Selected Bibliography

 

Selected Articles

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2023     Spelman Evans Downer: Locations, Conceptions, Sounds      Peter Frank

 

2022     Mapping Music    David Pagel       

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2021     The Act of Unmapping; Cartography, Painting, and Spelman Evans Downer    William L. Fox, Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum

 

2019     Peninsula Clarion, Ecotopia Impressions, Joey Klecka, October 9, 2019

 

2014     ArtScene, Spelman Evans Downer, Liz Goldner, October, 2014

 

2014     The Sun Runner, The Art of Mapping, Steve Brown, Oct/Nov, 2014

 

2007     Hi-Desert Star, Morongo Basin Stock Photography Project, Rebecca Unger, Dec 15, 2007

 

2006     Hi-Desert Star, The Sacred Catwalk, Stacey Moore, May 6, 2006

 

​2005     Swiss Magazine, Die Wuste Lebt, (The Desert Rocks), Frank Matter, March Issue

 

2005     Hi- Desert Star, Exhibit Takes Part in Earth Art Renaissance, Staff, Mar 11, 2005

 

2005     Press Enterprise, Down-to-Earth Exhibit, Mark Muckenfuss, April 1, 2005

 

2005     Desert Post Weekly, Forged from the Elements, Dan Carlin, March 5, 2005

 

​2005     Desert Post Weekly, Earth Works Now, Tom Loret, April 23, 2003

 

2003     Desert Sun, Art of Nature, Jennifer Chen, April 13, 2003

 

2003     Hi-Desert Star, CMC Prof. Hopes to Put Earth Art on Map in Basin, Mark Wheeler, March 19, 2003

 

2002     The Sun Runner, CMC Art Show Sets the Stage for Future Campus Earth Art, Vickie Waite, Summer Issue

 

2002     Desert Post Weekly, From Earth Day to Earth Art, Vickie Waite, May 1, 2002

 

2001     Arts Plan New Jersey, Illustrated Edition, All of New Jersey 1998 #1, Painting transcends cartography, p. 7

 

​1998     Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Annual Report, All of New Jersey, Cover, Scott McVay

 

1998     Princeton Packet, Environmental Design, Louise Handelman, May 1

 

1998     Newsday, Celebrating the Making of New York, Jonathan Mandell, January 11

 

1997     New York Times, Big Picture: New York from the Top Down, Staff, Dec. 14

           

1997     Art Market Guide, Contemporary American Art, Richard Polsky

           

1997     New York Times, Paintings that Take the Long (and High) View of Landscape, Carl Sommers, March 30

 

1997     Times Herald Record, Giving Landscapes New Form, Chris Farlekas, Jan 10

 

1996     New American Paintings # 8, The Open Studio Press

 

1995     New York Times, Landscapes Below, Staff, Feb. 12, 1995

           

1995     Scarsdale Inquirer, Hudson River Portrait, Staff, Feb. 17, 1995

 

1994     American Association for the Advancement of Science, Satellite Paintings-About the Artist, J. Murray, June

 

1991     Anchorage Times, Downer Art in D.C., Staff, Dec. 20

 

1990     Anchorage Times, The Man Who Makes the Maps, John Foley, July

           

1990     The Free-Lance Star, Fredericksburg, VA, Aerial Artist: A Birds' Eye View of

              Civil War Battlefields, Daryl Lease, March

 

 

Selected Reviews

 

3/23       Joshua Tree Voice, Abstracted Directions, Spelman Downer and Steve Rieman, JTGOCA

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8/07      Peninsula Clarion, Artists Follow the Tides to a Cooper Landing Gallery, Laura Forbes

 

7/06      Anchorage Daily News, Artists Take Contrasting Views of the Land, Mark Baechtel

 

11/04     Desert Post Weekly, Exalting the Goddess, Dan Carlin

 

5/00      Courier News, Preserving the Garden, Mark Terenzi

 

11/99     Worrall Newspapers, Artist's Work Defies Classification, Joe Lugara

 

1/98       New York Times, The Metropolis, Glimpses of the First 100 Years, Roberta Smith

 

8/97      Time Out New York, Aerial Perspectives: Reality, Imagination and Abstraction, Robert Mahoney

 

12/96     Art in America, Spelman Evans Downer at the Arsenal and Dru Arstark, Matthew Milford

 

6/96      Review Art, Dru Arstark Gallery and The Arsenal in Central Park, Frederick Ted Castle

 

6/96      Columbia University, The City Reconstructed, Julie Yufe

 

4/96      New York Times, International Juried Show, William Zimmer

 

