introduction and acknowledgments
Andrea
Sulzer: After
Nature brings together a selec-
tion of this multi-faceted artist's dizzyingly
prints
a
and drawings. The exhibition
summer
the three
College
series inaugurated
is
complex
the seventh
in
1999 (interrupted for
in
memory
collude. Both the writer
up vertiginous details
in their
and the
artist pile
respective responses to
the strange and terrible beauty of both nature and
human
history.
summers during which the Bowdoin
Museum
of Art
was undergoing renovation)
that seeks out unusual responses to the landscape.
I
am
and
so grateful to Andrea Sulzer for making her art
for her energetic
cooperation
in
helping to pull
together the details of the exhibition, including pro-
The subtitle After Nature was selected deliberately to
viding such a thoughtful and lucid artist's statement
acknowledge both the formative
that most of
Sulzer's work, her increasing
role of the land in
remove from
it,
and the
dark undertones that suggest a post-natural condition.
It
was chosen even before learned
I
passionate appreciation of W.
G. Sebald's
same name.
in
Sebald, grounded
of Sulzer's
book
of the
the destruction and
upheavals of the twentieth century,
is
noted for
his
empted.
I
my
responsibility as an essayist
around
not
in
+ around, 2005 (detail)
exhibition
photo Luc Demers
pre-
also appreciate the willingness of the
lenders to share their collections, and acknowledge
the Elizabeth
Frost
B. G.
Endowment
Hamlin Fund and the Stevens
Fund,
continues to make so
grams
whose
many
possible.
darkly poetic, deeply personal treks through a tor-
tured landscape, where experience, imagination, and
was
KATY KLINE DIRECTOR
L.
far-sighted generosity
of the
Museum's
pro-
statement
artist's
I
draw because
it's
the most immediate, transparent,
unrehearsed, and flexible
thought and sensation
marks, they might
way know
of to
I
visible.
become
a
When
riff
I
make
and then,
larger
like a note,
atmosphere
news
line
of the piece.
on a
Drawing, for me,
is
an unfiltered response
to daily living.
I
don't erase - not as a
matter of principle, but because
event, a
from a book or a
song, a pattern
into the
begin making
vast array of visual and other
experiences: a
becomes absorbed
it
it is
a non-issue, like the
impossibility of trying to
in
re-
moment. may work
nature, or a long-ago
live
memory
over parts of the drawing
that surfaces
through the act of
drawing
itself.
later
need to accumulate a
mark-making— a weaving
enter
My
I
to record time but a
A mark makes a moment
my
where look
of the past into the
present— is not so much a way
to be in time
bal-
concept of a mistake doesn't
history with an emerging work.
way
on to address more
ance and movement, but the
provides the time and
I
I
formal concerns such as
An
expanse of large paper
space
a
visible
mind. Drawing
for
tive to that instant of grace
becomes so expansive that
I
freedom and
when
the
Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis (sea urchin), 2002
illustration in Life
not
in
exhibition
Between the Tides
a place
am
recep-
moment
lose myself
with the drawing.
is
and breathe
The single greatest influence on
my
recent work
is
images, primarily of battles and soldiers, are nearly
the drawing
the writing of W. G. Sebald, particularly the prose
lost in a flood of detail, as
poem
absorb the blows of violence. Like maps and aerial
After Nature. The
manner
which he evokes
in
the workings of memory, both personal and historical, is
the
what
I
aspire to do visually.
way memory
time, and,
in
I
am
fractures, distorts,
particular,
interested
and collapses
how modern memory
in
imagery, the viewpoint of spillway
images
to
personal experience.
is
itself
could
from above, and
areas of great detail inhabit the page alongside areas
of emptiness.
is
overwhelmed by fragments that are impossible
ground
in
if
The space
shift, dissolve,
is
unsettling, vertiginous;
and reorganize themselves
the fluid and unstable nature of memory.
drawings to
feel like portals into
new yet
I
like
want my
strangely
familiar worlds.
