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Sue ChenowethPredator and Prey
Ted Decker Catalyst Space
Bragg’s Pie Factor y
Phoenix, Arizona
Febr uar y 6 –
March 8, 2009
Predator and Prey - Recent Work by Sue Chenoweth
The horrific death of an eccentric naturalist by grizzly
bears in Alaska; great white sharks shredding apart
seals and sea lions near San Francisco’s nearby Farallon Islands and
baited off Mexico’s Isla de Guadalupe; shipwrecked 19th century whalers
forced to eat their own shipmates for survival; old lunatic asylums in which
patients are put on display and “cured” by architecture and the “ordered”
beauty of nature. These are the odd inspirations for a prodigious number
of mixed media paintings produced by artist Sue Chenoweth, presented in
this exhibition under the rubric of "Predator and Prey.”
by Kathleen Vanesian
Though sparked by seemingly disparate
subjects, these paintings, which the artist
refers to as “dioramas both representational
and non-representational at the same
time,”1 are strangely and inextricably
interconnected, in much the same way that
predation – the biological interaction of one
organism feeding on another – is inevitably
linked to evolutionary survival and ecological
balance. Chenoweth's dazzling, but dark,
pieces plunge unwaveringly into the
indifferent, primordial power of nature and
its inherently destructive beauty. All deal
with the highly fluid boundaries between
predator and prey that have always existed
in the cosmos, boundaries that switch
directions with tidal regularity.
Produced over the last three years, the
visually and philosophically complex
paintings appearing in “Predator and Prey”
encapsulate the eternal encounter between
man and nature, devoid of moral judgment
or human constructs of good and evil.
Chenoweth's paintings acknowledge that,
even though man cannot resist
anthropomorphizing other creatures and
nature itself, nature is quintessentially
amoral and completely out of man's control.
Nature is neither good nor bad, heroic nor
demonic, rational nor insane. According to
literary critic Vereen M. Bell, “[w]hat we call
nature is an amoral process in which, at
any level, the strong prey upon the weak in
order to survive. The amorality of that
process is what makes nature work. It
cannot work in any other way and certainly
not in a moral way.”2
Nature simply is and often, in the raw
fear and abhorrence it engenders in
humans, it can manifest awesome and
unimaginable beauty, like that wrought by
raging wildfires, devastating ice storms or
the crimson aftermath of a seal kill. This
theme of profound beauty in destruction and
death, at once pleasing, fascinating and
hideous, threads its way through
Chenoweth’s most recent oeuvre, as do
motifs of risk, obsession, ritual and chaos,
all of which underlay the stories the artist
drew upon to create these works.
Chronologically, the images in
“Predator and Prey” begin with
Chenoweth’s fascination with the shocking
(and controversial) death of “Grizzly Man”
Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie
Hueguenard, in 2003 in Katmai National
Park in the Upper Kaflia Lake area of
Alaska, a remote location teeming with
grizzly bears. While Treadwell is known to
have suffered from cer tain mental
disorders, he was considered a basically
kindhear ted, though obsessively
passionate bear activist committed to the
preser vation of these animals and believed
he had a unique bond with them. He had,
for 13 years, spent summers videotaping
bears in their natural habitat in preparation
for a documentar y film. Other field
researchers note that Treadwell's
irresponsible risk-taking with regard to
these wild animals, including singing and
reading poetr y to bears close by, naming
them and even petting one on the nose,
was highly dangerous.3
Ultimately, Treadwell became a direct
victim of his own fixation with and love for
grizzlies. He was discovered decapitated
and partially eaten by one of them, while his
girlfriend was found completely
dismembered and buried in a cache created
by the bear to store her remains for later
consumption.
Mesmerized by a Katmai Park ranger's
expert reconstruction of the deaths,
Chenoweth produced Upper Lake Kaflia
(2006), the first of three abstracted,
cartographic images drawn and painted
solely from memory after extensive
researching of the Treadwell case.
Reminiscent of an old treasure map, the
piece – crisscrossed with undulating bear
paths and using innocuous materials like
flocking, model railroad turf, Letraset
transfers4 and pompons – compresses the
events of Treadwell and Hueguenard's
fateful demise into one temporal dimension.
It includes the site of the bear’s cache – a
grizzly's form of treasure trove – in which
parts of Treadwell’s companion were
covered with dirt, leaves and plants. In
Cache: Not to Scale (2006), the artist
enlarged the bear’s cache imagery,
referencing dismembered body parts,
encircled by T-shaped line drawings that
eerily foreshadow the architectural markings
representing cells in historic lunatic
asylums, a subject in which Chenoweth
would immerse herself two years later. The
final piece in the trilogy is entitled Timothy
Treadwell (2007), a turbulent,
impressionistic melange of biomorphic
shapes, figures and smears for which the
viewer is compelled to supply his own
meanings and associations. All three
paintings dealing with Treadwell suggest
maps and architectural renderings of not
only the physical events leading to the
victims’ deaths, but also simultaneous
tracings of the vivid psychological landscape
of victims, artist and viewer.
