Christine Bourdette | Mantle/Dismantle | Viewing Room

Christine Bourdette, Fumarole 1, 2021, graphite, water-soluble colored pencil and pastel on paper, 35.25 x 27.5" framed
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Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present new wall sculptures, drawings and prints by Christine Bourdette that are inspired by geologic phenomena. Through dynamic material investigations Bourdette mimics the shapes, colors and tactile details of the accretions and erosions of earth’s metamorphosis.

Christine Bourdette, Escarpment 2, 2022, vellum, pigment-based inks, PVA glue, matte board, wood, 12 x 56.5 x 10"
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She considers concepts of geologic time analogous to our relatively shorter time experience as human beings. In this body of work Bourdette says she was interested in the “cumulative distortions, upheavals, erratic shifting of terrain, which seem to me metaphors for this era we inhabit, for a sense of surviving instability through instability. These reflections of and on land mirror a precarious, tactile world, as well as a capacity for transformation and resilience.”

Christine Bourdette, Aerate, 2021, pigment-based ink and graphite on paper, 46.5 x 36.5" framed
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Christine Bourdette, Passage, 1, 2022, photogravure etching on Gampi backed with soft ground etching on kozo, 24.5 x 21" framed, Edition of 4
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Christine Bourdette, Passage, 2, 2022, photogravure etching on Gampi backed with soft ground etching on kozo, 24.5 x 21" framed, Edition of 4
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Christine Bourdette, Passage, 3, 2022, photogravure etching on Gampi backed with soft ground etching on kozo, 24.5 x 21" framed, Edition of 4
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Collaborating printers: Harry Schneider and Alejandra Arias Sevilla, Mullowney Printing

...It’s impossible to categorize Bourdette’s work as belonging to any style or movement; her range of thematic ideas, materials, techniques, and formal strategies denies easy classification.

– Lois Allan, from Clues to the Riddle of Human Experience, 2009

Christine Bourdette, Escarpment 1, 2022, cast bronze with patina (ferric acid, latex paint and pastel), 7.5 x 32 x 6.5"
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Bourdette in the studio. Image provided by the artist.

Watch the production of Escarpment 1, 2022

It is a rare artist who is this adroit and skilled at using a range of media: wood, leather, rawhide, rubber, plaster, fabric, metals, and all sorts of found and salvaged objects. Whether conscripting cut strips of cargo blankets, milling raw wood into basketry, or coaxing leather into the shape of a bird or a person, Bourdette never shies from materials; instead, she enlists whatever materials best fit her concepts.

– Linda Tesner, from Christine Bourdette: Riddles, Bunnyheads, and Asides, 2008

Christine Bourdette, Side Slide, 2021, graphite, lithographic crayon and pastel on paper, 35.25 x 27.5" framed
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Christine Bourdette, Shift, 2021, vellum and pigment based ink, 35 x 12.5 x 5.5"
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Christine Bourdette
Fumarole 2, 2021
graphite and, water-soluble colored pencil on paper
35.25 x 27.5" framed
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Christine Bourdette
Fumarole 3, 2021
graphite and, water-soluble colored pencil on paper
35.25 x 27.5" framed
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Christine Bourdette
Fumarole 4, 2021
graphite and, water-soluble colored pencil on paper
35.25 x 27.5" framed
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Christine Bourdette
Fumarole 5, 2020
graphite and water-soluble colored pencil on paper
35.25 x 27.5" framed
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VOCABULARY:

openings in the earth’s surface that emit steam and volcanic gases, such as sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide

a blank space or a missing part in the earth

an area of the earth where elevation changes suddenly

*Fractured Margin*, 2022 in process. Image provided by the artist.

Christine Bourdette, Fractured Margin, 2022, table salt, sand, paper board, white glue, pigment-based ink, 10.5 x 62.5 x 6"
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INSPIRATIONAL READING:

“…to think in deep time can be a means not of escaping our troubled present, but rather of reimagining it, countermanding its quick greeds and furies with older, slower stories of making and unmaking. At its best, a deep time awareness might help us see ourselves as part of a web of gift, inheritance and legacy stretching over millions of years past and millions to come, bringing us to consider what we are leaving behind for the epochs and beings that will follow us. When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. A conviviality of being leaps to mind and eye. The world becomes eerily various and vibrant again. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth."

–from Robert MacFarlane’s Underland, (2019)