Leah Raintree

Clearing is a series of ceramic drawings using found materials from Raintree’s childhood home on a small farm in rural Virginia. The materials are connected to cyclical rituals associated with working with the land, including clearing gardens and fields between seasons. Working with iris ash, wood ash glaze, and Virginia clay soil, the works are meditations on these seasonal patterns and the transition from winter to spring. | 2020, 4 ½ x 9” each, iris ash, wood ash glaze, Virginia clay soil on porcelain

the landscape is not still is an exhibition that brings together projects that respond to sites ranging from alpine glaciers in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, early industries of clay-rich Maine, and the rural landscape of Virginia. Across the exhibition, materials from the earth are used in drawing methods that intersect with photographic and ceramic processes, allowing elements of light, time, scale, and atmosphere to influence final works. Central to the exhibition is the interrelationship between humanity and the planet, with an interest in attempts to fix, utilize, and frame the earth, and what escapes these frameworks of use and understanding. Leah Raintree: the landscape is not still was shown at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA in spring, 2020 and at Staniar Gallery at W&L University in Lexington, VA in 2022.

hand that breaks the weather is a series of gelatin silver prints that combine drawing and photographic processes that mimic glacial activity within the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The images are produced using regional sediment, stone and ice in a drawing process on large format negatives, with gestures of pressure, dragging, and depositing producing both a material residue and an image. The resulting drawings are used in an analog photographic process, allowing light, time, and enlargement to act as agents in the final work.  | 2019, 36 x 36" each, gelatin silver prints

Alberta is a series of ceramic drawings created during an artist residency at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. The drawings are glazed with Alberta clay slip, which produces glassy greens in oxygen rich kilns, and deep purples in kilns with reduced oxygen. Elements such as heat, time, and atmosphere become materials that complete the final works. The linework is produced by dragging found stones through a regional clay body, producing intimate, script-like passages that mimic the formation of the landscape. | 2019-2020, 9 ½ x 4 ⅝" each, Alberta slip on stoneware

the landscape is not still is a series of ceramic tablets that integrate drawing gestures with the physical properties and material history of clay. Impurities, breaks, and accidents are embraced as elements inherent to the process and become integral to the final works. | 2018-2019, 14 ¼  x 13 ¼” each, glazed stoneware

Another Land: After Noguchi is a photographic response to the works of Isamu Noguchi (1904–88), using light as a sculptural tool to cast Noguchi’s work as distant objects in space. The project takes its point of departure from a 1968 sculpture of the same name by Noguchi, engaging the collection at The Noguchi Museum alongside iconic images from the history of space exploration. | 2016, 24x36" each, archival pigment prints

Works from Another Land: After Noguchi were exhibited at The Noguchi Museum in 2016 - 17, curated by Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart and Associate Curator Matt Kirsch. Production for Another Land: After Noguchi was provided, in part, by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Pier 54, 68 Piles at Sunset is part of a High Line Commission of photographs documenting actions and performances staged on Pier 54, a now demolished pier on Manhattan's West Side. The exhibition Pier 54  is a tribute and reaction to Pier 18, an exhibition organized by Willoughby Sharp in 1971, with Pier 54 featuring actions staged by artists in 2014.  Like Pier 18, the actions completed for Pier 54 were not intended to be public, but were exhibited as photographs, completed in collaboration with photographer Liz Ligon.  In addition to the exhibition, works from Pier 54 were projected on the High Line during 2014-15.   For 68 Piles at Sunset, the sixty-eight piles alongside the north edge of the pier were photographed over the course of two and a half hours straddling the setting of the sun. The project began with Jan Dibbets’s sunset-based Pier 18 action as inspiration. By keeping the exposure time of each photograph consistent, the work achieved a subtle grayscale over the set of images. | 2014   Pier 54 Artists: Leonor Antunes, Rosa Barba, Francisca Benitez, Carol Bove, N. Dash, Liz Glynn, Sharon Hayes, Iman Issa, Margaret Lee, Maria Loboda, Marie Lorenz, Shana Lutker, Liz Magic Laser, Jill Magid, MPA, Virginia Overton, Leah Raintree, Emily Roysdon, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Aki Sasamoto, Xaviera Simmons, Mika Tajima, Andra Ursuta, Sara VanDerBeek, Allyson Vieira, Marianne Vitale, and Anicka Yi  | Photographs by Liz Ligon Download the Pier 54 Newspaper  

Powers of Ten is a series of lithographic prints produced at Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, responding to their collection of lithographic stones and the parameters of the printing process. Various forms of mark-making were used across each stone including striking, incising, tracing and cleaving, using powers of ten as a starting-point for each work. | 2014, 25 x 37 ¾" & 19x25", lithographic prints

Rockaway is a series of photographs taken as the beaches of Rockaway, Queens were remediated following Hurricane Sandy, excavating domestic and industrial materials embedded within the sand. | 2013, 20x30" each, archival pigment prints

On Force is a series of silver gelatin prints produced at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada through the process of breaking shale from the surrounding region directly onto photosensitive paper.  Shale is a sedimentary stone formed through compaction, a geologic process that takes several million years to occur. Completed in immediate succession, the series produces to scale records of the stone's transformation, rendering it’s sedimentary process in reverse. | 2012, 16x20" each, gelatin silver prints (unique)

Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) is a large-scale drawing produced using shale from the Marcellus Formation, a geologic unit that spans much of the Appalachian Basin. Formed 400 million years ago under an inland sea, contemporary associations with the formation revolve around natural resource extraction, with the work engaging the timescale and polarity of the material. The two-part work includes a 132 x 168" drawing and a newsprint of curated research on hydraulic fracturing available for public distribution. | 2012

Working and Walking in Space was a studio installation that existed for a period of six months. The installation began with a series of shale stones that were gradually broken down and dispersed as various forms of work and movement occurred within the space. | 2012

Shore was a site-specific installation at Building 110: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Arts Center at Governors Island, for the exhibition No One is an Island, curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud. Building debris from recently demolished milatary barracks were installed beneath the gallery windows. Intended as landfill for newly designed parkland, the debris created a shoreline that met the view of the Hudson River and Lower Manhattan beyond. | 2011

Governors Island and Squamish, BC, Archival inkjet prints, 16 x 16 in (2011)  

8,807 is a series of photographs documenting the transformation of a granite boulder, recording the interaction between the stone and a masonry hammer. | 2010, 20x20", archival pigment print

A Falling Rock, A Thrown Rock is a photograph documenting a stone and it’s impact after being thrown against a wall. The title references Aristotle's use of a falling rock and a thrown rock to distinguish natural and violent motion. | 2010, 16x20", archival pigment print