The Silber ArT GAlleryGoucher College Athenaeum

Wildland

Susan Main Joshua Wade Smith Peter Stern Polly Townsend

Ryan Browning Travis Childers Frank Day Elizabeth Hoeckel Savanna Leigh

We simply need that wild

country available to us, even

if we never do more than

drive to its edge and look in.

—Wallace Stegner

1

Wildland, a satellite exhibition in conjunction with

Artscape, features the work of nine local artists:

Ryan Browning, Travis Childers, Frank Day, Elizabeth

Hoeckel, Savanna Leigh, Susan Main, Joshua Smith,

Peter Stern, and Polly Townsend. While viewing

submissions from the Baltimore Office of Promotion

& the Arts and looking for an overall arching

theme, I was struck by the large number of local

artists whose work seemed to be derived from the

landscape. Landscape has been an artistic subject

for centuries—Goucher College has even mounted a

few shows around the theme. However, in this case

I noticed a narrower or sub-theme of wilderness

and outdoor recreation—Images of camper trailers

nestled in the woods, wild animals, mountaineers,

and people gathered together as if looking out

over a scenic view mingled with more traditional

nature imagery. Thus, each artist in Wildland draws

inspiration from the great outdoors, inviting the

viewer to explore the wilderness through their eyes

and experiences.

Laura Amussen, curator

2

Ryan Browning grew up in suburban Houston playing

video games and reading fantasy and science fiction nov-

els. In fact, he can’t remember doing much else as a teen.

Actually, on second thought, it would be wrong to omit the

days on end playing pen-and-paper role-playing games

like Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy card games like

Magic the Gathering. His work as an artist is fueled by

these escapist and fantastic unrealities, and he explores

memories of virtual worlds and landscapes in an effort to

reconcile both real and virtual space as one. The resulting

objects and images inhabit a mythology of visual and sub-

lime virtual experience, and often suggest a kind of hybrid

existence between worlds, where the crafted object takes

on the form of the virtual memory.

Image Guardian, 2008

oak strips

9’ x 3’ x 3.5’

4

Recently, Travis Childers

has been working on a

body of work relating to

man’s relationship with

nature. He thinks about

how people use manmade

materials to create their

own nature, whether it takes

the form of a habitat or

some action they do every

day, such as landscaping.

People tear down forests

only to replant trees using

their own manicured sense

of style. Natural materials,

some taking centuries to

form, become disposable

tools, used up and tossed

away without a second

thought. For Brickscapes,

Childers was thinking about

nature retaking the world

from man, as it often does in

abandoned buildings or ar-

eas. We use bricks to build

houses and walls to sec-

tion ourselves off not only

from nature, but also from

each other. The landscapes

on the bricks represent all

the different regions man

has “conquered.” Looking

at the world around us, we

see very few places where

people haven’t left a mark.

Brickscapes, 2011

mixed media on bricks, installation

dimensions variable

Laredo 2, 2010

archival pigment print

44” x 66”

7

Frank Hallam Day is interested in culture, history, and

humanity’s footprint on the natural world. His images of

RVs lodged deeply in impenetrable night jungles suggest a

humanity isolated from a dark, unpredictable, and ominous

nature. The powerful sense of displacement and alienation

from the natural world conveys a relationship with nature

where something has gone very wrong. The occupants of

these pods are sealed off from the natural world looming

just beyond.

Nothing is more American than an RV, but these pictures

use RVs to suggest we aren’t headed anywhere good.

In these images, the RVs are the night song of a dark

American dream, lovely and glowing, yet somehow toxic

and chilling.

The images are intended to look staged, almost dreamlike,

halfway between fantasy and reality, but they are not—Day

is out on the road in Florida every night, week after week,

with lights and tripod looking for appropriate RVs. He then

uses incandescent lighting and (as the star streaks will

show) time exposures to make the image. The occupants

never know he’s there; their blinds are drawn and their

televisions are on.

8

Through collage and mixed-media work,

Beth Hoeckel conjures a vividly beautiful

and mysterious world beyond our wildest

imaginations. Much of her work is figurative

and landscape-oriented and recalls surreal

dreamscapes and whimsical hallucinations.

Her choice not to reveal the subjects’ faces

or expressions compels the viewer to imag-

ine what could be happening in the scene

and to what consequence. By combining

vintage-inspired, found imagery; futuristic

scenery; and mesmerizing colors, she is

able to produce an evocative narrative that

lures the viewer in and entices them to

imagine what secrets might be concealed.

