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Spelman Evans Downer: The Art of Unmapping

CAE2111

Summary Note

Spelman Evans Downer has been painting the world from above since the late 1970s, working first from elevated viewpoints on the ground and from photographs he took as an airline passenger, then using both contemporary and historical maps, and finally satellite imagery.

Biographical Note

Spelman Evans Downer is a painter, photographer, and videographer born in Pasadena, CA in 1954. He earned a B. A. from Stanford and an M. A. from San Francisco State University, and since 1977 has had studios in New York City, Santa Fe, NM, San Francisco, CA, Anchorage, AK, Hoboken and Jersey City, NJ. He currently spends his winters in the Mojave Desert’s Yucca Valley and was a tenured full-time Art Instructor at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree, CA from 2001 to 2019. He also has summer studio & gallery in Alaska at Cooper Landing on the banks of the Kenai River. In videography, Downer he is the director of photography and editor for the PBS TV show The Real Desert with Steve Brown, and the owner of Turquoise MultiMedia.

Scope and Content

Painter Spelman Evans Downer spends his winters in Joshua Tree, California, and his summers on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. He has been painting the world from above since the late 1970s, working first from elevated viewpoints on the ground and from photographs he took as an airline passenger, then using both contemporary and historical maps, and finally satellite imagery. His work is inspired by both by patterns in geology but also the manifestations of civilization as imaged from above.

Downer earned his B.A. from Stanford University in environmental design and an M.A. in painting and drawing from San Francisco State University. Working as a house painter, he learned how both paint and plaster could dry into forms that mimicked how the Earth is shaped through geologic forces. While his work is informed by influences as diverse as American Color Field paintings, Abstract Expressionism, Photo Realism, and the Japanese aesthetic practice of suiseki rock displays, the overt manipulation of surface is always present in his work.

Downer deliberately uses too much paint to create pools of oil, acrylic and other traditional painting materials that he can then push up with palette knives and brushes, rake with drywall tools and hair combs, and then allow to dry in hot sun (at his desert studio) and extreme cold (Alaska). The results are unique works situated where art and cartography intersect. The paintings look like maps and aerial photography but are as much imagined as a literal portrait.

Materials include exhibition ephemera, correspondence, digital images, prints, etchings, and paintings.

Arrangement

This archive is organized into five folders.
  • 1 Artist Information: 2019 – 2021
  • 2 Correspondence with Debra Kay Burger: 1986 – 1996
  • 3 Exhibition Ephemera: 1982 – 2019
  • 4 Ecotopia North Exhibition: 2019
  • 5 Artworks: 1981 – 2021

Inclusive Dates

1981-2021

Bulk Dates

1984-2020

Quantity / Extent

1 cubic feet

Language

English

Related Archive Collections

  • CAE1303: Erika Osborne: Mapping Projects

Related Publications

Desimini, Jill, and Charles Waldheim, Eds. Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2016.

Harmon, Katharine, A. You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.

Woodward, David. Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Container Listing:

  • ARCH-FILE 96-1

    • Folder 1 Artist Information, 2019 – 2021
    • Folder 2 Correspondence with Debra Kay Burger, 1986 – 1996
    • Folder 3 Exhibition Ephemera, 1982 – 2019
    • Folder 4 Ecotopia North Exhibition, 2019
    • Folder 5 Artworks, 1981 – 2021

Additional Materials

    ARCH-OBJ 63

    • 5#30 East Coast Aerials, 1988 & 1989, Binder, 1989
    • 5#33 Alaska Artworks, 1984 - 1992, Binder, 1992 CAE Box 249

    Archive F6 Oversized Items

    • 5#19 Good Friday 1964, Lithograph 1/8, Evans Downer and Mike Mosher, 1986
    • 5#20 Kachemak Blue, Color Lithograph 6/12, 1986
    • 5#21 Kachemak Blue in Black, A/P Lithograph, 1986
    • 5#27 Untitled, Paint on board, 1988
    • 5#28 Remembering the Desert, A/P Lithograph, 1989
    • 5#29 Watercolored Alaskan Geology, Watercolor and color pencil on paper, 1989
    • 5#31 Path of the Kenai River, A/P Color Lithograph, 1991
    • 5#32 Path of the Kenai River in Red, A/P Color Lithograph, 1991
    • 5#39 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 1 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#40 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 2 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#41 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 3 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#42 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 4 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#43 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 6 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#44 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 7 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#45 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 8 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#46 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 9 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#47 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 11 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#48 Channel Topography and Geography, A/P 13 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#49 Landscape Becoming Music, A/P 1 Collagraph, 2020
    • 5#50 Landscape Becoming Music, A/P 2 Collagraph, 2020

    Archive F14 Oversized Items

    • 2#9 Letter to Debra Kay Burger on Drawing, Drawing and correspondence on paper, 1987
    • 4#56 Ecotopia North Painting Exhibition, Exhibition Poster, 2019
    • 5#6 Peaks of Denali, Hand colored lithograph 15/15, Summer 1985
    • 5#7 Peaks of Denali in Fall, Hand colored lithograph 12/15, Summer 1985/1988
    • 5#22 Kodiak Island etc., A/P Hand-colored lithograph, 1988
    • 5#23 Mid Atlantic, A/P Hand-colored lithograph, 1988
    • 5#24 Untitled, Color pencil on paper, 1988