At Altitude: Four Views of the Southern Sierra
Foreword
From the depths of the sea to the dizzying heights of the Sierra Nevada, the Wildling Art Museum covers exceptional wilderness art wherever it appears. At Altitude: Four Views of the Southern Sierra was an exhibition concept suggested to us by Laurie Hoyle of the Sequoia Parks Foundation and brought to fruition by curator Scott McClaine.
The Sequoia Parks Foundation, a non-profit organization much like the Yosemite Fund, raises money to support Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Laurie is very involved with the Foundation’s Arts Initiative, which includes an Artists in the Backcountry or ABC program funded by the James Irvine Foundation, a frontcountry artists retreat, and opportunities for artists to show their work in the parks.
Scott McClaine, a professional photographer who works for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and who is passionate about the Southern Sierra, was recruited as the curator. He has done a masterful job of rounding up and winnowing the images for this exhibition as well as writing the text for this monograph. The Museum is indebted to them both, as well as to the artists Jeff Jones, Tom Killion, Zenaida Mott, and Matthew Rangel, for the loan of their exciting work.
We also want to thank Karen Sinsheimer, Curator of Photography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, for her encouragement and friend Susan Bower for her sponsorship of the exhibition.
~ Elizabeth Knowles
Executive Director
“Although mountains belong to the nation, mountains belong to people that love them...” ~Dogen
Introduction
The settlement of our American West is, historically speaking, not very distant in our rear view mirror, particularly in regard to the natural environment. Less than two hundred years have passed between the time when Native Americans occupied this region and today’s California settlement of almost 40 million people. Through it all, the Sierra Nevada high country remains relatively undisturbed. As the geologic backbone of our State, it continues to shape the storm fronts from the Pacific Ocean, while capturing, storing, filtering, and ultimately releasing the water that nourishes our foothill ranches and farms, our Central Valley orchards and fields, and our burgeoning inland cities and towns. The Sierra still represents “the wild west” for most of us, the west that preceded our settlement here.
Despite dramatic changes in the landscape elsewhere throughout the State, the Sierra has retained its exquisite, primordial beauty with high altitude lakes and meadows and jagged peaks 14,000 feet high. The range’s rugged, imposing beauty can still seem a world away; although in terms of distance and time, these mountains are remarkably close, essentially “in the backyard” of many of California’s citizens. Viewed from the vantage point of human endeavor, the Sierra itself is constant; it is our relationship to the Sierra that is jagged and inconsistent. Ours is a thematic exploration, based more on European ideals of conquest and dominance than on the ancient reverence of past inhabitants.
Fortunately, these mountains have eluded attempts to “conquer” them, because their relative inaccessibility, the steep inclines, treacherous crossings, and fierce storms provide almost insurmountable hurtles to those who would settle there. Shortly after the turn of the last century, my own great-grandfather applied for, and was given by the United States Government, a grant to “drive” a motorized vehicle across the southern section of the Sierra—not for the purpose of cutting and confirming a road as a connection to the eastern side—but purely for the value of the ideal that it was possible. It took him three years of digging, tree cutting, and dragging with horses; abandoning the project each winter at the first snow, returning in the spring to restart the automobile, and push forward again, if only a few feet at a time. Looking back at this now quaint, somewhat silly, feat of government-promoted conquest, I am aware of how we have attempted to tame the West. While once we saw imposing peaks of the Sierra dominating our view, obscuring us, and trivializing our efforts, we have now managed, from that same viewpoint, to obscure them from our horizon.
Although I have no statistical reference, no trailhead log book, no head count to point to, I could guess that, if I took a survey of the population of California, I would find a very small percentage of that population who had actually explored the heights of those Sierra Nevada mountains.
For the many who have not experienced the Southern Sierra, the four artists in this exhibition, Jeff Jones, Tom Killion, Zenaida Mott, and Matthew Rangel, give us that gift through their paintings, prints, photographs, and drawings. Those of us who have experienced the high country will understand their dedication to seeking out the vistas of the Southern Sierra that few of us see, translating them skillfully through their brushes, paints, carved wood, inks, cameras, pencils, pens, and plates – allowing us to consider anew our relationship to and appreciation for nature.
As much as these artists share a devotion to the Sierra Nevada, as individual artists, each sees and responds to the subject differently.