3/96      Star Ledger, Exhibition Perspective, Eileen Watkins

 

6/95      New York Times, Friday Reviews, Roberta Smith

 

6/95      New York Times, Katonah Museum Juried Show, William Zimmer

 

2/95      Gannett Suburban Newspapers, Downer Strives for Inclusive Oneness in Art, Georgette Gouveia

 

11/93     Anchorage Daily News, Artists Expanding the Landscape, Mike Dunham

 

11/92     Homer News, Kenai Peninsula Portrait, Shana Loshbaugh

 

2/91      TPE Active Arts, Perception/Presence/Progression, Mike Purvis

 

10/89    Anchorage Daily News, Well-Matched Solo Exhibitions Take Viewers Close to the Land, Jan Ingram

 

 

Short quotes from Bibliography

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Peter Frank Essay, March 2023

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"Downer’s concentration on systemic translation of course identifies him as a conceptual artist. But his is a painterly conceptualism, its various examinations undertaken not simply to expose systems but engage them in the concoction and elaboration of rich surfaces, luminous colors, and patterned networks, abstract paintings gratifying (to make and to behold) both because and despite the data they encode. Downer in effect introduces a layer of complex, even idiosyncratic knowledge into a stratification of effects, leaving nothing undelineated and everything darkly and yet giddily beautiful, elegance bearing eloquence."

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David Pagel Essay,  January 2022

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"As an artist, Downer is a Realist. His “Map” and “Music Paintings” are attentive, fastidious, and meticulously engineered accounts of his surroundings, the events that have taken place in those surroundings, and, most important, what is currently taking place in them. As an artist for whom accuracy matters, he doesn’t make stuff up. Instead, he pays great attention to the materials he’s working with and to the music he’s listening to, melding both in visual compositions that require him to keep his ego—or selfish intentions—from getting in the way of the paint and the music fusing: the music moving him to move the paint around before his conscious mind has a chance to get in the way of where it’s going. The kind of Realism Downer pursues isn’t depictive or representational. It doesn’t stick to the surfaces of things or settle for getting their appearances just right. Instead, it dives deeper, to capture the reality that does not immediately meet the eye but exists somewhere beyond that, where it can only be reached poetically or metaphorically."
 

William L. Fox Essay,   January 2021

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"Spelman Evans Downer’s paintings are inspired by maps and aerial views, and by geology and the manifestations of civilization as imaged from above. In viewing one of Downer’s paintings, depicting the shorelines of Alaska, the street grids of Manhattan, or the San Gabriel Mountains bordering the Los Angeles Basin, you will end up knowing more about these places than you did before, but his overarching concern is structure upon the planet — natural and cultural pattern, and the intersections of the two."

 

Peninsula Clarion,  Joey Klecka      October 9, 2019

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“Using maps and satellite images, Downer creates a real-life canvas of a particular area, using oil and enamel paint to create texture and relief of geography and topography.”

 

ArtScene,  Liz Goldner      October 2014

 

“His lifelong love of travel, along with his interest in abstract gestural painting and photorealism, has led to his numerous paintings of maps. “The Art of Mapping” consists of five-dozen works painted over the last 30 years. “Transverse" (2008), a large horizontal depiction of an unidentified coastline, is painted gesturally to evoke mid-century abstract expressionist work.”

                                               

Peninsula Clarion,  Laura Forbes      August 2, 2007

“Downer has incorporated the influences of a varied artistic background, including references to American Color Field paintings, Abstract Expressionism, Photo Realism and the 2000-year-old Asian art of suiseki rock appreciation and display, into the continuing evolution of his own explorations in painting and multimedia artworks”.

 

Swiss Air,  Frank Matter     March Issue 2005

 

“Since moving out to Joshua Tree, the painter Spelman Evans Downer has increasingly devoted himself to site specific installations made from stones and other natural materials.”

 

Hi-Desert Star, Staff from press release    March 8, 2005 

 

“EarthWorksNow has positioned itself as an important forum for the current environmental art renaissance in America by showing artworks that contain ideas relating back to early cultures which created a lasting art about the environment and seasonal/human cycles of time. The show also references the land art movement in America and Europe from the 1960's to 1980's, and expands the possibilities of works from this seminal period.”

 

Desert Post Weekly, Tom Loret    April 24, 2003

 

“Earthworks, at its core, seeks to reestablish a balance between human beings, our planet, and all creation. …    

I was pleased to meet Spelman Downer. I learned new ways of seeing, thinking, and creating art. It is always refreshing to discover new ambitions and designs for the return of this world to its garden days. Spelman’s skill, knowledge, and enthusiasm makes him a perfect steward of this project.”