After Nature,
in turn, led
me
to Albrecht Altdorfer's
violent, beautiful, sixteenth-century painting The
Battle of Alexander,
of questions
how
which fueled
in
me
spillway feels
a succession
about our relationship to the land and
ning.
It is
the
like a
first
it is
also a begin-
drawing of a three-to-four year
project— an oversized atlas comprising twenty-four
new drawings
the land functions as an archive of memory.
culmination but
that will have the opposite function of
conventional maps. Instead of helping you find your
sp/Z/way (2006)
is
the largest and most intricate of
recent drawings, a vast imagined landscape
of a proliferation of mostly tiny
paper. Fragments of historical
my
way, these pages
made up
marks of ink on
and contemporary
ANDREA SULZER
will
help you get
lost.
.
andrea sulzer: after nature
All
.
.
.
my work is
small marks
parasitical
shapes intertwine, and, growing into and out of one another surge as a demonic swarm.
SebM, After Nature,
(W. G-
in a large area. (Andrea Sulzer)
Michael Hamburger,
trans,.
New
York,
Random House,
2002,
.
p. 26)
Although Sebald was discussing the sixteenth-cen-
to determine,
tury painter Grunewald, he might well have been
scrutiny of an infinitely microbial world and, at the
describing the work of Andrea Sulzer,
same
in
which a
dizzying profusion of individual marks construct
one expanse can suggest a close-up
time, a bird's-eye view of the details of an
immense
vastness.
strangely accumulating, teeming forms. Sulzer's
works on paper are consistently grounded
ing for landscape's rich
powers
in
a
feel-
of suggestion, but
The amount
of visual incident in Sulzer's
and prints requires, and repays, slow and deliberate
drawn
they only very rarely reference the specifics.
looking. The viewer
Starting from early works that exquisitely rendered
of savoring myriad endlessly inventive
observed details of the natural world, to more
marks— pods,
recent evocations of huge, mysterious vistas, she
blisters.
lays
on her varied and
scale
vivid
marks obsessively. The
and point of view of these works
above and beyond, 2005 photo: Luc Demers
is
often hard
drawings
is
the sheer pleasure
and different
cracks, spikes, needles, hairs,
spongy
Viewer expectations can suddenly be upend-
ed when, within an abstract
bles
in for
upon the apparition
field
of a
expanse, one stum-
human
figure.
Sulzer's
somewhat unconventional educational
background
is
reflected
in
wrack
a highly individual and
nuanced approach that draws upon interests
in lan-
The
(1999) also
was done from
direct observation.
describes a particular variety of seaweed
title
common
along the Maine coastline. The dense tan-
guage, history, literature, and the natural world. Few
gle
other young artists have earned degrees
creating an all-over urgency that will characterize
in
French,
fills
English as a foreign language, and forestry sciences,
much
as well as fine arts.
Sulzer's
every inch of the slightly irregular paper,
of the
work that
work
will
of small parts, a
follows.
A constant
in
be an unremitting accumulation
generous profusion of details and
She has illustrated several books on marine and con-
an accretion of gestures whose obsessive crowding
servation biology; these elegant natural history
often hints at dark undercurrents.
drawings predict her
later
independent
art in their
the term wrack
is
It is
telling that
also used to describe debris from
combination of a sober accuracy of information and
a maritime disaster, the disorderly residue of mis-
an exquisite delicacy of touch and
fortune.
visible
is
the rich variety of
hatching— that she
will
detail.
Already
marks— stippling and
continue to exploit
in
her
subsequent work.
In
2002 Sulzer began what would become a series
of
more than seventy graphite drawings that arose
not from the observation of an external subject but
The earliest pieces
in this
exhibition were
done from
rather from investigating the private recesses of
direct observation. Drypoints of a nest or of the
memory and imagination These hedge drawings
abject corpse of a bird demonstrate a masterful
are small and,
exploitation of the scratched line to convey the
able fragility of the
woven twigs
flattened feathers.