Later, Chenoweth would research other
subjects dealing with predator/prey death
narratives involving humans pitted against
not only creatures of the wild, but against
themselves as well. Farallon Islands (2006),
a bird's-eye view of jagged, incisor-like
islands off the coast of San Francisco that
are home to great white sharks, was the
result of the artist reading a book by a
woman writer infatuated with great white
sharks.5 In it, the author poetically
documented her journey to and stay on the
virtually uninhabited Farallons, which she
describes as “the spookiest, wildest place
on earth,” to witness great whites being
studied by two research biologists. Farallon
Islands graphically describes the topographic
extremities of these rugged, rocky
projections, as well as the author’s course
on both the islands and in surrounding
waters where she witnessed the sharks
violently attacking and feeding on seals and
sea lions living in the area. Again,
Chenoweth plucks her imagery and
chronology solely from remnants of her
personal memories of the book and maps
contained therein, expanding her recall of
striking descriptions of a seal kill by a shark
in Great White Seal Kill (2007), in which a
bloom of blood red oozes outwards toward
organically shaped blue forms evoking
fleeing seals or perhaps their shadows.
In October of 2007, the artist would
eventually indulge her own obsession with
great white sharks and her personal need
to, in effect, become prey to understand the
primeval interchange between predator and
prey. During a 5-day diving expedition off
the coast of Baja California’s Isla de
Guadalupe, she and other divers watched
sharks underwater from a steel diving cage.
According to Chenoweth, this trip”...was
structured like an ancient myth – I was the
hero leaving home to conquer the monster
and the monster is not the monster. I was
the monster.”6 To the artist, the sharks she
encountered while in her viewing cage were
more like curious dogs and were not
frightening in the least. Of course, such
inevitable anthropomorphizing ignores the
wholly wild nature of these 15-foot
creatures, who, without warning, could
instantly turn into fearsomely brutal
predators.7
From her diving experience, she
produced two large-scale paintings. In Scad
Mackerel and Great White (2007), the artist
captures the balletic fluidity of schools of
fish feeding in a colorful confetti-like burst
and the utter serenity of her underwater
surroundings, which are juxtaposed against
representations of out-of-control wildfires
near San Diego that raged on shore during
her trip. “Let Fish in the Sea Inform You”
(2008) gracefully pairs stylized “hookah
hoses” (diver’s air tubes) and tightly
rendered, faceted jewels against subtle
shark shapes slicing through the upper and
lower quadrants of the painting’s
background.
Water-related predation appears again
in a series of pieces informed by the artist’s
keen interest in a book written about an
iconic early 19th century whaling expedition,
during which the Essex, an American whaling
ship from Nantucket, was rammed
repeatedly and sank by an 80-ton sperm
whale in the Pacific waters off South
America.8 A story of mythic proportions, the
tale of the Essex was as well-known in its
day as the sinking of the Titanic, and one
that actually inspired Herman Melville's
classic novel, Moby Dick.
After the destruction of their ship,
which had carried live giant sea tor toises
captured in the Galapagos Islands by the
sailors for food, sur vivors escaped into
three small lifeboats. All but five escapees
in two boats slowly died or were killed and
eaten while afloat for over three months.
George Pollard, the ship's captain, and his
first mate, Charles Ramsdell, were found
floating off the coast of Chile, hysterically
clutching the finger bones of their
deceased comrades; they were never to
fully recover from the psychic disintegration
caused by their sur vival cannibalism and its
social aftermath.
While the whalers were the original
predators in this true sea saga, the hunted
sperm whale eventually morphs from prey to
predator. In one continuously shifting cycle,
the surviving sailors change course again to
become predators upon themselves,
ritualistically drawing straws to determine
which survivor would be killed and consumed
and which would be required to kill.
Titles assigned to the Essex paintings
are the keys to unlocking Chenoweth's
expressionistic renderings of the gruesome
narrative. The Last Voyage of the Whale
Ship Essex, 1819 (2007) is yet another
cartographic depiction of the artist’s
recollection of the story’s circumstances,
compacted into one spatial/temporal plane,
much the way the human brain processes
different levels of information all at once.9
The terrifying chaos of the ship’s collision
with the rampaging whale permeates The
Ramming of the Whale Ship Essex (2007),
while dark, ciliated ocean currents
resembling microscopic organisms and
bone-shaped forms against a starry sky are
the focal points of “Where in the Bottomless
Depths Could He Find His Brother,” M.D.?