 

Hi-Desert Star, Mark Wheeler    March 19, 2003

 

“EarthWorksNow, according to Downer, intends to revive and renew what he considers to be a most exciting art form. He further contends it to be an art form which, because of its scope and scale, belongs in the desert. "This basin and Copper Mountain College can be a beacon for developing this genre in an environmentally sensitive way." In the process, he and many others here are hoping that by putting this art form back on the map, the basin's own place on the map will be most fortuitously illuminated.”

 

Desert Post Weekly, Vickie Waite    April 25, 2002

 

“Recent abstract paintings are map-like perspectives of the Mojave, oil and enamel on panel, based on desert geology. Expanding his perspective beyond two-dimensional works, Downer is now exploring earth art and altering the land as a form of sculpture. Downer sees a new earth-art vision for the Mojave Desert.

With any luck, CMC may host its next major revival. Downer's art department is embarking on a long term project with an EarthWorksNow  theme for the expanding campus, and to form a program to create, study, and promote this kind of work.”

 

The New York Times, Roberta Smith    January 2, 1998

 

"Spelman Evans Downer, a 43-year-old contemporary artist replicates, or more accurately expands upon, existing maps to a highly refined degree.  Mr. Downer's paintings may not do everything you want art to do, but the best of them fuse beauty and fact with dazzling efficiency."

 

 

New American Paintings #8,  1996     The Open Studio Press

 

"Downer's aerial landscapes trace an area's history of development.  These views of the man-made world shows us what we have created on the landscape over time. Downer's approach is to synthesize various forms of visual information and make visible what can only be completely comprehended from an aerial perspective."

 

 

The New York Times,   Carl Sommers   March 30, 1997

 

"…his paintings are often made up of multiple panels, an allusion to the way natural dynamics affect image making:  in aerial photographs, and his works from them, the movement of the Earth puts the frames a bit out of synch with one another, creating a mosaic effect."

 

Thelma Golden, Associate Curator and Branch Director of The Whitney Museum at Philip Morris

International Juried Show 1996, New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, Best of Show, Curator's Statement:

 

Meadowlands by Spelman Evans Downer

"I feel it is a very interesting take on the landscape tradition, an artist looking at landscape in the industrial environment and finding a way to relate that pictorially.  I was also interested in how he combined topography and mapmaking with the painting tradition: how the work, when looked at close up, really begins to show his interest in abstract painting technique; where as moving far away from it, you see his interest in topographical photography. It’s a real combination...an artist working with a lot of influences in a very interesting way."

 

The New York Times,   William Zimmer   June 11, 1995

 

"The two "Hudson River Portraits" by Spelman Evans Downer are absolute abstractions of abutted panels painted thickly to resemble topographical maps through which the river runs, like a splash painting by Clyfford Still."

 

The New York Times, Roberta Smith   June 9, 1995

 

"A show that will grow on you: small, folkish paintings that are wonderfully wrought surprisingly accurate maps of Manhattan-its grids, parks and neighborhoods, and adjacent boroughs, in various colors and points in history."

 

Art in America, Matthew Milford   December 1996

 

"In areas where the relationship between nature and civilization is not too lopsided, Downer's work achieves a kind of utopian lyricism."

 

Art Market Guide 1997, Contemporary American Art, Richard Polsky

 

"Spelman Evans Downer makes art that draws inspiration from aerial landscape photographs. Downer's work is also informed by the 'Earthworks' artists (Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, and James Turrell).  These artists altered the land as a form of sculpture that couldn't be experienced within the four walls of a gallery or museum.  But their two-dimensional works served more as diagrams rather than works of art in their own right.  Downer could put together an interesting career by doing the opposite; making two-dimensional works that are significant."

 

Gannett Suburban Newspapers, Georgette Gouveia   February 26, 1995

 

"Downer's landscapes combine the qualities of topographical maps with those of abstract paintings."

 

Review Art, Frederick Ted Castle   June 1996

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"Spelman Evans Downer tries and succeeds to include everything in his painting of a place. He's not just acknowledging that people have moved the earth around, the way geologically young rivers do all the time, changing course on the flood plain, creating lakes and new deserts. He is really staking our claim (not only his own) as collaborators on the earth's creation."

 

 

As Author

 

1995                 Artists and Maps, The Portolan, Washington Map Society, Washington, D.C. & New York Map Society.

1994                 Second Manifesto of Maximalism, AK Artistic License, Anchorage, AK.

1994                 State of the Art, Art Review, AK Artistic License, Anchorage, AK.

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