Steven L. Anderson
Betsy Cain
Steven L. Anderson is an exhibiting artist and co-director of Day & Night Projects—an artist-run gallery in Atlanta that he helped initiate in 2016. He has received the 2019 Denis Diderot [A-i-R] Grant for a summer residency at Chateau d’Orquevaux in Orquevaux, France, and a 2018–19 Artist Project Grant from the Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and was a 2018 Fulton County Fine Art Acquisition Program finalist. Anderson was part of the first annual TAR Project Therapeutic Artist Residency in 2016–17. He has been a studio artist at the Atlanta Contemporary (2013–16), a 2015 Hambidge Center Distinguished Fellow, and a 2014–15 WonderRoot Walthall Artist Fellow. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States. Artist’s Statement Steven L. Anderson’s work concerns the nature of power and the power of nature. The world of trees and plants is an endless source of meaning that can be applied to our human systems by simply imagining our world from their perspectives. Works in the Tree Rings series are made by following a simple, repetitive process of growing. Paper is torn into concentric rings and reassembled, then scratched and sanded. Starting in the center, the artist draws circles with markers and pens, expanding as the rings build and bring the form into existence. They squeak, skip, and dry out, depositing ink on the paper’s surface or bleeding below. Where do our own activities, lifespans, and histories fit into the recordings made by sawed-off trees? These drawings are at once a violent death, a time machine, a hypnotist’s tool, an energy vortex.
Betsy Cain is a painter who has maintained an active independent studio practice in Savannah, Georgia for thirty-eight years. She was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and grew up in Fairfield, Alabama, the steel mill city near Birmingham. She received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees of fine arts from the University of Alabama. After receiving her degrees, she worked in both Alabama and Georgia’s artist-in-schools programs, working with students from all grade levels and abilities. Cain’s work includes paintings, works on paper, and cut-outs, influenced by the salt marshes, tidal creeks, and barrier islands surrounding her home. Her work has been shown in museums, galleries, artists’ installations, and curated invitational exhibitions at venues including the Roswell Museum and Art Center, New Mexico; the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta; Laney Contemporary Gallery, Savannah; Florida Mining Gallery, Jacksonville; and Robert Steele Gallery in New York City. Artist’s Statement Working on paper has been a continuing method of discovery in my artistic practice for over 50 years. The “shred” drawings have their own evolution, initiated in part by a mistake. Mistakes open pathways. In this instance, the “mistake path” led to disrupting the paper with a razor blade. In the beginning, the shreds were meant to evoke the floating salt marsh grasses on the surface of tidal waters, a seasonal offering when the grasses die back and become sustenance for many organisms. Subsequently, I did a series celebrating the explosive beauty of the indigenous long leaf pine or “fire tree,” using the carving of shreds to suggest pine needles. Currently, the shreds cover suggested figures and forest landscapes with cuts and slices; a scarring of sorts, but a deliberate scarring, like tattoos. The scarring is the drawing.
Shredhead #4
302 Years
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