(2007). The most despairing image in the
series is Pollard and Ramsdell on the 94th
Day, February 23, 1821 (2007), named for
the day upon which the starving men were
found by a passing ship. The painting
features two ghostly specters facing each
other in a boat, the bottom of which is
splotched with red, drifting against the
blackness of both sea and star-pocked
night sky.
Chenoweth’s last paintings related to
predatory behavior use concepts attached to
architecture of 19th century insane asylums,
whose palatial exteriors and ordered
patterns belie the pathos, captivity and
mental disarray of those living within their
confines. Using The Architecture of
Madness: Insane Asylums in the United
States by architectural historian Carla Yanni10
as a reference source, the artist produced a
number of small paintings connected to the
post-Enlightenment psychiatric theory that
the special shallow V-shaped architecture
favored for lunatic asylums, in and of itself,
had healing properties and that placing such
asylums in idyllic pastoral settings was
especially curative, propositions that
blatantly ignore the wild indifference and
brutality inherent in nature.11
Used for centuries, the terms lunatic
and insane historically had included the
mentally ill or handicapped, the senile and
the physically deformed, whose typical
treatment consisted of being chained to
walls or manacled naked in filthy, dank
prison-like conditions. Fighting the irrational
and amoral (in the sense of an absence of
good or evil) conditions presented by the
insane with the rationality of architecture,
pristinely planned landscaping and what was
considered “moral treatment,” though light
years ahead of old treatment methods more
akin to torture, goes against the very grain
of survival and selection inherent in nature.
Bethlehem Hospital (2008) is artist Sue
Chenoweth’s interpretation of Bethlem
Hospital, Europe’s oldest and most
notorious asylum. Founded in 1247 as the
Priory of St. Mary of Bethlem in London, it
was initially dedicated to raising funds for
the Order of Bethlehem, which sent
crusaders to the Holy Land. By the 15th
century, it was not only taking in plague
victims and indigent sick people, but the
insane as well; new quarters, palatial in
outer appearance, were constructed in 1674
and became one of the great tourist
attractions of London.12 In the 18th century,
Bethlem became a freak side show and
human zoo, with guests giving donations to
gape at both its inmates and architecture.13
The word “bedlam,” a synonym for both
madhouse and pandemonium, was derived
from Bethlem Hospital's egregious
conditions.
Chenoweth portrays the institution as a
frenzied, hallucinatory warren with
transparent walls flanked by two trees of
outsized proportions, teeming with Letraset
starbursts and set against a blue circular
vortex. Neon orange and yellow paint
explode in the foreground, producing the
visual equivalent of nails on chalkboard.
Bethlehem Hospital is a place located
somewhere between Disneyland and
dementia. The psychosis continues in
Bedlam (2008), in which trees seem to
march in a neat, organized row in the
painting’s foreground, while 1930’s cartoon
character, Piggy Hamhock, is strapped into a
machine resembling an electric chair that
force feeds him, a well-known scene from a
1937 Merrie Melodies cartoon, Pigs is Pigs.
The archetypal asylum inmate, Piggy
represents hapless prey being force fed the
idea of the curative power of nature, like a
goose being fattened for a fine pâté de fois
gras. Evocative of Vincent van Gogh's Trees
in the Asylum Garden, Chenoweth’s Walking
Towards Bethlehem (2008) focuses on a
path leading to an asylum in the distance,
lined on either side by trees that stand at
attention like soldiers; the path might well
be a reformative gauntlet through which a
patient must allegedly pass to ultimately
reach the asylum and, metaphorically, sanity.
In I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff (2008), leering
cartoon wolves, executed in shaky,
nightmarish black lines, threaten to destroy
the soothing architectural symmetry of an
asylum’s walls, as a woman weeps into her
hands, while another frantically rips her hair
out. In the background, two figures are
splayed against the mullions of dual arched
windows; it is unclear whether they have
been chained to the windows or are
desperately trying to escape.
