Katie St. Clair: Lay of the Land by Van Every/Smith Galleries

Katie St. Clair Lay of the Land

Lia Rose Newman Director/Curator

Each year, the Galleries organize an exhibition that highlights the work of one or more faculty members in the Art Department at the college. Such exhibitions allow us to honor the important work of one of our own — as researchers, artists, and educators, here on campus and as part of the wider, global art world.

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For her dedication to this exhibition, her work, and the mission of the Galleries and the Art Department, we extend heartfelt gratitude to Katie St. Clair. We are also thankful to Linda Weintraub for her thoughtful investi gation into St. Clair’s most recent bodies of work, an essay entitled Katie St. Clair’s Cosmic Dance Through Space and Time. As always, we are grateful to Davidson College for providing a space for inquiry, discussion, and presentation around creative endeavors.

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Encountering St. Clair’s explorations, I am reminded of the importance of slowing down and taking in nature. Studies have shown that even just looking at images of nature can actually lower one’s stress levels. St. Clair’s work, though abstract in many ways, transports me back to special moments spent in nature, places where I felt deeply connected with the land. As a curator with interest in supporting socially and politically engaged artists, I see St. Clair’s work as both a celebration of and connection to the natural environment, as well as a warning to viewers to rectify our negative impact on the Earth that sustains us.

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Introduction 4, 2022, natural and hand

To that end, it is with great pleasure that the Van Every/Smith Galleries at David son College present Lay of the Land featuring primarily new works by Katie St. Clair, Assistant Professor of Art. Much of the work on view was created over the past year, inspired by St. Clair’s immersive experiences in the natural landscape in remote parts of the United States, Canada, and Ireland.

“I want to let you know there is darkness around your cabin. The land is haunted by dark spirits and they are watching you.” Katie St. Clair received this ominous pronouncement during her month-long sojourn on Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the northern Pacifc coast of Canada. The artist chose this remote island, an eight-hour ferry ride from the mainland, to fulfll a longing “to engage with life in a way I hadn’t ever been able to. I wanted to be exposed to elements without romanticizing the hard work of living alone in an off-grid environment.”1

The woman who delivered this message was a Northern Cree healer. Her peo ple have inhabited the region for over 13,000 years, although their population plummeted after European contact in 1774. Ninety percent of the inhabitants succumbed to diseases — smallpox, typhoid, measles, syphilis — introduced by the colonizers, who also enslaved the natives. The woman never explained her warning. St. Clair fretted. What was the source of the “darkness”? Was it the tragic history? Was there a current threat? St. Clair explained, “I am not particularly fearful of night, but this woman’s state ment terrifed me. I asked myself, why did the woman’s pronouncement hit me so hard? My distress made me realize that encountering darkness must be important. I needed to come to terms with my own fears. It is hard work to see through those shadows and understand where they come from and why they are there.”

Katie St. Clair’s Cosmic Dance Through Space and Time Linda Weintraub

While on Haida Gwaii, in an effort to understand darkness and its relationship to the landscape, St. Clair gathered tangled strands of dark seaweed that had been washed up on shore by a storm. She introduced their powerful presence into a new set of paintings by arranging the strands on canvases over grounds of color that evoked an ocean sunset. She added crushed charcoal from her fre, doused the sur face with water, and then waited as all these forms of sea matter registered their powerful presence on the canvas. Through that process, she made a remarkable discovery. Characters appeared in the swirls of seaweed she had

Terraform, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 60 x 48 x 1.5 inches

1All quotes are based on a telephone interview with the artist, January 27, 2022.

6 laid upon her surfaces. Their presence did not resemble her own previous work. Instead, they resembled the Haida carvings, the movement of weather, and the natural forms she had observed on the island. It was as if she gained entry into the Haida world of darkness. She explained, “This series sent me on new trajec tory with my work. I began to recognize that darkness is related to lightness. It is embedded in nature.”