Though Sulzer
fri-
or the pathos of
faithfully renders
done
of the artist's inner
intricate,
daily,
life.
dense tangles,
became
a kind of diary
Once again she has
lines laid
down
rapidly
that pulsate with barely contained vitality.
locked within these spaces, whose
built
One
the factual details, her bold organization of forms
feels
on the open sheet, daringly isolating a small subject
ambiguous. Are they immense and overpowering or
off-center on a large,
compositional
risks
empty
field,
forecasts later
and extravagances.
scale
is
intimate and benign? Plant forms seem both reas-
hedge
3,
2002
photo Melville McLean
Pull-out centerfold reveals poster of sp///way
spiHway 2006
(details)
photos Luc Demers
garden, 2001
photo Dennis Griggs
had been reading Sebald's After
suringly familiar and strangely threatening, under-
and
scoring the nature of a hedge as both barrier and
Nature and was also powerfully struck by a reproduc-
protection.
tion of The Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529), a paint-
history. Sulzer
ing by the
The
artist's
ing
in
childhood memories of playing and hid-
hedges
Germany produced the
in
darkly dap-
embroiled
escape path at the right and by the jolting interruption of an actual
two sheets
seam that unapologetically joins
in battle.
Their tangled lances and stan-
dards create a scene of overall tumult and conflict
that
Soon
is
echoed
Sulzer's
in
the churning turmoil of the heavens.
own drawings would
quietly interject
dramatic tidbits of twentieth-century military
of paper.
imagery taken from photographs of World War
Beginning with the hedge and garden drawings,
even an occasional image of
there are often striking similarities between Sulzer's
her
marks and those of van Gogh's
of
Aries.
A
late
detail seen in isolation
to either artist; both rely
strokes that
roil
is
drawings from
own understanding
herself,
on a variety of small urgent
with furious energy, acting at
its
some
churning
pulse and rhythms.
from two years of study
Scotland, a radical element entered her work. An
ambitious drawing, point
me
in
the direction home,
at fifteen feet too tall to be installed in this exhibition,
thus enacting
human experience and memory.
A spillway
is
a device used to control the release of
flows from a dam. Sulzer's monumental work of the
same name appears
to capture an
containment before they erupt
in
and
of the land as a potent carrier
immense
scape of pockmarked forms at their
Sulzer's return in 2004
II,
difficult to assign
remove from nature while affirming
Upon
is
Altdorfer depicts thousands of minute figures
blacks and the white of untouched paper. A vague
offset by the suggestion of an
who
scape painting. From a dramatic overhead perspective,
is
artist AlbrechtAltdorfer,
often considered the father of independent land-
pled garden, which exploits the bold contrasts of rich
claustrophobia
German
introduced imagery directly referencing war
is
last
land-
moment
off the page.
of
Drama
supplied by the sheer size of the work, an appar-
ently overhead point of view, and a disorienting
absence of balance. Despite an
random chaos, slow and
initial
impression of
careful looking provides a
mracK 1999 photo Luc Demers
way
ancient document,
Within the exuberant variety of abstract
in.
whorls and hatching, the viewer
is
taken aback to
past history and
itself
eroded, bearing hints of
loss.
discern an occasional recumbent form, splayed
book, or group of armed
men
(paradoxically seen
Her most recent woodblocks involve the radical
both from above and below). The sharp lines of their
introduction of rich layers of color. There are hints of
bayonets multiply frighteningly;
her telltale overhead view and rings of small figures
in
other areas of
the drawing clusters of sharp pointed lines suggest
piling up.
dark and hidden forms and forces. Having found one
from her drawings, they nonetheless participate
figure,
way's
one
own
number
starts to read
history,
of inked
them everywhere,
encompassing an unimaginable
marks and moments, stands
the innumerable actions of
the larger landscape of
Like
human
human
beings
history and
in
in
for
and on
memory.
an explorer, Sulzer continues to chart new
tories, driven
It is
spill-
terri-
by her restless investigative impulses.
not surprising, given her ongoing interest
marks made upon the
land, that she has
in
made some
works loosely describable as "maps." Though adhering to a
map
format, they provide no actual topo-
graphical indications, but their scarred, layered sur-
Although these objects look very different
the artist's ongoing
tion
commitment
in
to slow accumula-
and measured accretion. The "sprouting perpet-
uation and proliferation" (After Nature,
which Sebald drew attention
in
p.
