Eve Andrée Laramée explores the remarkable form of the river as shaped by human activity and cultural interpretation. In this installation, the gallery is suffused in yellow light and overtaken by a drifted mound of golden colored sugar, referring to the accumulated sediment on the river floor. This radiance was inspired by the Hudson River School paintings, such as Hudson River Scene, circa 1850, by John Bunyon Bristol, that idealizes the landscape and bathes the picturesque scene in a golden glow. In her initial research, Laramée looked at the river and its watershed “upside-down and sideways” and was drawn to benthic maps of the river bottom. The maps are created by scientists who profile the river floor with multi-beam acoustics, resulting in vibrantly colored maps that contain layers of information about the river floor. She also focuses on the sugar refinery site in the Ludlow section of the Yonkers shoreline. The sugar processing industry has been integral to the Yonkers economy since the mid-nineteenth century when the Hudson River painters were also drawn to the river. The factory site itself was the subject of realist painter Daniel Putnam Brinely. A digital print of his Hudson River View (Sugar Factory at Yonkers), 1915, is included along with a twenty-first century landscape image—a recent benthic map that shows the dredge channel created in November 2002 to provide shipping access to the site. A photograph of the site taken this summer is overlaid with commentary describing the contents of the dredged material.

Laramée’s installation adds a twenty-first century viewpoint to familiar images of the river produced by the Hudson River School painters. Another installment of her Fluid Geography series, the work exposes the underwater topography—the physical form of the region that is shaped by human activity, economics, ecology and politics. This activity is far from benign as the material removed through dredging is shifted from the riverbed to the ocean floor, along with the toxic substances it contains.

Eve Andrée Laramée wishes to thank John Ladd at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Dr. Roger Flood and Vicki Lynne Ferrini at SUNY Stony Brook for providing the benthic maps; the Hudson River Museum for the permission to use the images of the paintings in their collection; the McDowell Colony and Fairfield University for their support, and Laurie Kain, Rachel Goods and Luis Malconado for their assistance.

Eve Andrée Laramée is a sculptor and installation artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe, including exhibitions in New York, England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; the Museum of New Mexico Santa Fe; among other institutions.

She has taught sculpture and critical theory at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rhode Island School of Design, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She is currently the Director of the Visual Arts Program and Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Fairfield University.

In 2001 she was awarded a fellowship in Performance Art/Multidisciplinary Works from the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 1995 she received a regional NEA grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992 she was named the Guggenheim Museum Sculptor-in-Residence and received a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. She has also received awards from Art Matters, Inc, the Shifting Foundation, and the New Mexico Arts Council. Her work is included in the collections of the MacArthur Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, the Albuquerque Museum and in numerous other public and private collections. More information about her work may be found at www.home.earthlink.net/~wander/