Separation and Renewal

About the Work

From the Artist

I was offered a Brandywine Workshop residency in April 2020, just after the Covid-19 pandemic began spreading through the Philadelphia region. My lithograph, Separation and Renewal, was inspired in part by the Crum Woods, one of the last forested areas in Delaware County, PA, and a refuge for many during this era of social distancing.

Over the last 30 years, I have seen this landscape impacted by highway construction, boundary walls, graffiti, and runoff. In 2016, wooded areas along a floodplain were clear-cut in order to reconstruct a train overpass. When conservationists replanted the area, they encased saplings in plastic tubes in order to protect them from deer and other fauna. Sometimes, at dusk, the tubes along the floodplain can look like tombstones. At other times, the tubes seem to catch fire with sunlight or overflow with new growth. During the early months of the pandemic, I began to sketch these tubes as well as other features in the landscape. As I did so, shocking images were crowding the news: people on ventilators dying of Covid, wildfires raging on the West Coast, George Floyd suffocating in police custody, and Black Lives Matter protests throughout the country.

Amid the disturbing parade of imagery, President Trump’s border wall stood out as a metaphor for the politics of division. From the relative safety of the Crum Woods, I imagined a different kind of mindset—one that can both redress suffering and cultivate renewal. I work primarily in collage: painting, cutting, tearing, and recombining varied materials, often adhering them to carved wood panels. I improvise and experiment, searching for resonant images, evocative relationships, and layered surfaces that evoke nature’s beauty and complexity. As a quilter for more than 30 years, I have also been especially interested in fabric, patterns, and women's craft traditions that reflect the interconnection of nature and culture.

Separation and Renewal is based on a collage sketch I created using photographic elements, prints, painted papers, and scraps of fabric with floral patterning and bold stitching. After completing the collage, I traced essential elements of the composition onto a sheet of Mylar, creating a template and color guide for Nicole Donnelly to use when making the paper for my print edition. I selected warm white, grey, and red pigments and asked Nicole to apply the pulp using a combination of methods that would animate the print with specificity, liquidity, and dynamism. I also traced different components of my collaged sketch to create three Mylar layers—one for each color used in the print (yellow ochre, red, and blue). As I did so, I consulted often with Galen Gibson, who used the Mylar layers to create lithography plates and masterfully printed them at his studio in Northern Liberties.

 Early on in this process, I departed from my initial concept and experimented with lithographic pencils and inks. I hoped to create a varied ecosystem of textures, from puddles of brushed ink and acid-lift erasures to staccato areas of cross hatching, sprayed textures, and meandering lines inspired by embroidery. Like other artists completing Brandywine residencies during the Covid-19 pandemic, I primarily worked in my own studio. However, I was fortunate to meet not only with Nicole Donnelly and Galen Gibson, but also with Allan Edmunds and Gustavo Garcia at Brandywine Workshop. I am especially grateful to all of them for their expertise and generous support.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records

Andrea Packard's Separation and Renewal was inspired by Crum Woods, the last forested area in Delaware County, PA. The landscape absorbed highway construction, graffiti, new buildings, and walls within the previous 30 years. Areas were cleared and conservationists replanted trees. Encased saplings in plastic tubes began to look like tombstones as the pandemic seized the lives of more than five million people worldwide, and the loss of Black Lives inspired protests all over the globe.
_{—Halima Taha, from Pigment of the Soul: Visiting Artist Prints, 2019–2021 (2022) exhibition catalog: https://brandywineworkshopandarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Pigment-of-the-Soul-catalog.pdf, accessed 4-27-2022}