Woodcut

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The nature and trees around him have always been an creational source for him, not only are they beautiful from the outside at but also when you try to investigate a look inside. Gill found that things were more beautiful and complex inside than what was visible from the outside. Pattern, texture, color. ‘You’ll never know what you’re missing if you don’t find some way to get inside and look’ and that brought him closer to the gentle giants we live among. Gill used recycled lumber, covered it with ink and paper and pressed and scratched the wood pattern on the paper with his fingers. When Gill is working with wood, he is not fighting it but he is going with it. He is printing over a period of time and you can see and feel the slight changes in the texture or mushrooms growing on it. For him, his process is very organic and it just comes to him while working. Its engagement is to understand his place in this world in this time, which he has to participate as a record of his connection to it. In his prints you can see the natural beauty of the earth and its plants and creatures and the natural unique fingerprints and stories they tell in their texture, if you just listen carefully. BNG: A Cedar telephone pole. It was so dense and the annual growth rings were so close together that they could not be accurately counted beyond two hundred.

Bryan Nash Gill, Sculpture and Works on Paper, The Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Gallery, The Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, CT BNG: Ash is a great wood to work with because of the distinct separation of summerwood and springwood. (see Ash wood below) As part of this activity encourages children to look at the work of other artists, why not show your students these wonderful creators? They use natural resources for their work, or enjoy creating art inspired by nature. Bryan’s work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Solway Gallery entitled “Tree Conscious” opening September 28th, 5-9 pm. Bryan Nash Gill was born and raised in the same rural, northwestern corner of Connecticut where he works as an artist today. Gill earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from Tulane University in 1984 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland four years later.In the most deliberate way, since his return to New England, the nature of Gill's work - its medium, metaphor, syntax, meaning - has been rooted in nature, particularly the grown-over tangle that is rural New England. But it is equally rooted in the evidence of time, of life cycles, of human labor and art. Gill has received two Connecticut Individual Artist Grants, is a California Arts Council Fellow and in 2005 he received the Artist Resource Trust, from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. He has shown his sculpture, drawings and installations at many exhibitions and galleries across the United States. Gill is the author of “ Woodcut“, (New York, 2012, Princeton Architectural Press) The artist has attempted to draw the growth rings of trees. “You can’t do it better than nature,” he says. Inspiring Sensitivity, The Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT (traveling exhibition of CT. Commission on the Arts Grant Recipients)

Trees have a way of witnessing the world that stirs our deepest sense of permanence and impermanence. Somewhere between Cedric Pollet’s Bark and Romeyn Houghs’s cross-section plates comes Bryan Nash Gill’s Woodcut ( public library) — a magnificent collection of the artist’s large-scale relief prints from the cross-sections of fallen and damaged trees. I not only create objects but love collecting objects, these two practices result in a studio that is visually overloaded. Some found objects find their way into a piece and others into the trash; depending on how long I’ve been staring at them. I think of my studio as my supply store and the shelves are full.”Anniversary Exhibition: Highlights from the Last 20 Years; Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT The footprint of the studio is about 2800 square feet and has a large garage door for moving large sculptures in and out and opens up to a big field where we can watch the wild life.

Nature Photo Frames Activity - This resource is ideal for younger children who would still like to explore and get creative. Just like with the wind chime, they will have to find all sorts of natural materials to design their craft. Your class can explore their adventurous side by looking outdoors for all their equipment, then express their artistic side when they’re ready to create their own masterpiece. It can help them develop planning and organisation skills. This resource also asks children to look at other artists’ work for inspiration, so they can learn how to research effectively. Land Art Challenge Cards - Print off these brilliant cards to set your children the task of collecting lots of resources. They can develop physical and mental skills while they explore nature and finish by creating even more artwork. Amazing artists who use nature for their art:After 16 years, however, he came home to the very farm in the western Connecticut hills on which he grew up, which he has since bought and converted into a home and studio complex. For all the study and experience he gathered in his travels, in the end it was returning to New England, to its woods and its history both geological and anthropological that gave him his voice as a sculptor. It was from this place that he first made art that connected to the deeper roots of his sensibility. That first work composed of 42 Christmas trees suspended upside-down, in echelon, in situ, above the floor of the forest contained many of the elements that would come to characterize his mature work as a sculptor. For the first time, says Gill, "I wasn't making something for somebody to buy. I wasn't making something to please somebody else. And I [certainly] wasn't 'making it big, painting it red, throwing it in the field and calling it art.' The only people who saw [this work] were people I brought to it, or who stumbled upon it, like my family when they cross-country skied or walked in the woods. It was very uplifting, very eerie." The gallery is in the West End at 424 Findlay Street in Cincinnati, Ohio. The exhibition opens on Thursday, September 28, with reception for the artists from 5-9 pm. Some artists in the exhibition will be present for the opening reception. Woods: Installation and Drawings, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT Bryan Nash Gill (November 3, 1961 – May 17, 2013) was an American artist who worked primarily with wood, in the form of relief prints and sculptures.