Soon after her return from Haida Gwaii, St. Clair relocated her inquiry into dark ness to Ballyvaughan, a small town on the west coast of Ireland where she was a visiting artist-in-residence at the Burren College of Art. The area is replete with evidence of its human history, from megalithic tombs and prehistoric burial mounds to Bronze Age forts and Medieval monasteries and castles. An equally compelling geologic history also persists. The region’s craggy limestone terrain is riddled with fssures that penetrate deep into the rocky landscape. These surface fractures seem to have penetrated the fssures of human consciousness too, giving rise to the imaginative adventure, heroism, romance, and magic that abounds in Celtic mythology, and the creative outpouring of artists who have been inspired by this powerful landscape. St. Clair and I discussed her current work while she was in Ireland. She answered my inquiries with ease and clarity. But her manner of speaking shifted into a higher gear when she shared accounts of nighttime walks in Ballyvaughan’s remarkable landscape. That is when her discourse became animated, her descriptions poetic, and her insights amplifed. St. Clair explained, “When I walk at night, I discover the poetry of darkness. My senses are heightened, as I rely on sounds and smells more than sight. I hear rustlings. The darkness protects understory animals from nocturnal predators. As I listen and walk, it is like the darkness is blanketing the landscape and holding me.” She then explained, “Complete darkness on a moon less night is less daunting than moonlight. Shadows have an eerie quality. They play tricks on the mind as it strains to make out the forms of moonlit silhouettes.” The artworks on view at the Van Every Gallery at Davidson College manifest St. Clair’s bold investigations of art’s potential to manifest a chance encounter with the native Cree woman in Haida Gwaii, as well as nighttime excursions in Ireland. These divergent experiences converged into a desire to visualize the role of darkness both in the Earth’s geology and in human consciousness. This exhibition reveals that this quest led her to invent a way to apply paint that recreates these material and mental encounters with darkness. In the series entitled Terra Plume, for example, her quest led her to abandon the spatial concern that has long occupied landscape painters who depict observable distant views by focusing on receding markers of space and the ubiquitous presence of the horizon. Such land scape paintings coincide with perceptions that anchor the viewer in physical space as it is experienced and observed.

— The second region of this earthly exploration into darkness probes the atmo spheric layers above the Earth’s horizon. These celestial layers are invisible and intangible. Nonetheless, they are precisely named by astronomers as the tropo-, strato-, meso-, thermo-, iono-, and exospheres. Each name designates a layer of atmosphere that encircles the globe.

The title Terra Plume encapsulates the duality of these invisible territories. The word terra simply refers to earth, but the word gains emblematic resonance when its etymology is considered. Terra derives from Tellus Mater, the powerful earth goddess who was worshipped by the Romans. The word plume, on the other hand, indicates rising smoke and curling clouds that occur in the atmosphere. As the title suggests, the paintings unite these divergent domains. The Terra Plume paintings are created by replicating the material existence of these imperceptible horizons above and below the Earth’s surface. St. Clair accomplished this by applying paint in a succession of layers. She initiated the process by pouring liquid pigments, many from natural sources, onto a canvas. Then she waited until the liquid evaporated and dried before she poured another layer, then another, and so on. Gradually, the strata accumulated. She manipulated the resulting surface, adding loose pigment and handmade paper, and sometimes subtracting by sanding. This manner of painting not only references the dark striations of physical matter underground but also the light striations of atmosphere above the surface of the Earth. This layering of imagery also recreates the dark, imperceptible, St. Clair’s temporary home on Haida Gwaii was in an off-grid cabin built by Richard and Haley collectedrecycled,withorganicstructureaConstructedFrances.withoutblueprint,thisspiralepitomizesthecreativeprocessitsuseofreclaimed,andbeachmaterials.

— One non-observable territory lies beneath the surface of the Earth. Because it is composed of layers, this dark region is referred to as “soil architecture.” Each layer is identifable by its specifc color and texture, a product of an under ground drama being performed by myriad soil organisms and mycelia interact ing, adapting, competing, and cooperating.

In contrast, St. Clair severs these connections and penetrates two unseen territories:

Photo: Shane Leyden.

8 overlapping horizons that coalesce in consciousness. St. Clair explained, “Clouds become mushrooms, strands of mycelia in black dirt become the lightning in the sky. The indelible worlds above and below meld into moments where contradic tions resolve.”

