86 Bends of the Kaw, Lisa Grossman

Artwork Overview

born 1967
86 Bends of the Kaw, 2004
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: wood panel; rice paste; silk tissue; relief-roll woodcut; mulberry paper; chine collé; PVA glue
Dimensions:
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): each panel 203.2 x 33.02 cm
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 80 x 16 in
Weight (Weight): each panel 15 lbs
Credit line: Museum purchase: Gift of Elizabeth Schultz and Peter T. Bohan Art Acquisition Fund
Accession number: 2004.0050.a-f
Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label: "Conversation XIV: Water,” Mar-2013, Kate Meyer and Kris Ercums This work ambitiously documents Grossman’s experience flying east to west over the Kaw River. She mounted a series of small woodcuts that she made from the trip onto wood panels, conveying the bends and shapes of the Kaw River valley as witnessed during a sunset. Exhibition Label: "Site Specifics,” Aug-2010, Susan Earle This work ambitiously documents the 86 bends in the Kansas River, or Kaw, as seen at sunset from a low-flying airplane. The artist flew from east to west as darkness almost fell. She later mounted the series of small woodcuts that she made from the trip onto wood panels, conveying the bends and shapes of the Kaw River valley. Based in Lawrence, Kansas, Lisa Grossman grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Kansas City in 1988 to work as an illustrator for Hallmark Cards, Inc. She shifted her focus to plein air, or open air, painting when she discovered the tallgrass prairies of east-central Kansas, leaving Hallmark in 1995 to pursue painting full-time. She received a BFA from the University of Kansas in 1999. “I see my work as a sustained meditation on open spaces, as a celebration of their sublime beauty, as an expression of my deep concern for their survival. Painting en plein air is a necessity for me. It allows me to work in a very direct manner, drawing energy from my surroundings and translating it into paint.” -Lisa Grossman Exhibition Label: "A Kansas Arts Sampler," Oct-2004, Kate Meyer Grossman’s ambitious documentation of this Kansas waterway is based on the artist’s experience flying from east to west along the river. The colors increase in warmth and darkness from left to right and top to bottom as the sun set on her flight while ghost images from the roller used to ink Grossman’s woodcut blocks suggest captured motion and lingering memory. Exhibition Label: "Summer in the Central Court," Jun-2006, Kate Meyer Unlike corn and oats, which are harvested in the fall, farmers harvest wheat during May and June. Ripened wheat forms a golden ocean of grain we imitate with waving arms. The rippling stalks soon become spiky chaff as combines alter the appearance of fields like paintbrushes pulled across a vast canvas. The planting process is one of change - equipment has become more mechanized, crops are rotated to balance the soil. Thunderheads on the skyline transform our landscape radically during the timeframe of a single afternoon. Summer storms threaten not only the harvesting process but also may damage crops. The rains that may strip and flatten ripe wheat are essential earlier in the season. Spring rains swell our streams and rivers as flash flood warnings hover in the margins of television sets. The Kaw River that runs through much of northeast Kansas reflects the changes of a single season as water levels vary through drought and flood and the relentless motion of water meanders eastward, ultimately emptying into the Missouri River at Kansas City. Our bridges and levies attempt to contain rivers, although the floods of 1951 and 1993 demonstrate nature’s ability to chart its own path.

Resources

Audio

Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 87 Nov-2006, David Cateforis, Associate Professor of Art History I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Lisa Grossman’s evocative paintings of rural northeastern Kansas and the Flint Hills capture sublime skies above vast stretches of dark earth. She also paints the Kaw, or Kansas River, which flows eastward from Junction City to Kansas City. In a 2004 series, Grossman traded her usual ground level viewpoint for a bird’s eye view of the river. From an airplane flying low over the course of the Kaw near sunset, she shot video images and digital stills of the river. These served as the basis of paintings and watercolors and an ambitious mixed media work, the Spencer’s “86 Bends of the Kaw”, which presents multiple features of the river on six tall vertical panels. Grossman based these images on her aerial photographs, which she translated into woodcuts, printed onto silk tissue, and mounted to Japanese mulberry paper. The stacked images mimic Grossman’s frame-by-frame experience of the river as she photographed it, while their ghostly quality reminds us of the Kaw’s fragility. “If you love something,” says Grossman, “you want to take care of it,” and she hopes that her art will encourage conservation of the river. From the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.

Documents