Selected Exhibition Views

All This Land  exhibition

Environmental Installation 

Chicago Academy of Sciences/​ Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum​

October 27, 2018 - February 3, 2019

For over three decades, Andrew Young has created art that presents nature as a reference point for human aspirations, worldly and spiritual. His earlier tempera works grappled with our natural desire for ethereal and transcendent experience, yet constrained by such temporal matters as history and mortality. The next phase in Young’s work more clearly reflected his background in science. Carefully constructed collages explored how we observe and catalog our surroundings, defining us through the models and language we use. A new direction here goes further into the physical aspect of art making; specific sources of pigments, their collection and processing, carry as much meaning as any imagery found or invented. The material itself grounds us to a living or geological occurrence, and to a place.
 
Today, we are at an inflection point in our relationship to the landscape. No matter if one’s perception of nature is romantic, aesthetic, or purely utilitarian, dramatic change is underway. All This Land is a paradoxical title for a show that uses a little humor, theater, abstraction, and a ton of recovered objects to address a more somber awareness that Earth’s fragile systems and resources, despite some current beliefs and tendencies, are not inexhaustible.
                                          All This Land exhibition, Notebaert Museum ground-floor view with entry signage.
    The River (Migrations) – water-tumbled “glacial erratic” stones encrusted with toxic mining sludge (Colorado): 6 x 26 x 14 in.
The Beginnings of All Things are Small – hand-ground watercolor and raw-mineral pigment rub on museum board: 15.5 x 15.5 in. 
                         Tales of Adventure – stacked hardbound fiction and biography books caked in 285-million-year-old,                                               fossiliferous ocean sediments (Kansas), Atlantic dogwinkle snails, and silver nail polish: 30 x 18 x 15 in.
                           I Own Nothing (Thoreau Practices His Autograph) – hand-drawn writing paper, antique wallpaper,
                                    quill-penned sepia ink, and fifty-seven and a half forged signatures: 15.25 x 11.25 in.
                      Harbingers – two pounds of bituminous coal fragments, industrial canary cages, and Chicago Academy
​                      of Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum bird specimens ORN-3385 and ORN-1172: 14 x 38 x 15 in.
                                               Forty Leaves and Droplets – hand-ground watercolor with an unknown
                                                            Czech artist’s diary text, on museum board: 20.5 x 14.5 in. 
          Cartoon Box Trap (Kill the Wabbit) – disassembled and reassembled cardboard shipping container, hand-printed wood                         grain on rice paper, found cryptobiotic soil pigment (Utah), ashwood stick, and raw jute twine: 10.5 x 18 x 8 in. 
Horizons (Boundaries) 1 – found pigments (from Colorado and Arizona) on incised and stained museum board:  22.25 x 22.25 in. 
    Horizons (Boundaries) 2 – found pigments (from Utah and Kansas) on incised and stained museum board: 22.25 x 22.25 in. 
                          Equivalents (or The Weight of Things) – two early-1970s, cast and kiln-fired fake “rocks” (for interior
​                               wall decoration), newly chiseled, filed, and repainted to appear nearly identical: 11 x 22 x 5 in.
Constellation 1 – coal dust, crushed freshwater mussel shells, zinc-white pigment, and gum arabic on museum board: 21 x 15 in.
Constellation 2 – coal dust, crushed freshwater mussel shells, zinc-white pigment, and gum arabic on museum board: 21 x 15 in.
                                    Work Clothes – decayed late-1800s coal-mining artifacts    (Braceville, Illinois), folded
                                    cotton shirt and pants soaked in burnt, oxidized shale overburden: 31 x 20.5 x 10 in.
                    Numbers, Near and Far 1- collage of hand-painted and abraded papers on museum board: 17.5 x 12.5 in.       
                    Numbers, Near and Far 2- collage of hand-painted and abraded papers on museum board: 17.5 x 12.5 in. 
                                  Ochre Stratum – mineral pigments (fossil strata of Utah) and found text (index of North
                                     American Carboniferous brachiopod literature) on museum board: 20.75 x 15.25 in. 
                                         Shadow Stratum (Solitude) – coal dust, soot, sepia and white ink on museum
                                              board (transcript from Thoreau’s Walden): 20.75 x 14.5 in. 
                                         A Stratum of Flint – lead oxide slurry and rust, with crushed freshwater mussel
                                               shells, and hand-painted papers on museum board: 20.5 x 17.25 in. 
Elixir – wine bottle and cork, gold-painted Atlantic barnacles, white ink, ocean sediments, and 30-weight engine oil: 13 x 4 x 4 in. 
Coal Drawing 1 – ground coal and freshwater mussel shells in gum arabic, zinc white, on soot-stained paper: 21.5 x 15.25 in.
Coal Drawing 2 – ground coal, rust, and freshwater mussel shells in gum arabic, zinc white, on soot-stained paper: 21.5 x 15.5 in.
Coal Drawing 3 – ground coal and freshwater mussel shells in gum arabic, zinc white, on soot-stained paper: 20.5 x 17.25 in.
                                               Actual Size - hand-painted papers with five-gallon bucket silhouette made
                                                    of pure cadmium orange pigment on museum board: 22.5 x 22.5 in. 
                   Blue – zinc-white gouache and hand-rubbed pigment on paper, mounted on museum board: 17.5 x 12.5 in. 
I put together the exhibition catalog to showcase all of the individual artworks, including their descriptions and accompanying wall text. This was a very content-driven project, so the art and writing pairings were more important than usual.