27) to
Grunewald could
equally well describe Sulzer's approach.
Sulzer's
drawings involve a dramatic tension among
forms and forces; the viewer
is
swept up
in
the
uncertainty about whether the active fields of marks
are coalescing toward resolution or disintegrating
into chaos. Her
marks, and
in
work marks time by the making
of
the process creates an archived
archaeology of her own (and the viewer's) moments.
faces nonetheless suggest an impossibly fragile.
KATY KLINE
biographical statement
I
was born and
raised on
Long
where my parents immigrated
child of the suburbs
(when
I
in
my
spent most of
Levittown),
in
Germany. Our family divided
Karlsruhe, the city of
vineyard
in
my
York,
the late 1950s. A
was born our family
in
I
New
Island,
lived
childhood summers
its
time between
parents' origin, and a family
the Palatinate region where the extended
family would gather. This vineyard, a place where the
kids ran free
all
dreams and when
rience of
two
I'm drawing.
lands,
I
made
think
in
my
day-
early expe-
families
sum, two ways
had a defining influence on me.
things from an early age, but
late bloomer. At
began
I
two languages, two
(the nuclear, the extended), in
of being,
me
day, often returns to
age
37, as
I
my hunger
to eclipse everything else,
I
left
am
to
a
make images
my job as a
lab-
oratory instructor at Bowdoin College and
moved my work
Brunswick. Up until that time,
in
if
into a studio in Fort
I
had been
po/nt
not
in
me /n
t/ie
living a life that
it
Andross
was
as
wasn't quite mine.
d/rect/on home, 2003-2004 (detail) photo: Luc
exhibition
Demers
Awards/Residencies
Education
Master
2002- 200A
Glasgow School
1989-1991
University of Maine, Orono Master of Science (Forest
of Art:
of Fine Arts
Biology)
1984-1985
Columbia University, Teachers College: Master
1982-1984
New
1979-1981
Smith College (Fine Arts major, transferred to NYU
of Arts
2007
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
2006
Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant Commission
2003
Horace W. Goldsmith Scholarship Glasgow School of Art
2001
Bingham Fellowship: Skowhegan School
of Painting
and
Sculpture
York University: Bachelor of Arts (French)
in
Ucross Foundation Residency
1982)
2000, 1999
Vermont Studio Center Residency
Solo/Two-Person Exhibitions
2007
Works on paper, ICON Contemporary
Art,
Brunswick,
Maine (with Duncan Hewitt)
spillway,
McCoy
Gallery,
2007-present
Non-resident studio instructor, Maine College
2006-present
Freelance drawing instructor
1991- 2003
Freelance illustrator
1993-1998
Bowdoin
Merrimack College, North
of Art, Portland,
Andover, Massachusetts
2006
Work Experience
Free Hand, Center for Maine Contemporary Art,
Rockport, Maine
Serving Time, Maine State House, Augusta, Maine
2005
Worlds Apart: Drawings, ICON Contemporary
and Drawings, ICON Contemporary
Prints
2000
Recent Drawings, ICON Contemporary
Art,
1993-1997
Freelance
1993 (summer)
The Nature Conservancy,
field ecologist
field ecologist,
Brunswick, Maine
Art,
Brunswick, Maine
1992- 1993 and
Art,
College, Brunswick, Maine: laboratory
instructor (Ecology, Plant Physiology)
Brunswick, Maine
2002
Maine
Brunswick,
University of Maine, Orono, Maine instructor
(English as a
1987-1991
Second Language)
Maine (with Ann Minich)
From the
Thicket, Center for
Maine Contemporary
Art,
and Animals of the Northeast Gardiner, Maine:
Group Exhibitions
2008
Gangbusters, Plane Space,
An Other
New
York,
New
York
World, Center for Maine Contemporary Art,
Hunter, Malcolm
Spring Selections 2008, The Drawing Center,
New
New
York,
York
Grayscale, Plane Space,
2006
Skowhegan
New
at 60, Center for
York,
New
Art,
Rockport, Maine
From Here
2004
International Exchange Exhibition, Hunter College,
New
Sowaka
Gallery, Kyoto,
Japan
York
Degree Show, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland
Contemporary Drawing, Central Academy of Fine
Arts, Beijing,
and
L., Jr.,
ed.