Cream, 2011

collage on paper

6.5” x 8.5”

Tectonic, 2011

film still

8.5” x 11”

11

Savanna Leigh combines

film, sculpture, and painting

to describe placelessness:

the emotional connection to

a place that no longer exists.

Leigh’s moving landscapes

traverse time and space,

constantly shifting and

rearranging. These trans-

formations create amor-

phous landscapes that are

informed by geologic plate

tectonics—the actual move-

ment of the Earth’s crust. By

merging scientific geology

with emotional geography,

Leigh creates abstract

ghosts of places past.

12

By exploring landscape,

light, and language, Susan

Main examines the wildness

of attention and perception

through video, drawing, and

painting. Gathering seconds

of light, opening the cam-

era to one yard of ground,

pairing breath with a view of

the horizon, her work draws

simple boundaries in time

and space as a way to orient

under the elusive, shifting

conditions of everyday natu-

ral phenomena. Presenting

a landscape that fluctuates

between containment and

release, focus and dissolu-

tion, attachment and sacri-

fice, Main offers an everyday

wilderness teetering on the

threshold of perception.

Grass, Sky, (Fly), 2008

single-channel color video still

15

Indebted to the spirit of Emerson’s self-

reliant man, Joshua Wade Smith designs

purpose-built sculpture kits—makeshift

ladders, suitcases, and backpacks—that

walk the line between tool and prop, and

provide him with a poetic means for his

endurance-based performances. Employ-

ing these kits he can build a camp, climb

a mountain, raze it, and rebuild it anew at

the next turnabout. Smith’s work seeks to

bridge the gap between the gallery and

the outdoors in a Sisyphean search for a

Contemporary Sublime.

Over the Mountain, 2009

mixed media, (image of performance)

dimensions variable

16

Understanding the photographs of Peter

Stern requires one to understand the pro-

cess he undergoes to obtain these images.

Many aerial photographers hire a pilot and

sit in the passenger seat, unencumbered by

the task of flying while they shoot. Stern is

the pilot and the photographer—an extraor-

dinary and often challenging combination.

Day-long flying missions at low altitudes uti-

lize all of his concentration and skills to stay

safe and produce the work. His dramatic

images are the result of first being drawn

to complex landforms that he initially views

from his ultralight airplane, and seeing the

potential abstract beauty of land forms such

as coal ridges, strip mines, and marshland

laid with irrigation line.

Stern uses a Nikon D300 camera with a

Zeiss 50 mm lens that he hand-holds, and

he prints his images in his home studio.

The photographs are unaltered in color and

composition; what the mind records is the

juxtaposition of earth, extracted, altered,

and restored, yet caught serenely for a mo-

ment from above.

Marsh Spirit Figure, 2010

inkjet digital aerial photograph

20” x 26”

19

Driven by the desire to find her ultimate landscape, Polly

Townsend has traveled to some of the most remote and

inaccessible regions in the world. Her paintings pres-

ent the world beyond our experience—vast, untouched,

desolate, and uninhabitable. Townsend’s work is devel-

oped mainly from memory, but also from photos, drawings,

and paintings made during long, unplanned, and usually

solo journeys through remote high plateau and mountain

regions. Townsend’s paintings are a study of her physical

and emotional response to these vast, uninhabited vistas,

which variously inspire, overwhelm, and intimidate. Often,

Townsend will literally paint across the canvas from one

side to the other to physically represent her journey, or

use compositional devices to highlight her own routes and

memories of the space. Returning to her studio to com-

plete the work in an urban environment provides a space

through which the memories and sensory experiences

can be filtered and gives the work a more multilayered,

abstract perspective.

Reformed, 2011

oil on canvas

66” x 70”

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DiReCTionS

Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus.

GaLLeRy HouRS

11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday – Sunday.410.337.6477

The Silber Art Gallery is free and open to the public.

The Silber Art Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the NEA, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences.

www.goucher.edu/silbergallery

The Silber ArT GAlleryGoucher College Athenaeum

June 28 – august 7, 2011

ARTISTS’ RECEPTIOn

Saturday, July 9, 2011, 3-5 p.m.

Susan MainJoshua Wade SmithPeter SternPolly Townsend

Ryan BrowningTravis ChildersFrank DayElizabeth HoeckelSavanna Leigh

Wildland