Jeff Jones’ photography gives us a powerfully felt sense of place, as though we were standing in the midst of the scene, sensing the quiet, feeling the cold, noting the change of light. Tom Killion, through his Japanese-style prints, evokes the reverence for nature of a culture much more ancient than our own, imbuing even the most dramatic scene with a sense of our own fragility. Zenaida Mott interprets the natural environment through the painterly traditions of impromptu landscape painting, as practiced by European painter-explorers sending back views of the American West. Matthew Rangel’s drawings challenge us by contrasting the type of notation used in the field notes of early explorers with modern map maker’s, whose note taking connotes boundaries, territories, land ownership, and other man-made intellectual constructs. I invite you to spend time with all of these works, so that you might find, at altitude, your own view of this special place.
~ Scott McClaine
Curator
Jeff Jones
Jeff Jones, Moon and Mt. Whitney, 1993
Jeff Jones’ keen understanding of the natural world, coupled with decades of experience in remote wilderness areas, form the foundation for his exceptional landscape photography. His works – from sweeping panoramic vistas, to intimate, abstract studies of nature’s elemental forms – reveal his respect for and endless fascination with the landscape that quietly surrounds us. Through his camera lens and the use of digital technologies, Jones brings us his carefully crafted, exquisite vision of subtlety and splendor, ranging from stark views of rugged peaks to lush sweeping vistas filled with color and life. His technique, which involves equipment designed by Jones himself, enables him to produce exceedingly detailed large-scale scenes that invoke in the viewer an overwhelming sense of place.
Jones’ dedication to his outdoor photography began more than two decades ago. Since that time, he has created significant bodies of work depicting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and California’s Sierra Nevada. With a primary focus on wilderness areas and shared public lands, he has also photographed a number of national parks, including Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon. His traveling exhibitions include A Wilderness Worth Saving, Future of Sequoias: Sustaining Parklands in the 21st Century, and Intimate Thoughts: Impressions of the Natural World. An active environmentalist, Jones follows the American tradition of raising public awareness through art.
Tom Killion
Tom Killion was born and raised in Mill Valley, California, on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais. The rugged scenery of Marin County and Northern California inspired him from an early age to create landscape prints using linoleum and wood, strongly influenced by the traditional Japanese Ukiyo-ë style of Hokusai and Hiroshige. He studied History at UC Santa Cruz, where he was introduced to fine book printing by William Everson and Jack Stauffacher. In 1975, he produced his first illustrated book on the University of California Santa Cruz’s Cowell Press.
After traveling extensively in Europe and Africa, Killion returned to Santa Cruz in 1977 and founded Quail Press, where he published his second book, Fortress Marin. In 1978, Killion began graduate studies in African History at Stanford University, completing a doctorate on Ethiopia in 1985. He also continued to make woodcut prints of the California landscape, producing his large-format The Coast of California in 1979. During the early 1980s, Killion divided his time between history research in Europe and Africa and the development of his multi-color woodcut prints.
During 1987-1988, Killion worked as administrator of a medical relief program at a camp for Ethiopian refugees in Sudan and traveled with nationalist rebels in war-torn Eritrea. In 1990, after many years of work, Killion produced Walls: A Journey Across Three Continents -- an extensively illustrated travel book combining his African experiences with woodcut printmaking. Killion then devoted four years to teaching African History at Bowdoin College, Maine, and in 1994 was a Fulbright scholar at Asmara University in Eritrea.
In 1995, Killion returned to California and taught in the Humanities Department at San Francisco State University, while he worked on a new handprinted, large-format book, The High Sierra of California, in collaboration with Pulitzer prize-winning poet Gary Snyder. The new book was published in a trade edition in 2002 and received a number of awards. Killion currently has his studio on Inverness Ridge, near Point Reyes, California. He has just completed a trade edition book with Gary Snyder entitled Tamalpais Walking.
Zenaida Mott
Zenaida Mott grew up hiking and backpacking with her family, and, early in her life, she began drawing her inspired views of nature. Mott credits her family with instilling in her a deep respect for land and wildlife and a strong sense of responsibility to preserve wild places.
Known as Zee Zee to her friends, Mott first tried her hand at oil painting while in Africa, teaching at a girls’ college in Nigeria. There she met Maria Sanchez, the wife of the Mexican consul and a former student of David Alfaro Siquieros, who befriended Mott and became her art instructor. At this point, her passion for painting joined with her passion for travel. As she herself points out, “How can you not feel anything but fully alive when you are doing both?”
