Susan Davidoff bio

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susan davidoff

Born in El Paso, Texas, 1953
Studied at University of Texas, Austin (1972-73); Fort Mason PrintmakersWorkshop, San Francisco (1974-78);
University of Texas, El Paso (B.F.A., 1985); New Mexico State University (M.A., 1987; M.F.A., 1989)
Lives and works in El Paso, Texas
Teaches at University of Texas at El Paso

Artist's statement:
March 21, vernal equinox, to early June of 2000--walks in an arroyo in El Paso, Texas. The last walk at dawn before driving to Tamarind to begin this group of lithographs. My car was loaded with plant fragments--fresh and dried, that I had collected on the walks, and earth, clay and pods from the arroyo. The wind blew relentlessly almost every day that I walked. It was amazing that the emerging leaves and flowers weren't stripped from their stems. The drawings on the stones were completed on June 21, the summer solstice. This series of prints is an investigation of the spring cycle in the arroyo.

Regarding her 1999 project, Davidoff wrote:
The idea of a journey, and most often an actual walk or hike, is the genesis of much of my current work. My recent prints at Tamarind began with a series of walks in the Davis Mountains in West Texas. The grasses, bark, earth, clay, and plant materials collected on my walks from the basis of these lithographs. Earth and plant materials were rubbed into each sheet of paper before printing. These physical remnants of the walks serve for me as connections between personal experience and the finished work. The botanical images in each print are from the collection of Theodorus Clutius, a sixteenth-century Dutch pharmacist. They Contrast with the drawn forms and refer to the spirit of investigation and observation of the natural world.

Selected Exhibitions:
2000	Susan Davidoff/Rachelle Thiewes, Carrington Gallery Ltd., San Antonio, Texas Gardener's Delight, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Art by Women in the New Century, Union Exhibition Gallery, El Paso, Texas Five by Seven by X, Jones Center for Contemporary Art, Austin, Texas Print 2000, Las Cruces Museum of Fine Arts and Culture, New Mexico
1999	Beauty.Chaos, Adair Margo Gallery, El Paso, Texas Group Exhibition, Susan Conway Gallery, Washington, D.C. Lone Stars, Fresh Paint, Culver City, California Small Works Show, Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York City Refocus II-Contemporaries of the Great Southwest, El Paso Museum of Art, Texas
1998	Drawings and Paintings, Susan Street Fine Art, Solana Beach, California Visceral Intellect, Women and Their Work, Austin, Texas Refreshingly Unfamiliar, Tarrytown Gallery, Austin, Texas Refocus I - Contemporaries of the Great Southwest, El Paso Museum of Art, Texas
1997	Arroyo, Megan Fox Gallery, Santa Fe Bush Walk: Texas Realist Series, Museum of the Southwest, Midland, Texas Revelation, Dallas Visual Art Center (catalogue) Waterproof Wallet Art, The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Saint Joseph, Missouri Gallery Artists, Adair Margo Gallery, El Paso, Texas
Selected public collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Amarillo Art Center, Texas El Paso Museum of Art, Texas University of Texas, El Paso University Art Museum, University of New Mexico New York University Art Museum