Susan Woolf
Bark Beetle Book Vol. XXV: Outbreak

Media: Artist Book
Size: 21" x 21" x 0"
$2500

Artist Statement:
I am preoccupied with climate impacts on Pacific Northwest forests. Hiking through forests burned and yet to burn, I observe the hieroglyphic “scribing” of bark beetles on inner bark and wood. The winding marks seem like a script I cannot read, as if their trails (called "galleries") are cryptograms we fail to decipher. A book, loosely defined, is a collection of messages, and incorporating raw materials from nature becomes a meditation on those materials’ disturbing beauty, as well as an opportunity to learn.

Beetle-kill is compounded by climate change: trees stressed by heat and drought are more vulnerable; and the beetles’ larvae no longer freeze during warmer winters. Reproduction rates soar, tipping their populations from endemic to epidemic. Only a few species attack live trees. Even those “aggressive” beetles are a normal disturbance agent like fire – but they are enthusiastically responding to the conditions we created: a warming world, a century of fire suppression and vast menu of even-aged agri-timber resources over which we and the beetles now compete.

While perhaps it would be more apt to use paper made from wood pulp, to be archival, higher-quality Asian or Western traditional fibers are required. The artist books in my entry include paper that I made with the assistance of local Northwest master, Mary Ashton. I created silicon molds from beetle galleries on trees into which I cast paper pulp, becoming the ghostly representation of various species' galleries in "What the Beetles Wrote." In "Outbreak" I made rubbings of beetle galleries on a variety of handmade papers in proportions representing increasing tree mortality in a timber supply area of British Columbia over a 10-year period. And in "Forest Decomposition" I used tea-dyed handmade Japanese rice paper with a wood-grain-like pattern with galleries I traced in Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains, glued to laser-cut mat board.

Biography

Suze Woolf studied ceramics and printmaking at the University of Washington. An early adopter of computer graphics, her career has included print and interface design. Though known as a watercolorist, she explores a wide range of media from painting, paper-casting, artist books and pyrography to installation – sometimes all together.

She has exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest but also in Utah, British Columbia, Maryland, California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Washington DC. Her work is in regional public collections as well as many private ones. She has curated a large travelling exhibit, juried competitions for municipalities and artist organizations, and contributed work to non-profit fundraising. An installation of her burned tree portraits is touring museums until 2022.

She has received grants, stipends and exhibits from Artist Trust, Shunpike, The Entrada Institute, Zion Natural History Association, the Museum of Northwest Art and the San Juan Islands Museum of Art. She has been artist in residence in Zion, Glacier, Capitol Reef and North Cascades National Parks. She was a test artist resident at the Grand Canyon Trust’s remote Kane Ranch. 2019 was her seventh appearance in Zion’s annual plein air invitational. She has also been an invited resident at art colonies such as the Banff Centre, the Vermont Studio Center, Willowtail Springs, Jentel Foundation and Playa Summer Lake.

http://www.suzewoolf-fineart.com/
https://suzeart.wordpress.com/