutonnees, but of course, no glaciers.

My stints in other places almost always follow a pattern: I wander around getting to know a place by painting its landscapes. Once I’ve exorcised “the pretty stuff,” I can begin to focus on the underlying issues and meanings. This visit is no exception—though with an initial week’s vacation hiking spent around southeast Utah on the way here, it’s taken me even longer to settle down.

I had another goal of a “from-life”-painting-a-day, practicing for the Zion Plein Air Invitational. This wall shows my progress:

Snapshot of my painting-a-day at Willowtail – the good, the bad and the so-so.

Top Row, left to right: The Pond 1; The Pond 2; Upended truck bed (“Marfa North”); Kiva at Balcony House, Mesa Verde; Hesperus mountain from the Sharktooth trail. Row 2: Below the Pond; Pond 3; Far View Doorways, Mesa Verde;
Sleeping Ute Mountain from Park Point; The Pond in the Rain.

Row 3: The Hill; Prater Ridge Rim; Balcony House, Mesa Verde;
Shiprock from Park Point

With bad weather, I had enough studio time to almost complete another burned tree: untitled yet, this totem (as wildland firefighters call the still-standing carved trunks) is from the 2015 Reynolds Creek Fire in Glacier National Park.

Untitled, Watercolor on torn paper, 52″H by 11.5″W

I have had wonderful interactions with Lee and Peggy, visitors, donors and avid arts-interested people in the area. It was deeply gratifying to hear that my burned tree paintings and my rock-bound artist books inspire them, and I’m looking forward to more exchanges in the future. Willowtail residents will be the focus of an exhibit at the lively Durango Arts Center in 2017.

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I am deeply grateful to the Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation for partial support of my residency at Willowtail Springs.

 

A Thrilling Installation: Twelve Burned Tree Portraits Suspended in the Air

This fall I had the opportunity to participate in the Museum of Northwest Art’s annual Surge event in La Conner, Washington State. It’s a brief exhibit intended to inform and provoke, especially residents of the low-lying Skagit River delta area. They’ve expanded their purview to include less proximal causes of coastal flooding to the broader impacts of climate change, such as melting glaciers and forest fires.

I turned in a number of proposals, some of which I will likely pursue in the future, but the one the curators most wanted to see was an installation of multiple burned tree paintings.

I thought this would be easy since all but one of the pieces already existed. (I promised to try to complete a burned tree from the Skagit watershed in time for the exhibit. The painting below came from a tree I saw near Newhalem. Last year’s Goodell Creek fire touched down right next to this small town on the west side of the North Cascades.)

Goodell Fire Instance, varnished watercolor on torn paper, 52″H x 16″W

Easy, hah! Some of the works were in frames. Some were already mounted on shaped black foam core, but the backs had been used for wall hanging and had bumpers, hanging wires, and tags that needed to be removed. I chose to re-cover the backs of these with black paper. And of course the ones that were in frames needed to be taken out and new shaped foam core backings jigsaw-cut for them. And I needed to come up with a way to suspend them from the ceiling that would last throughout the exhibit.

I made a number of tests of different coatings, papers, hanging hardware and lay outs before settling on my final method. I had been reading the David McCulloch biography of the Wright Brothers, and while I cannot claim that level of invention, I was amused by how similar our processes are: theorize, plan, observe, model, build, crash, tweak again and repeat, repeat, repeat…

Backs of 7.5″ high prints of burned tree paintings, pasted onto 1/8th inch foam core. Wires into the bases allowed me to stick them into a foam base and move them around until I was satisfied with the layout.

Every remounting and each piece of foam core required two coats of adhesive. I had to give up varnishing the foam core because it too often warped it. I tried a variety of hanging hardware. Once I began the process I realized there was no way I could complete this in time on my own.

Thanks to friends, neighbors, fellow artists and Kelly’s Lyles’ artist list, they were finished in time. It was stressful having other people working in my small space. But I met some wonderful folks – thanks especially to Arisa Brown and Rosie Peterson who spent more time than anyone besides me. Working with other artists gives you confidence in your vision!