Mott is known for her sensitivity in capturing the light falling across her landscapes and her economy of brushwork. In the summers Mott and her family spend time in the Sierra mountains that they love. They own a rustic cabin on a small lake at 8,000 feet, and after the snowmelt the cabin becomes her summer studio. She is a founding member of the Baywood Artists, an artists group dedicated to the preservation of open space and the restoration of habitats through exhibitions and sales of fine art. Mott is also an Artist Member of the California Art Club, a Signature Member of the National Academy of Professional Plein Air Painters (NAPPAP), member of the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA), a Signature Artist Member of the American Impressionist Society, and Oil Painters of America.
Matthew Rangel
Matthew Rangel comes from the small town of Dinuba in California’s San Joaquin Valley. After graduating from high school, Rangel attended the College of the Sequoias. He later transferred to California State University, Long Beach, where he earned a B.F.A. in drawing, painting, and printmaking. He recently completed his M.F.A. at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Rangel explains, “My grandparents are from Texas and Mexico. They moved to California’s great Central Valley, where they lived in the margins by working the fields. They had little time to gaze at the horizon to the east. I’ve only recently realized that, because they paved the way for a better life, I’m able to not only gaze at the horizon from the very fields they worked, but also to journey into the enchantment of the Sierra Nevada.”
Rangel incorporates a wide array of linear elements, transcribed from historic and contemporary maps, into his work. In doing so, he considers personal relationships to landscapes as shaped by both natural and human-made developments, such as waterways, trails, roads, boundaries, and grids. Rangel describes his pieces as contemporary extensions of a continuing tradition of land-based artistic practice. Rangel pursues his own firsthand experiences in the wild (hiking, backpacking, and rock climbing), while also looking to 19th century American source material.
As Rangel notes, this source material comes from an unprecedented number of self-proclaimed artists/explorers who accompanied early geologic surveys. Conducted throughout remote regions of the American West, these expeditions resulted in various depictions of real places. It is linear elements from the products of these historic surveys that inform and appear in Rangel’s work.
Explains Rangel, “The use of line within my art imposes a framework of measurement and comprehension, signifying man’s control over vast areas of land. Within this context, the aspect of line becomes both fundamental and conceptual within my drawing process.” By examining how the land affects us physically, mentally, and emotionally, and by showing our attempts to “control” the natural world, Rangel’s compositional explorations serve to communicate the vitality and necessity of deep and lasting relationships between people and the land.
Checklist
All work is from the collection of each artist.
Jeff Jones:
Winter Willow, 2002
Sequoia National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Fall’s Last Stand, 2006
Kings Canyon National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Colby Inflow, 2006
Kings Canyon National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Fall Fog, 2006
Sequoia National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Spring Morning, Kings River, 2005
Cedar Grove, Kings Canyon National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Dancing Sun and Mist, 2006
Kings Canyon National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Moon and Mt. Whitney, 1993
Sequoia National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Storm Clearing at Sunset, 2002
Kings Canyon National Park
Archival Inkjet Print
Tom Killion:
Foxtail Pine World Triptych:
left - Big Arroyo, Foxtail Pines
center - Whitney Crest From Kaweah Basin
right - Sawtooth Crest From Chagoopa Creek
Woodcut, Ink On Paper
East Pinnacles Creek
John Muir Wilderness
Woodcut, Ink On Paper
Paiute Pass From Carolina’s Valley
John Muir Wilderness
Woodcut, Ink On Paper
Chalfant Basin and Royce Peaks
John Muir Wilderness
Woodcut, Ink On Paper
Evolution Valley
Kings Canyon National Park
Woodcut, Ink On Paper
Kearsarge Pinnacles
Kings Canyon National Park
Woodcut, Ink On Paper
Zenaida Mott:
Sierra Spring
Oil On Canvas
High Country Bliss
Oil On Linen Board
Sierra Jewel
Oil On Linen Board
Evening Magic
Oil On Linen board
Sierra Visitors
Oil On Canvas
Dancing Waters
Oil On Linen Board
Untitled
Oil On Canvas
Untitled
Oil On Canvas
Matthew Rangel:
Across the Sierra
Lithograph, 2008
Detour
Lithograph and digital, 2008
Traverse of Mt. McAdie
Lithograph
Due East from Eagle Scout Pass,
The Black Kaweah
Lithograph, 2008
Due East through Elliot Ranch
Lithograph, 2008
Due East from Moro Rock
Lithograph, 2008
Due East over Stokes Mountain
Lithograph, 2008
Due East over Shadequarter Mountain
Lithograph. 2008