The Terra Plume paintings diverge from biological manners of perceiving that are evident in classical landscape art. This difference is embedded in the word landscape. Scape means wide view. Within this esteemed tradition, viewing consists of broad vistas composed of phenomena that are located on the Earth’s surface. St. Clair’s perspective, in contrast, presents an ecologically informed view that might be referred to as landplumb. Plumb refers to a vertical view. From this vantage, the surface shrinks to a mere point of contact between, beneath, and above. It becomes the mere point of contact that locates “beneath” and “above.” The dimensions of the regions St. Clair references are fathomless, the opposite of measurable vistas. Beyond developing a painting technique that references these unobserved earthly domains, St. Clair embodies their power and signifcance by inviting paint to transcend its status as a passive medium that she directs with a brush to create a representation. Paint serves as her collaborator. Its inherent properties propel the creative process. It puddles, soaks, and blends according to its physical structure. They are her partners in creating and composing the images. In this manner, St. Clair digresses from the perceptual conventions of painting and also from the reliance on gesture and brushstroke, the hallmarks of expressionist art. While the Terra Plume paintings materialize the mapping of space by reenacting the Earth’s spatial planes with colored liquids, they also embody the passage time. Each layer of paint, once it dries, becomes a record of the artwork’s accumulating history. Marking time is even more evident in the series entitled Wayside where progressive changes are not confned within the studio; they transpire while the artwork is being displayed, throughout the course of an exhibition. These sculptures embody dynamism by incorporating ice, a substance St. Clair mushroomsidentifyingwhileon a bog walk on Achill Island off the coast of Ireland.

The scavenged objects that St. Clair collects for the Wayside sculptures were either discarded or disregarded. As such, the marks of past use that they display convey additional observable markers of time. She notes, “Each one tells its own story.” Either by design or accident, the story of such cast-offs typically ends with their appearance in the Earth’s soils and waters. Those that are made of toxic sub stances become pollution. But those that are biodegradable undergo wholesome transitions into compost. These artworks are invitations to contemplate the role we each play in constructing these contrasting material fates. St. Clair commented, “I try not to prejudge. My job as an artist is to look for a momentary truth in the visual relationships I see, even if it is complicated to understand or challenging to accept. Trash tells a story. When we look at our trash with curiosity, we open our minds to possibilities, innovation, and solutions. I hope my honest encounters with the natural environment and its human waste counterpart opens up conversation: Who created it? What was it? Trash is, of course, a harmful pollutant, but it can be aesthetically beautiful. I want to help viewers see these materials in a new way.”

9 that makes change visible because of its vulnerability to temperature. These installations are formed out of the disparate objects the artist collects as she meanders in the woods and on city streets. She then arranges evidence of her chance encounters in half-globe containers that are flled with water and placed in a freezer. When they have frozen, St. Clair joins two halves to create a sphere that is then hung above a canvas that lies on the gallery foor. From that moment on, the ambient temperature drives the creative process. It dictates how quickly the ice melts, how the drips fall onto the canvas, when the objects embedded in the ice loosen and fall onto the canvas, how these objects are altered when they fall; and when the process comes to a halt. In this manner, the passage of time becomes palpable. Besides observing the changes, visitors hear the dripping of the ice as it liquifes. These sounds are powerful markers of time, like the ticking of a clock. Silence only prevails once time and temperature have completed the transformation of the frozen suspended sculptures into a reclining relief. It is signifcant that the experience of time that Wayside offers to viewers unfolds gradually and unpredictably according to determinants that are not artistic, nor even human. They are atmospheric. Experiencing the slow and steady pace of transformations that occur in response to environmental conditions has become rare wherever machines and electronic technologies set the pace of lived experi ence. Turbo power and supersonic speeds set the velocity of contemporary life. St. Clair’s suspended ice sculptures require viewers to synchronize their observa tions with the melting sculptures. Like these artworks, they too are synchronized with a measure of time that marks the fow of natural cycles — sunsets, seasons, decomposition, evaporation, and so forth. As such, these artworks forge pathways of neglected experience. They unite viewers with the rhythms of their planetary home.

