At Schema Projects, the unusual name for Joan Waltemath’s 2005-08 series of graphite-on-Mylar drawings, “The Dinwoodies,” comes from Dinwoody petroglyphs (rock carvings) associated with Mountain Shoshone and the Plains Shoshone Indians.
Appearing throughout central Wyoming, the original petroglyphs depict owls, thunderbirds, hummingbirds, bears, bison, and other animals. According to the Chief Washakie Foundation, the Shoshone believe that these carvings are invested in spiritual power and should, as part of the natural order, remain on the landscape as they have for centuries.
Conceived through an intellectually rigorous process involving computer-generated mapping of virtual spaces, Waltemath’s Dinwoody drawings are surprisingly tactile and visually evocative. Starting with virtual spaces, she translates the data into grids and then plots them digitally on Mylar, leaving the numerical coordinates intact on the edges of the grid. As the units are combined and filled in with graphite and colored pencil, Waltemath accords great attention to the size, shape, and sheen of each rectangle, applying the graphite densely, layer upon layer. When I met with the aritst at the exhibition, I suggested that the process is obsessive, but she disagreed, arguing instead that the labor-intensive nature of her undertaking is meditative.
Related posts:
Umarmung or marsha’s two ways: Joan Waltemath @ Pulse (2012)
Exchanging studio visits with Joan Waltemath (2010)