Maintaining Biodiversity
X'ian
2007
Accepted
in
in
Forest Ecosystems
illustrations.)
The Drawing Center's Slide Registry and
Viewing Program,
Maine Percent
for Art
Middle School
BraveArt, Atrium Gallery, London, England
Contemporary
Hunter, Malcolm
Other
2005
to There,
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
)
Maine Contemporary
ArtFutures Scotland, Millenium Hotel, Glasgow, Scotland
York,
New Jersey:
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. (About 45
Print Project, Center for
New
and James Gibbs. Fundamentals of Conservation
York
Maine Contemporary
Rockport, Maine
Art,
L.
Biology {Second Edition) Hoboken,
(Wiley-Blackwell), 2002, (About 140 illustrations
2007
Maine
Tilbury House, 2003.
(About 150 illustrations
Rockport, Maine
M.F.A.
Selected Published Illustrations
Watling, Les, et aL Susan White, ed. Life Between the Tides: Marine Plants
Rockport, Maine
Academy
of Art, X'lan,
Prints from the Bruce
Colby College, Waterville, Maine
Brown
China
Collection,
New
York,
New York
Medomak
Commission:
Valley
works
in
the exhibition
illustrated
* nest
1,
hedge
1999
20 X 23
3/4
inches
Courtesy of Mark Wethli
* wrack, 1999
2002
at sea, 2005
*
cont6 crayon on paper
12 X 9 inches
12 X 9 inches
Courtesy of Dorothea Sulzer
Courtesy of Roy Kozupsky
hedge
3,
2002
* spillway,
2006
ink on paper
graphite on newsprint
20 X 24 inches
12 X 9 inches
101 X 101 inches
Courtesy of Riley Brewster
Courtesy of Pia Young
Collection of the artist
fallen,
hedge
2001
V4X
6,
ink on paper
2002
what's
graphite on newsprint
drypoint on paper
color
left,
2006
woodcut on mulberry paper
12 X 9 inches
27 X 48 inches
Collection of the artist
Courtesy of Dorothea Sulzer
Collection of the artist
garden, 2001
hedge
heap, 2008
20
*
1,
graphite on newsprint
drypoint on paper
ink
23 V2 inches
8,
2002
woodcut
graphite on newsprint
on paper
47 V2 X 46 inches
12 X 9 inches
16 X 16 inches
Collection of the artist
Courtesy of Pia Young
Collection of the artist
above and beyond, 2005
ring around, 2008
*
Edenkoben, 2001
ink
on paper
ink
woodcut
on paper
47 V2 X 46
43 X 45 inches
16 X 16 inches
Courtesy of Caroline Sulzer
Courtesy of Jane Brox
Collection of the artist
This brochure
of the
accompanies an exhibition
same name
Museum
August
of Art
27,
at the
Bowdoin College
from June 17 through
Andrea
Sulzer: After
by the Stevens
L.
Nature
Frost
is
supported
Endowment Fund
On the cover
spillway, 2006 (detail)
photo Luc Demers
and the Elizabeth B G Hamlin Fund
Opposite nest
2008
Copyright
®
2008
Bowdom
1,
1999
College
photo; Dennis Griggs
Design by Wilcox Design
www wilcoxinc com
Printing by Kirkwood Printing
Wilmington,
MA