The Wayside installations are composed of refuse and pigment which are bound together in spheres of ice. Each frozen orb hangs above a canvas in a gallery, melting at different rates. Debris, water, and pigment fall onto the canvas, accumulating in pools that evaporate and result in an abstract composition, while some material stays suspended in the air as sculptural forms.

Perhaps this transformation was kindled by learning that the Cree healer was devoted to helping women empower themselves. She then realized that she had been offered a powerful, soul-searching opportunity. “The encounter forced me to ponder darkness and how it is perceived by different cultures. The Cree and Haida cultures are imbued with customs. The people endure extreme weather. They share a challenging history that has been rewritten by colonizers. My reaction to darkness originated from how my culture understands it. After the experience, I am now much more curious about darkness as something in all of us, embedded in the landscape and prevalent in our current time. On Haida Gwaii, I was experiencing darkness without electricity and limited daylight hours. I started seeing darkness in the tannic black rivers and hearing it in the account of local stories. Maybe darkness is not some thing that needs to be dispelled but looked at more closely. Perhaps it has its own validity.” Then she concluded with a personal observation that might beneft us all, whether or not we are artists, “It was my hope to explore the natural environment as it is now. And then to ask, how can I touch this reality through painting?”

The “new way” that St. Clair refers to can be summarized by noting that by layer ing paint and melting ice, she shifts the focus away from her personal inclinations, and directs it to the unmoderated interactions of substances with existing condi tions. In all these ways, these artworks are timely because they diverge from rapid, controlled, technologized interactions, and tune into the gradual events that are not driven by humans. The artworks on display pose a perplexing challenge to art historians who must decide if St. Clair’s abstractions belong to the long tradition of landscape art or if they signal a new trajectory in the ongoing evolution of art. The latter may seem warranted when consideration is given to the fact that these depictions of landscape exclude the assumption that discernible objects exist in a dimensional space. In contrast, St. Clair interprets landscape from an ecological perspective that is unrelated to human experience of spatial attributes as they appear to sight. St. Clair states that she favors the “cosmic dance” that is being performed among cells, fungi, bacteria, viruses. moss, mycelia, water droplets, soil particles, and gases. This terrestrial dance began when life frst stirred on this planet and is ongoing. Yet much of this dance is either unobservable or unobserved. With a quiet but insistent grace, St. Clair brings these dark regions into the light.

Katie St. Clair In Process

Experiencing the landscape in the moment is important to me, no matter how exposed, fearful, or awe-inspiring. I take notes on aspects of sensations, color, and form. I collect samples and do research to learn about the interconnectivity of ecosystems and other environmental factors. I do my best to understand the working components of what I have experienced intellectually but fnd that I often forget or can’t retain the complexity of the moment. In the studio, I paint subconsciously, trusting what I have investigated will come through in the process. I fnd the paintings often feel familiar, and later, when I walk in the landscape, I often see an example of what I painted, but this time with a new understanding of its importance. It gives me context for my paintings and a way to process the changes in our current environment. In this way, my painting is a remembrance of a time that I spent immersed in the landscape.

Collybia, 2020, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, loose pigment and powdered charcoal, aerosol, gesso, and stained rice paper on canvas, 64 x 96 x 1.5 inches

Terra Plume

far left: Documentation of the water surface and refections of the tree canopy in a river tributary in Carran, Ireland — the resulting images undulate between recognition and abstraction.

far left: Algae growing on a retreating cliff above Bishops Quarter, Ireland.

left: Thermo-silt, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 54 x 48 x 1.5 inches

14 Lentinellus, 2020, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, loose pigment and powdered charcoal, aerosol, gesso, and stained rice paper on canvas, 96 x 64 x 1.5 inches

Terra-lume, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 48 x 72 x 1.5 inches

Gloaming, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5 inches

16 Under-land, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5 inches

17 Terrene, 2021, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 64 x 56 x 1.5 inches

18 Thermo-silt, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 54 x 48 x 1.5 inches

19 Tidelines Tidelines 2, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 48 x 40 x 1.5 inches

right, bottom: Sedimental remains, 2021, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 30 x 30 x 1.5 inches

20 Tidelines 1, 2022, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 48 x 40 x 1.5 inches

right, top: Lay of the land, 2021, Acrylic, natural and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 30 x 30 x 1.5 inches

