City life never suited me either.
That's what drew me to Pacific Grove Art Center last week.
The space that just opened in the Center now features prints by Linda Zupcic, an artist from the Sierra foothills, for a collection titled, “City Life Never Suited Me.”
In the exhibition, I immediately see why.
Only vague hints of human activity enter into Zupcic’s prints.
There’s a lighthouse, a fence, and a bridge. I’m sure Zupcic drove to most of these locations in a car and on a road, of course, but one immediately sees that this artist moves away from people as she chases her creativity.
I feel privileged to catch a visit to the PG Art center when no one else was walks around the exhibition. The quiet of the studio, along with the natural light of day, complements the prints.
Yet, I feel something off in her depictions of nature. When I ask Zupcic about it, she says she really admires the Impressionist movement, but her prints take on a much more dramatic, specific tone than Monet’s mushy water lilies or Renoir’s soft, swirling portraits.
She compares her process to theirs, saying, “What I’m really looking at is the play of light and shadow, not unlike the Impressionists.”
The result, though, is vastly distinct, even novel.
Zupcic has mastered the ability to use pure line and solid shapes to depict the chaos of colorful, natural scenes. These sharp black and white depictions of nature may be Zupcic's “impressions,” but they are not like the Impressionists. Her prints are almost harsh. They are reconstructions. Or perhaps decompositions. The viewer decides.
In “View from Glacier Point,” Zupcic uses a combination of strong, sure lines and different sized round blotches to describe the image. Zupcic’s sky, which uses pure line, helps the viewer interpret other uses of line as smooth surface, like the face of Half Dome or sides of distant mountains.
Thick blotches describe less smooth, round parts of domes, and collections of triangles pushed together describe foliage.
Nature breaks into parts that can each be described by basic shapes, and she collects those basic shapes into different areas of her print, creating a complex natural scene.
It’s amazing that a viewer can still feel the effects of recession and distance, although the elements of Zupcic’s print are so basic at their core.
“Dillon Beach” is another of my favorites. Here again, Zupcic uses only white lines on black background to describe a detailed natural scene.
The clouds and waves move in almost exactly the same manner, only the waves are thicker, allowing the swirling white line to take over the back background in most places.
But a viewer completely understands the two similar entities as distinct clouds and waves, and the horizontal lines in between as mountains. Zupcic easily describes ridges, cliffs, and jutting rocks using just one tool—line.
And it reflects Zupcic’s process exactly, when she described it to me. She always works with her hands, sketching with white colored pencil on black background.
She says, “I am drawing the places that I carve away.”
She scans her initial sketch into a computer and then prints it out on a paper that she furbishes onto a block. Then she carves away from the block the spaces she wants to leave white on the final print.
She describes the process as detail-oriented, especially as she nears her finishing touches.
“In the beginning it can be a quick process, but I slow down quite a bit as I get close to printing," she says. "The sketch and the block become entirely different things, and at this point I look at the block and see what it’s telling me to do.”
Zupcic describes her process as “compulsive.” She finds herself creating these prints in an almost obsessive manner, drawing from inspiration in her backyard and in the natural world that surrounds her every day.
“I love having space around me,” she says about her home in the Sierra foothills. “Not just scenery but also the animals that pass through.”
The prints are small, and in order to fully immerse oneself in her work, a viewer ends up having an intimate encounter with the block print. One will be inches from the print, alone with it, when one truly sees and appreciates the details.
It’s like being alone in nature.
And yet, the prints feel so removed from soft breezes and meadows of Yosemite. The prints are not soft. They are not even realistic. They are harsh impressions.
Almost like someone using the language of mass production to describe nature. Someone using the visual language of city art, to describe the places outside the city.
Zupcic reaches for natural beauty, and achieves instead a uniquely rational, decomposed view of the open spaces and details that lie beyond the city centers.
The relationship between the city and nature, and her relationship with both, just like mine, may be a little more complicated than we wish.
The Pacific Grove Art Center is open to visitors Wed-Sat 12pm-5pm, Sun 1pm-4pm, closed Mon-Tue.
Linda Zupcic's exhibition, "City Life Never Suited Me," will close August 27th.
Website links: Linda Zupcic's artist website, Pacific Grove Art Center website
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Monterey, Naturally, is a summer blog series by editorial intern Kristen Stipanov. Blog installments will appear about once a week and focus on the natural world as a jumping-off point for thoughts on a summer spent in Monterey County. Stipanov is a self-declared heavyweight backpacking guru who spends a lot of time with her digital camera, Lucy, and her film camera, Vesper. Her photo adventures and other contributions are made possible by the Rebele Internship Program, a Stanford University Department of Communications-sponsored program designed to both encourage aspiring journalists and strengthen community journalism, by enabling undergrads to gain real world experience at exceptional media outlets across the country.