(Posted April 8, 2013)

The art of Evan Summer is on display in "Unknown Landscapes" at the Juniata College Museum of Art from Thursday, April 18 through Sept. 7.
The art of Evan Summer is on display in "Unknown Landscapes" at the Juniata College Museum of Art from Thursday, April 18 through Sept. 7.

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Throughout most of history, the landscape painting or image has been used to reflect the essence of a real place. The art of Evan Summer, on display in "Unknown Landscapes" at the Juniata College Museum of Art from Thursday, April 18 through Sept. 7, takes imagery grounded in a sense of place but uses fragmented parts in art prints to create real, but also unreal, landscapes.

The exhibit is a solo show for Summer, who is professor of art at Kutztown, University specializing in printmaking. The museum will hold a reception for the exhibition at 5 p.m., Thursday, April 18 at the museum.

Before the reception at 4 p.m., Summer will give a lecture on "Landscapes, Nocturnes and Pigs" in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science, followed by the 5 p.m. reception.

As a printmaker, Summer creates many of his works using collagraphy, a technique that allows the artist to create a single printing plate from a collage of many different plates. His interest in science and mathematics provides an opportunity to create new landscapes using images from existing landforms.

A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Summer often incorporates images he recalls from seeing Niagara Falls from above as well as structures that recall hydroelectric plants he saw in the industrial city of Buffalo and near Niagara Falls. The resulting images have a dark feeling of forbidden areas or abstract blueprints.

"Evan Summer has created an impressive volume of work that is dominated by nocturnal landscapes of austere power."

Eric Denker, curator of prints at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Summer's work in collography began in the 1970s. Collograph plates are built up like a collage and are then printed like an etching. He has exhibited his work in more than 100 national and international exhibitions. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1993.

"Evan Summer has created an impressive volume of work that is dominated by nocturnal landscapes of austere power," writes Eric Denker, curator of prints at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. "His prints offer remarkable visual testimony to the conflict between the elements of nature and of human creation. Though seemingly unpopulated, they are permeated by evidence of man's presence, represented by monumental structures in various states of decay."

Summer earned a bachelor's degree in fine art from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and went on to earn a master's degree in fine art in 1975 from Yale University. In 1984, he was hired at Kutztown.

He is a renowned printmaker and has earned solo art exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Reading (Pa.) Public Museum, the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Guanlan International Printmaking Workshop in Guanlan, China.

He received Tai-he masterpiece Award from the Beijing International Print Biennial. At Kutztown, he received the Wiesenberger Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Carlton Chambliss Award, for outstanding research.

His work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.