I could calculate the footprint from my model — which was trebly useful when we arrived to find we’d been assigned a triangular space instead of a rectangular one. But I could work out the new arrangement on the model before we started measuring and hanging.

Front of installation mockup, reworked for triangular footprint

After that, leaning the paintings (still in their protective surrounds) up against office chairs allowed us to fine tune the spacing before committing to ceiling hooks.

The twelve trees still wrapped in their protective foam core surrounds, which allows them to be transported and rearranged without damaging fragile edges.

That the trees came from all over the American West and one of them local makes them even more thought-provoking. One of the effects I was after was indeed realized: when you walk through a burned forest it seems as if the trunks closest to you are stationary, but those seen through the gaps between them seem to move as you do.

The result was stunning and something I hope to do again.

Museum of Northwest Art installation of twelve, varnished, watercolor-on-torn-paper paintings of charred trees, installed September 2016, each 52″ high by various widths

Summing up my GNP residency

I’ve been delayed in rounding out my Glacier National Park residency reporting. For the OCD record:

• 25 paintings completed while resident (as well as 10 more after I got home, and more to come)
• 21 hikes of ~215 trail miles and ~40,000 feet of elevation gain (lots but half as much as a good through-hiker!)

As I compile a portfolio of images in fulfillment of my residency requirement, I’m struck by several subjects that influenced what I decided to paint – mostly unconsciously:

• iconic postcard vistas, and how many of them have burned trees in the foreground (31%)
  

  Curly Bear Mountain, watercolor on paper, 11″x15″

  

  Robert Fire Dog Hair across Lake McDonald, watercolor on paper, 11″x15″

• Vanishing ice (8% but 43% if you add the next category… and in some sense every mountain view shows the retreat of the glaciers)
  

  Iceberg Lake, watercolor on paper, 30″x11″

  

  Grinnell Glacier Moraines, watercolor on paper, 11″x 30″

• Mountain views (35%), my abiding love of alpine scenery
  

  The Garden Wall, watercolor on paper, 11″x15″

  

  Lake McDonald from Apgar Lookout, watercolor on paper, 15″x22″ (sold)

• Running water (11%), always a challenge for the plein air and studio painter
  

  Baring Creek, watercolor on paper, 11″x15″

  

  McDonald Creek from the west bank, watercolor on paper, 11″x15″

• Tourism nostalgia (14%), the vintage infrastructure of past ways of experiencing the park – the tour buses, boats and lodges
  

  DeSmet Tour Boat, watercolor on paper, 11″x15″

  

  Red Bus #3, watercolor on paper, 15″x11″

   

  I learned so much about the place and its natural history. The trouble with all my residencies is that once I have learned to love a new place, then it becomes a part of me that I have to re-visit.

  (I did get more of the work posted on my website, finally!)

 

The End is in Sight

I can’t quite believe I’m on the downslope to leaving. Glacier National Park is a huge place to try to get to know in a short time. It’s takes a certain amount of time, energy and networking to get oriented, poke around enough to find the places that grab me and be productive. I can tell that I’ll be working from some of the small studies I did here once I get home. I’m quite taken with the classic views of the Park peaks with burned-over forests in the foreground, to the extent that I’m almost disappointed if there isn’t a burn somewhere near a vista I want to paint. But I have promised not to do this…

(Thanks Jim ; – )

Elevation-dependent Warming – and Alpine Fires

It may be safe to assume that no one who works in Glacier National Park denies global warming. Proof of change is so overwhelming even the casual visitor can see it. It somehow seems more intense here – though perhaps it is just more visible. But from my interview with Dan Fagre, scientists working in the Park have confirmed a greater rate of change the higher in elevation you go, with profound implications for the species the Park is sworn to protect.

This week I saw my first alpine-zone burn: small and once-ancient, twisted, krummholz fir trees in vertical stripes running up steep meadows on the way to Siyeh Pass. Even the shrubby heathers, kinnikinicks and creeping junipers remain as blackened runners. Sooner or later these will get added to my individual burned tree series.