Influential Artist Presentation

Evan Summer







Evan Summer is a contemporary printmaker who has spent over 35 years making prints. He completed his first degree in chemistry at New York College at Cortland before studying painting, printmaking and drawing at the University of Buffalo. It was during this time that he began making collagraphs. This process of building up materials led to Evan's interest in collage work. After completing his B.F.A., he attended graduate school at Yale University, where he started to focus on etching. He is currently a Professor at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.

Evan's work is influenced by his childhood, specifically his frequent trips to Niagara Falls with his parents. His etchings depict barren landscapes, often a mixture of man-made structures with nature. The images in his work come from the landscape surrounding the waterfalls and the nearby hydroelectric plants. Evan recalls childhood fears and dreams of being lost in an abandoned building or an unknown place. It is these memories and fears from childhood that have propelled him to create these unknown places that don't exist and seem to have been lost in time.

I feel compelled into these worlds that Evan has created. I am so fascinated by the emptiness in the landscape, yet there seems to be a desire for life, or a sense, at least that it once existed there. I respond deeply to the structures he creates, and the wonderful sense of light and dark that balances each image. There is a great depth and suggestion of eternity in his landscapes.

Evan's work is very precise and structured. His etchings often go through 10 to 20 stages, and he sometimes spends over a year working on a single plate. He works accurately and diligently, line by line. Although I do not have the same patience and precision with my work that Evan does, I have the same desire to create the places that I remember - both real and dreamlike. I really respond to Evan's influence for his work because I find that my influences also come from my childhood and the memory of home. I like this connection to the past and to the world that I lived in growing up. I am inspired by Evan's combination of reality with the imagined, and I hope to use that influence in my own work, to create my own spaces.