Over the last fifteen years, Lucy Raven has examined the forces of pressure, industry, and material transformations that mark the Southwest and Mountain West regions of America. Raven’s recent Depositions employ the displacement of physical material to capture a likeness of the west. Through the recreation of a dam break in a plumbed, steel and wood container lined with silk, displaced sediment embeds into the surface of the fabric, preserving the dynamic force as layers of material formed like monumental peaks and valleys iconic to western landscapes. The resulting “drawings” evoke the dramatic representations of an idealized West by classical 19th century painters like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. The luminous landscapes in Depositions demonstrate how material that endures cycles of pressure can build up, be released, and literally turn “land into landscape.”

This exhibition is part of Tinworks Art’s 2024 exhibition season, The Lay of the Land, featuring a major new ecological artwork by Agnes Denes and work by five artists inspired by the land of the American West.

With an intergenerational mix of established and emerging artists, iconic work and newly commissioned installations, The Lay of the Land explores how land in the west is represented. The artworks included connect to land and place through their physical materiality—wheat, sediment, soot, clay, the sound of passing trains—and subject matter—the natural or industrial forces that have shaped the land of the west and depictions of western places shaped by memory or technology.

Lucy Raven, born in 1977 in Tucson, is an artist with a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history from the University of Arizona (2000), as well as an MFA from Bard College (2008). Notable works include China Town (2009), which traces copper production from Nevada to China, and Curtains (2014), a 3-D video installation highlighting outsourced labor in film conversion. Raven has earned several awards and residencies, exhibited internationally, including in the Whitney Biennial, and currently resides in New York.