{"id":48373,"date":"2019-11-23T16:03:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T22:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=48373"},"modified":"2019-12-06T12:23:08","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T18:23:08","slug":"you-are-of-the-land-sam-walker-and-danielle-susi-at-bountiful-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/you-are-of-the-land-sam-walker-and-danielle-susi-at-bountiful-davis\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are Of The Land: Sam Walker and Danielle Susi at Bountiful Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sam Walker, “Alone Time”<\/p><\/div>\n

Going out into the big world: that\u2019s Sam Walker\u2019s paintings in this exhibit called SOIL SAND SURFACE.<\/h4>\n

Danielle Susi, the fiber artist whose work appears like crafted landmasses between Walker\u2019s large paintings, tells us with her embroideries that all our life continues due to continents, continents which hold us up above the sea.<\/h4>\n
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Danielle Susi, “Magis Terra”<\/p><\/div>\n

Walker, in paintings titled \u201cPlace to Place\u201d (a tiny tightrope walker, walking between two cliffs), \u201cWhere Nobody Else Exists\u201d (one swimmer churning through water), \u201cRed Forest\u201d (flagrantly red-orange maples bigger, much<\/em> bigger than giants, two tiny figures below) gives us our dilemma: in a world so big, how do we stay brave? And our answer: by facing hugeness, by doing brave things.<\/h4>\n

In \u201cAlone Time,\u201d one canoeist is alone atop the giant lake. Walker doesn\u2019t make this easy for us: he refuses to fill foreground with trees or shrubs or sides of houses to make us feel the very small person who has chosen to go out alone in the canoe is nestled, contained, made safe by other enclosing and side or foreground objects.<\/h4>\n

In Walker\u2019s paintings are big, pleasing expanses of keeping-true-to-color: there\u2019s barely a variation in the serge blue or the teal or the tan or the black of large expanses of land; these color chunks are as humble and effective and pleasing as big colored wooden puzzle pieces are for children.<\/h4>\n
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Sam Walker, “Red Forest”<\/p><\/div>\n

All the better, of course, to show off small figures: small figures engulfed by nature, but proving they can make their way through \u201cthe urgency of the natural world\u201d (the curator\u2019s statement for this show). In \u201cRed Forest\u201d two little figures walk beneath a tree-line of giant maples; you might be very sure the person leading the way can do so because her shoes are the precise burning red-orange of the enormous trees behind her. In color language, you\u2019re hearing the promises of fairy tales: she\u2019s wearing shoes the maples gave her; she was meant to be here and to lead. Those huge trees \u2014 they are on our side, her side.<\/h4>\n

Are Sam Walker\u2019s paintings, in this way, like sports therapists, encouraging one to visualize how to successfully maneuver against an opponent? Or, are they one artist facing the troubling and joyful and necessary reminder to one\u2019s self that, as artist, they are always alone? Or, like Hemingway\u2019s The Old Man and the Sea,<\/em> is it the urgent story of man versus nature?<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n
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Sam Walker, “Place to Place”<\/p><\/div>\n

Our hands, however small, conduct courage. Look at the cupping, somewhat ferocious hands of Walker\u2019s one large figure, a female swimmer (\u201cWhere Nobody Else Exists\u201d): one hand\u2019s up, surging for forward traction in the water; one\u2019s down, getting ready to wheel itself back up through the froth of white bubbles created by the speeding swimmer. Our hands and arms are paddles of our body\u2019s canoe. Look over to the tiny tightrope walker between cliffs in \u201cPlace to Place\u201d \u2014 one arm\u2019s thrown up, that hand, too, sculpting, challenging the air. Other hand waits its turn, its turn to balance and lead.<\/h4>\n

Persevere, practice, say these paintings: then comes strength and grace.<\/h4>\n

Look to Susi\u2019s embroideries \u2014 on muslin, small in scale \u2014 between Walker\u2019s painting and you see she\u2019s given us a way to look straight down at land. It\u2019s land-grant; she\u2019s continental. There\u2019s the fat twist of trees in \u201cLimus Terra\u201d and \u201cMagis Terra.\u201d Dark greens and sages and lichen greens abound; there is even preserved moss in some of the pieces, and glass beads in \u201cMagis Terra\u201d gleam like bluish fish eggs, an ethereal caviar among twisted threads and wool, a treasure glimmer of stream or lake.<\/h4>\n
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Danielle Susi, “Limus Terra”<\/p><\/div>\n

In other, flatter, pieces (like \u201cPratum\u201d and \u201cTriticum\u201d and \u201cAnguis\u201d), the flat-profile sheen of Danielle Susi\u2019s embroidery thread predominates. Sometimes they create fluted edges almost like edges of shells, or like bird wing or fish fins. If \u201cAnguis\u201d is symbolic of landmass, it\u2019s an island like a coiled snake, patterned with zigzag repeating shapes and lines like those in\/on American Indian pottery pieces.<\/h4>\n

Walker the painter\u2019s canvases hold men and women in indistinct knitted caps and swimming caps and hoodies and swimming suits; their attire distant and plainly colored. And Danielle Susi\u2019s work on plain soft muslin also make you think of clothes. Wool and cotton and moss which spring from field and forest, surrounding us with privacy and protection, giving us reassurance, comfort and courage wherever we go. You are of the land, <\/em>our clothes remind us; and the land\u2019s with you.<\/em><\/h4>\n
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Danielle Susi, “Anguis”<\/p><\/div>\n

Danielle Susi & Sam Walker: SOIL SAND SURFACE<\/em>, Bountiful\/Davis Art Center<\/a>, through Dec. 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going out into the big world: that\u2019s Sam Walker\u2019s paintings in this exhibit called SOIL SAND SURFACE. Danielle Susi, the fiber artist whose work appears like crafted landmasses between Walker\u2019s large paintings, tells us with her embroideries that all our life continues due to continents, continents which hold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":48374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[3127,3569],"class_list":["post-48373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-danielle-susi","tag-sam-walker"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/place_to_place-sam_walker.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 05:25:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48383,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48373\/revisions\/48383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}