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Journal of Landscape Architecture

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Grove: Landscape Architectural Drawings by Catherine

Dee
a
Elizabeth Boults
a
University of California, Davis
Published online: 19 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Elizabeth Boults (2014) Grove: Landscape Architectural Drawings by Catherine Dee, Journal of Landscape
Architecture, 9:2, 82-83, DOI: 10.1080/18626033.2014.931728

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2014.931728

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 E X H I B I T I O N R eview
Grove: Landscape Architectural In introducing her current work, Catherine Dee,
Drawings by Catherine Dee senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield’s
Department of Landscape Architecture, positioned
Wurster Gallery, College of Environmental­
Design, University of California, Berkeley, the grove_which she termed ‘a place redolent of
USA trees’_as an agent of urban ecological remedia-
tion and phenomenological experience. Through
3 — 21 February 2014
her design research and art practice, she has
Review by Elizabeth Boults implored us to see the forest for the trees_an
University of California, Davis endeavour well-represented by her recent exhibi-
tion, Grove: Landscape Architectural Drawings,
at the University of California, Berkeley.
Downloaded by [Bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal] at 19:49 01 December 2014
The exhibition was organized thematically and
comprised of approximately 50 small-format
drawings originally created to illustrate the book
To Design Landscape (Routledge, 2012). In addition,
several new large-scale ‘wall drawings’ explored
the qualities and aesthetic functions of trees.
The exhibition’s thematic framework reinforced
the spatial narrative of ‘grove’ and made the
landscape architect/artist’s presence strongly felt.
Carefully composed on the gallery walls, the A4-
sized drawings were presented horizontally and
Figure 1 William Kent, Rousham, England, eighteenth century
82 Journal of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Specifics 2-2014
vertically. Of Dee’s nine themes, some described a
condition or style (Classical, Winter, Windswept),
while others typified a spatial construct (House,
Topiary, Hortus, Colonnade, Floor, Hilltop).
Evident in both sets of themes was a purposeful
process of production, with drawing as the mode
of critical inquiry.
With a restrained economy of gesture, Dee ex-
presses the complexity of landscape observation.
She draws in pencil on the surfaces of digitally-
manipulated photographic images of different
sizes. By layering a 50 percent white ground over
the image, the opacity and contrast of the original
photographs are reduced. Each small drawing
demands close viewing to distinguish the drawn
from the photographed, as well as to appreciate
the details in the work. Most, but not all, of the
drawings extend beyond the frame of the photo-
graph; as a result, the context of the landscape is
at once condensed by the framing of the scene and,
at the same time, expanded by the subtle yet crisp
overdrawing (Fig. 1). Observers are invited into
the space represented in the photograph and com-
pelled to deeper inquiry by the emphatic vectors
of the line work_the particular textures, shapes,
shadows, and spatial structures that are ren-
dered_and by what has been left out.
For example, in an illustration of Carl Theodor
Sørensen’s allotment gardens in Naerum, Den-
mark, pencil lines draw attention to the seat of
a tree swing, the edge of a path, and the texture
of a remnant oak trunk; the branching structure
extends beyond the upper border of the photo-
graph, balanced by several leafy gestures that only
hint at the remainder of the canopy (Fig. 2). The
drawing appears in the ‘House’ series; thus, con-
ceptually, we read the scene as habitat or domicile,
while visually we shift between perceiving the
abstract ciphers drawn on the page and the sub-
ject of the muted photograph itself. As a result,
we are ‘present’ in the drawing in a variety of ways.
 In a public lecture before the opening reception
for the exhibition, Dee quoted the German poet
Rainer Maria Rilke: ‘These trees are magnificent,
but even more magnificent is the sublime and
moving space between them, as though with their
growth it too increased.’ She noted how groves,
‘neither full nor empty’, both occupy and define
space. The territory and spatial domain of groves
provided the point of departure for her new large-
scale work. Wall-height paper panels hung singly,
in pairs, or as a triptych, each set depicting the po-
Downloaded by [Bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal] at 19:49 01 December 2014

etic qualities of understorey vegetation, overhead

canopy, and the branching patterns of clusters
of young trees (Fig. 3). The technique for drawing
these large-scale pieces again involved the
intervention of technology: digital photographs
projected and enlarged on the paper surface ras-
terized the original images, with myriad vertical­
pencil hachures representing each pixel of the
fractured forms. Seen from a distance, the subjects
appeared resolved and lucid; at close range, the
Figure 2 Carl Theodor Sørensen, allotment gardens, Nærum, Denmark
abstraction of the edges was legible. Engaged
by the perspective and the position of the image
on the panel, we inhabit the spaces of the large
drawings, captivated by their depth of space and Dee’s drawings derive from her conception of work for landscape observation and representa-
quality­of light affected by the range of pixilated­ an ‘aesthetics of thrift’, a key premise behind her tion. Both small and large drawings invite close
tones. thinking in To Design Landscape. The small com- inspection and illustrate a substantive process
posite drawings were realized to illustrate this of engagement on several levels. The work recalls
proposition, while the large ‘wall drawings’ were a symbolic middle distance, the poetic ‘space
generated from a later, more poetic exploration. between’ figure and ground, viewer and work,
Imperative to the group was finding an authentic­ artist and subject. We are in the grove, and it is
method of production_one dominated by the redolent of trees.
hand yet supported by the computer. Through
this process, Dee established a significant frame-

Figure 3 Catherine Dee, ‘wall drawing’, University of California, Berkeley, February 2014

Journal of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Specifics 2-2014 83