Humane Ecology, Eight Positions, 2023, installation view, The Clark Art Institute, Williams College, MA
(left) Photo: B.F. Sisk Dam and San Luis Pumping Generating Plant, Merced County, California, April 1, 1964. California Department of Water Resources. (right) Indian Cartography, poem by Deborah Miranda, compressed graphite applied directly to the wall.
Ignition Pattern 1: Density, 2023
Soot, bear grass, and handmade paper
74 X 48 X 2 inches
Ignition Pattern 2: Victory Over The Sun (for Malevich), 2023
Soot, bear grass seeds, and handmade paper
54 X 48 inches
Ignition Pattern 3: Memory of A Flood, 2023
Soot, bear grass, handmade paper, and cedar
40 X 83 X 20 inches
Humane Ecology, Eight Positions
Clark Art Institute, MA
Curated by Robert Weisenberger
Christine Howard Sandoval’s art narrates a history of the land. Her most recent drawings do this using water and fire, two elemental forces whose relative balance has defined the ecology of the artist’s homeland in dramatic terms. To create her drawings, Howard Sandoval mixes water and plant fiber to create a pulp in which she embeds bear grass, a material long used in Native basket weaving. The artist then selectively masks the paper and scorches it to create an image in soot that alludes to the controlled burns that Native peoples have long employed as part of their stewardship of the land.
Indeed, the wildfires that have devastated California in recent years are driven by climate change but exacerbated by a disregard for this Indigenous knowledge. At the Clark, one of Howard Sandoval’s carbonized drawings rests on a cedar stand on the floor. !e paper, with its geometric latticework, assumes topographic dimensionality when draped over the frame.
Catalogue Excerpt By Max Gruber