Opening June 1: The Clearest Way

Groveland Gallery is pleased to present a unique exhibition of paintings, prints and sculpture by three Minnesota artists. Inspired by elements of the landscape—both natural and urban—artists Abigail Woods Anderson, Clara Ueland and Cynthia Rae Levine seek to cultivate a balance between representation and abstraction. Their title is based on an excerpt from John Muir’s journals: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forested wilderness.” This passage echoes the shared artistic approach of Anderson, Ueland, and Levine: their art-making is defined by their conceptual processes, resulting in a compatibility of subject matter, light-filled and detailed compositions, and simple yet sophisticated forms.

Science continues to inform Abigail Woods Anderson’s paintings and prints. Her most recent collection of compositions are inspired by the effects of Dutch elm disease on the shady boulevard near her childhood home in Minneapolis. Using tracings from the stumps leftover from the impact of the disease, as well as scientific knowledge of the boring beetle that carries the fungus from tree to tree, Anderson has created paintings that pay homage to the trees, while drawing attention to their demise. The artist explains: these paintings are embellished with patterns derived from the elm tree’s natural history and Dutch elm’s disease’s pathology. I scavenged and restyled images from botanical illustrations and figures, entomology databases, micrographs, and art history, especially landscape paintings and studies by John Constable. The resulting works are a meditation on ecology, contemplating the entangled fates of four organisms: the elm tree, the beetle, the fungus, and humans.