22 Penumbra: Studies of Darkness, 2021, Acrylic, hand ground charcoal and gesso on paper mounted on aluminum sign board, 6 x 4.5 x 0.125 inches

Penumbra: Studies of Darkness

Linda Weintraub is a curator, educator, artist, and author of several popular books about contemporary art. She has earned her reputation by making the outposts of vanguard art accessible to broad audiences. She focuses on the bold and original strategies being developed by eco artists to tackle current environmental crises. Her own studio practice provides one of many examples. Weintraub’s books exploring contem porary art and ecology include WHAT’s NEXT? Eco Materialism & Contemporary Art (2018), To LIFE! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (2012), and a series of textlets that include EcoCentric Topics: Pioneering Themes for Eco-Art; CycleLogical Art: Recycling Matters for Eco-Art; and EnvironMentalities: Twenty-two Approaches to Eco-Art. Her forthcoming book is titled Who Do You Eat? Weintraub earned an MFA from Rutgers University. She was the Henry Luce Profes sor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College, taught at the University of Hartford, and was previously the director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College, where she curated more than sixty exhibitions and published over twenty catalogues. Weintraub applies environmental concerns to her personal life by managing a sustainable homestead in Upstate New York where she practices permaculture.

Katie St. Clair earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan–Stamps School of Art and Design. After graduation, she was a Teaching Fellow at the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughn, Ireland, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Albion College in Michigan. Currently, St. Clair holds the position of Assistant Professor of Art at Davidson College. Her work has been exhibited at the Burren College of Art, Ireland; Museum of Contem porary Art, Detroit, MI; Zhou B. Art Center, Chicago, IL; Charles Danforth Gallery, University of Maine, Augusta; Dalton Gallery, Rock Hill, SC; Greenhill Center for NC Arts, Greensboro, NC; and Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY. She has received numerous awards and honors, including Best in Show, Annual Alumni Exhibition, University of Michigan, and the 2019 Young Affliates of the Mint Choice Award for her work in Coined in the South, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC. St. Clair has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Amherst, VA; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Penland School of Crafts, Penland, NC; and the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Ontonagon, MI.

Biographies

This publication was produced in conjunction with Katie St. Clair: Lay of the Land, presented in the Van Every Gallery at Davidson College, August 29–October 2, 2022. Publication ©2022 Van Every/Smith Galleries Davidson College 315 North Main Street Davidson, North Carolina Alldavidsoncollegeartgalleries.org28035rightsreserved.Printedinthe United States. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-890573-32-4

Director/Curator: Lia Rose Newman Gallery & Collection Coordinator: Marisa J. Pascucci

Essayist: Linda Weintraub Designer: Graham McKinney front cover: Over-land, detail, 2022, Acrylic, natural, and synthetic dye, hand ground powdered charcoal, aerosol and gesso on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5 inches inside front cover: Dark powdery residue in dendritic patterns found under tree bark near St. Clair’s cabin on Haida Gwaii, which inspired her to use powdered charcoal to capture natural forms. back cover: Close-up photograph of a shallow intertidal creek on the Sagan River with late-stage sand ribbons over shell pavement. details of nature photos by the artist, in circular design elements: pages 1, 13, and 24: 1: Refections on water, Ireland. 2: Algae on retreating cliff, Ireland. 3: Sagan River intertidal sand ribbons, Haida Gwaii. 4: Limb and sphagnum moss in bog, Haida Gwaii. 5: Seaweed, quartz, and sandstone cover shoreline, Ireland. pages 3, 19, and inside back cover: 6: Salt crust on cedar driftwood, Haida Gwaii. 7: Whelk (snail) egg sack, Ireland. 8: Collected plastic and marine rope, Ireland. 9: Sand covered rocks on the Rine Peninsula, Ireland. 10: River refections over shards of discarded pottery, Ireland. pages 5 and 23: 11: Dendritic patterns under tree bark, Haida Gwaii. 12: Close-up of a Wayside installation canvas, Ireland. 13: Refections of the tree canopy on water, Ireland. 14: Derrygimlagh Bog rock covered in lichen, Ireland. 15: Seaweed foating on water, Ireland.