PAT PICKETT (b. 1953) experiments with drawing invisible forces acting on the landscape. On paper, photographs, panel, video, and digital motion capture, her works explore a range of expressive possibilities in a trees’ response to phenomena; the movement and growth behavior of trees reacting to wind, to water, and changes in the environment.
The drawings are a visual residue of an unfolding event. Designed to expand the definition of drawing, Pickett’s work seeks to find a balance between making something happen and letting something happen.
The work is simultaneously infused with current scientific conversations, and an evolving understanding of our personal relationship with nature.
Pickett’s work has been exhibited since the late 1980’s. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY; and The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton , NY. Extensive field expeditions have resulted in many bodies of work featuring tree drawings; Plants + Wind, Theodore Payne Native Plant Foundation, Sunland, CA; A Record of the Conditions: 21 trees, 7 states, 3500 miles, The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY; and The Effects of Wind on Trees, roth horowitz, New York, NY. An active member of an international community of scientists studying the Effects of Wind on Trees, she has presented her tree drawing experiments to several International Union of Forestry Research Organization conferences; Training Predictive AI Motion of Pine Branches, Boulder, CO; Digital Video Tracking, University of Frieburg, Germany; Digital Pen Recordings, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA; and Tree Drawings, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.
Residencies include Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, WY, and Artist in Residence, Tree Motion Workshop, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark. She presented her work at the Weather Report: Symposium on Art and Weather hosted by the Aldrich Museum and NYC/Long Island American Meteorological Society, Western Connecticut University, Danbury, CT.
Pickett earned an MFA at Hunter College, New York, NY, and a BFA from Scripps College, Claremont, CA. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
CONTACT ppickett@mindspring.com
Pickett is engaged in a long-running experimental drawing project in which she collaborates with trees to manifest environmental conditions. Attaching pens to the tips of branches, she positions paper mounted on sturdy tripods at the pen’s point, allowing the trees to record their movement in the wind. Her work is related to the modernist tradition of automatic drawing , but its impulse is substantially different: documenting expression from a life form that lives a radically different time scale. Trees experience the world ways we can’t understand and possess what can only be considered an alien form of intelligence, with recent research pointing to their communicating with each other through both air and soil. Trees evolved in the turbulence of the atmosphere, and their structure and ability to move in the wind speak of deep evolutionary adaptations. Pickett’s drawings done with trees reveal not only the character of the wind on a particular day, but also – and more importantly – the qualities of the specific tree. On the lower margin of drawing, she records the species name, time elapsed, location (frequently with brief details of weather conditions), and the time and date. We can’t see the wind – we can only see its effects on the physical world. Moving air, on the most basic level, is sound. These drawings are to trees what the groove of a record is to the human voice.
– Richard Klein
Weather Report, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art 2019
CV
PAT PICKETT
b. 1953
EDUCATION
1988 MFA CUNY Hunter College, NY
1983 BA Scripps College, Claremont, CA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Plants + Wind, Theodore Payne Native Plant Foundation, Sun Valley, CA
2012 Pat Pickett: Tree Drawings, Artbook @ Paper Chase, Los Angeles, CA
2009 A Set of Circumstances:Tree Drawings, Open Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
2006 A Record of the Conditions: 21 trees, 7 states, 3500 miles, The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY
2004 Wind in the canopy, The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY.
2003 The Effects of Wind on Trees, roth horowitz, New York, NY.
2002 Chain Saw Drawings, Gallery Merz, Sag Harbor, NY.
1995 Works on Paper and Wood, Glenn Horowitz, East Hampton, NY
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 BOTANIC – A Garden Show for the Dead of Winter, The North Fork Contemporary at VSOP, Greenport, NY
2019 Weather Report, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CN (catalogue) https://soundcloud.com/user-292598524/pat-pickett
2018 INCOGNITO, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
2018 CURATORIAL HUB at Bestor Architecture, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Elemental / Marking Time, Stuart Haaga Gallery, Descanso Gardens, La Canada Flintridge, CA (catalogue)
2016 Artists in the Field: ArIene Kopelman, Pat Pickett, Alexis Rockman, The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY.
2014 Thanks for the Mammaries, For Your Art, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Dig the Dig, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA
2012 The Eagle and the Rock. Los Angeles, CA
2010 Fragile Handle With Care: an Environmental Exhibition. Art League of Long Island, Dix Hills, NY
2009 The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY.
2008 Earth Works, Art League of Long Island, Dix Hills, NY
2007 Observing the Natural World, Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston MA
2006 Affinities, The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY.
2005 The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY.
2000 Personal Space: The Domesticated Landscape, The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY.
1999 24/7, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY
1999 Emerging Artists, Glenn Horowitz, East Hampton, NY
1998 Centennial Exhibition, The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY
1988 Ten Artists, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY (catalogue)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2019 Weather Report: A Symposium on Art and Weather, NYC/LI American Meteorological Society, Western Connecticut University, Danbury, CN
2017 Artist in Residence for One Tree, Tree Motion and Wind Measurement Workshop, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark
2017 Training an artificially intelligent program to solve and display motion paths of multiple needle and leaf tips of various species. International Union of Forest Research Organizations, Wind and Tree Conference, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
2011 Capturing the damped oscillation paths of individual branch tips using a digital pen recorder. International Union of Forest Research Organizations Conference, Wind and Trees, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
2009 Digital tracking imagery of tree movements in response to gusting airflow conditions. 2nd International Conference Wind Effects on Trees, University of Freiburg, Germany
2007 Tree drawings: recording wind conditions. Wind and Trees International Scientific Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2019 Forestry – Vol. 92 No. 4 Special Issue: Wind and Trees (Cover image) Two Sugar Pines, San Gabriel Mountains, CA. 8 secs, winds 18-25 mph.
2019 Patrick Rogers, “When Art Captures The Wind And The Rain And A Bit Of Ourselves”, onEarth NRDC, March 16, 2020
2017 It Takes One: Pat Pickett / The Cultural Landscape Foundation, https://tclf.org/it-takes-one-pat-pickett
2009 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference Wind Effects on Trees, University of Freiburg, Germany (October) : 297-301
2007 Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Issue # 44 (Winter): Art 9-12.
2004 Tom Isler, “Nature has a Hand in Her Drawings”, Southampton Press August 26, 2004. B17.
2003 Edith Newhall, “Drawn With the Wind”, New York Magazine, July 21.
2000 William Norwich, New York Times Magazine, May 21, 2000. 90. Phyllis Braff, (“personified branches”), New York Times, Long Island Section, April 30, 2000. 17.
1995 Phyllis Braff, New York Times, Long Island Section, April 23, 1995. 26.
RESIDENCIES
2013 Jentel, Banner, WY (April 15 – May 12)
GALLERY REPRESENTATION
The Drawing Room, 55 Main St, East Hampton, NY
TEACHING
2000 – 2001 The Ross School, East Hampton, NY. Teacher. Middle School Art, Art History, Architecture. High School Drawing, Architecture,
1995 – 2000 Dowling College National Aviation Technology Center, Brookhaven, NY. Adjunct Faculty. Visual Arts, Sculpture, Art History