Pat Pickett: A Record of Wind Conditions

From September 21 through October 30, 2006, The Drawing Room is pleased to present "Pat Pickett: A Record of Wind Conditions", an exhibition of ink on paper abstractions, each a distinct record of physiological conditions realized during the artist’s journey cross-country in July 2006. Pickett began her investigation of the marks made by pens clamped to branches swaying in the wind several years ago in Bridgehampton, New York where she lived for many years before moving to Los Angeles in 2001. Her automatic drawing technique evolved from her search for “a way to make pictures that directly expressed underlying forces – physics, bio-mechanics.” Consciously eschewing her academic training, the artist gravitated instead to a form of imagemaking that embraces chance, “looking for something very specific in the face of unknowns.”

Pickett set out from California in a car equipped with a GPS and the tools of her portable studio: wind maps, an anemometer, an array of paper up to 72 inches wide, foam core to support the drawings, a bag full of pens, clamps to attach the pens to tree branches, and a tripod to hold the drawing surface in place. With years of experience honing her process, she anticipates the markings that specific trees will generate in particular wind conditions. The drawings on view–- created with the aid of a McNab Cypress in Marin County, California, a Sugar Maple near Northfield, Vermont, a Black Spruce at Mount Washington, New Hampshire and so on–-reveal a range of gestural compositions, from lacey, open linear arrangements to intricate, nest-like webs, and broad serpentine gestures produced by the sway of long pendulous branches. In this body of work, a temporal record of a journey in search of some of the windiest sites in the country, Pickett sought out trees subject to extreme habitats, such as a gnarled old Black Spruce on Mount Washington. Only a foot off the ground, reaching out along the rocky mountaintop to avoid being whipped down by the wind, the tree creates a delicate and poignant drawing.