Immigrant Shadows: Tracing the Herders’ Legacy, a collaborative installation by Earle D Swope and Amy Nack, celebrates tree carvings (arborglyphs) left by immigrant sheepherders in mountain aspens throughout the American West.
Arborglyphs created by Basque immigrants have been documented from the early 1900’s and continue today by immigrants from Chile, Peru, Brazil and Mexico. The cross-cultural carvings have continued for generations as a form of mark making and self-documentation by immigrants in a strange and often unwelcoming land. Paper seemed the natural medium to express this story as it epitomizes the temporal nature of both the immigrant and the carvings they leave behind. Shadows created by the exhibition acknowledge that throughout American history immigrants are often relegated to live within the shadows of society.
Deftly wielding utility knife Amy Nack cuts images of trees and leaves into large panels of paper, creating a sculptural landscape of aspen trees. A canopy of branches and restless paper leaves shelters the castings creating a fictional mountain grove. Negative space resulting from the cuts cast filigree shadows and hint at the earlier presence of solitary immigrant herders.
Earle Swope sojourned into the mountains of Idaho creating plaster and silicone casts of actual arborglyphs. From these casts he has created facsimiles using cotton paper pulp flecked with aspen baste fibers. The castings hang at the same height and compass azimuth as their parent arborglyphs and are arranged into an ovoid grove allowing the viewer to stroll through the “carvings” examining them in their natural orientation.
Arborglyphs created by Basque immigrants have been documented from the early 1900’s and continue today by immigrants from Chile, Peru, Brazil and Mexico. The cross-cultural carvings have continued for generations as a form of mark making and self-documentation by immigrants in a strange and often unwelcoming land. Paper seemed the natural medium to express this story as it epitomizes the temporal nature of both the immigrant and the carvings they leave behind. Shadows created by the exhibition acknowledge that throughout American history immigrants are often relegated to live within the shadows of society.
Deftly wielding utility knife Amy Nack cuts images of trees and leaves into large panels of paper, creating a sculptural landscape of aspen trees. A canopy of branches and restless paper leaves shelters the castings creating a fictional mountain grove. Negative space resulting from the cuts cast filigree shadows and hint at the earlier presence of solitary immigrant herders.
Earle Swope sojourned into the mountains of Idaho creating plaster and silicone casts of actual arborglyphs. From these casts he has created facsimiles using cotton paper pulp flecked with aspen baste fibers. The castings hang at the same height and compass azimuth as their parent arborglyphs and are arranged into an ovoid grove allowing the viewer to stroll through the “carvings” examining them in their natural orientation.