Caricatured figures also play prominent
roles in both Ship of Fools (2008) and Hero
Fools (2008), both of which feature a
boatload of donkey-eared fools adrift on
tormented seas. This prototypical imagery,
popularly repeated throughout art history, is
borrowed from a woodcut – thought to be
carved by Albrecht Dürer in his youth –
illustrating a 15th century poem, published
in 1494 and entitled “Das Narrenschiff,” or
“Ship of Fools,” by German humanist
Sebastian Brant. In this famously moralistic
poem, Brant describes 110 sundry human
vices and follies, each assigned to a
different fool. A recurrent theme in the
poem is that of a ship carrying all the
assembled fools the poet mentions to
Narragonia, the island of fools. In his 1961
treatise, Madness and Civilization, French
philosopher and social critic Michel Foucault
rejects the usual position that the Ship of
Fools was pure metaphor and makes the
unsubstantiated claim that during the Middle
Ages, real ships were loaded with actual
lunatic cargo and set adrift.14
The artist's final piece, The Hero’s
Dance (2008) come full circle, referencing
numerous elements from other paintings in
a final frenetic victory dance, including shark
teeth, fire, water, remnants of topographical
imagery and the circular blue vortex that
appears frequently in Chenoweth’s asylum
pieces. Drawn from the predator's
perspective, the image contains a brilliant
burst of serrated white teeth carnivorously
devouring a mix of narrative details,
reminiscent of the voracious whale in the
biblical tale of Jonah. In the final swallow,
both predator and prey will both inevitably
meet their ends.
In the compelling work she has created
for “Predator and Prey,” artist Sue
Chenoweth removes the lens of morality that
tints, then taints, experience, one through
which most people have been conditioned to
view unexpurgated nature. Her paintings
unsentimentally disinter and examine the
aesthetic lure of primal events and forces,
chaotic elements forged into the unbroken
chain of sex, birth and death. Though
elegantly abstracted, they are not unlike the
grotesquely romantic photographs of JoelPeter Witkin, at once exquisite and
horrifying. Chenoweth’s unforgettable
paintings have baited and snared the savage
beauty born in the ceaseless cycle of raw
survival.
1 Recorded interview with Sue Chenoweth, November 4, 2008.
A diorama is a picture or series of pictures representing a
continuous scene or a partially three-dimensional life-size
replica or to-scale model of a landscape typically showing
historical events, nature scenes or cityscapes.
2 Vereen M. Bell, Yeats and the Logic of Formalism
(Columbia: U. of Missouri Press, 2006), pp. 34-35.
5 See, Susan Casey, The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of
Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks
(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2005)
6 Recorded interview with Sue Chenoweth, November 4, 2008.
7 Ibid.; the artist does note, however, that during the trip
following hers in November, 2008, a disoriented shark
managed to tear the diver's cage apart. For details of this
harrowing experience as described by the two divers involved,
as well as video footage of the incident taken by them, see
Mike Celizic, "Rage in a Cage" at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28174468/
8 See Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy
of the Whaleship Essex (New York: Viking Press, 2000).
9 Recorded interview with Sue Chenoweth, November 4, 2008.
10 Carla Yanni, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums
in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press 2007).
11 During the 1800s, a major cause of insanity was thought to
be civilization itself: "Thus the insane hospital, which on one
hand symbolized the progressiveness of a civilized nation, also
announced the corruption caused by industrialization,
urbanization, and the quest for profit...Nineteenth century
thinkers believed that civilization caused insanity through a
subtle process of mental disease preying upon society's
weakest individuals. Ibid, p. 3.
12 Ibid., pp. 17-18.
3 For further details surrounding the death of Treadwell and the
ensuing documentary, see James Owen, “’Grizzly Man’ Movie
Spurs New Looks at a Grisly Death" for National Geographic
News at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/
news/2005/08/0812_050812_grizzly_man.html
4 Letraset is a generic term applied to rub-on graphic art
symbols very popular with graphic designers and artists in precomputerized graphics days; Letraset is the name of the
company who produces these transfers, which are still
available today.
13 Ibid., p. 20.
14 Ibid., p. 10.
E xh ib i t ion Checklist
R e s u me
Born in Plainview, Texas, 1953; lives and
works in Phoenix, Arizona
EDUCATION
1998
M.F.A. The Katherine K. Herberger School of
Art, Arizona State University, Tempe
1994
B.F.A. The Katherine K. Herberger School of
Art, ASU, Tempe
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009
Sue Chenoweth - Predator and Prey, Ted
Decker Catalyst Space, Bragg’s Pie Factory,
Phoenix.
2007
From Our House to Yours, Stark Gallery,
Phoenix.
2005
The Rich Man, Cue Art Foundation, New
York, New York. Curated by Susan Krane.
2004
Hold Your Cards, eyelounge, Phoenix.
2003
Presence, eyelounge, Phoenix.
Sue Chenoweth, Modified Arts, Phoenix.
Tantivey, eyelounge, Phoenix.
2002
Conundrum, Main Street Gallery,
Cottonwood, AZ
Sue Chenoweth: New Work, Modified Arts,
Phoenix.
2000
Articulate With Tongue Tied Tendencies,
@Central Gallery, Phoenix.
Triangle Paintings, Modified Arts, Phoenix.
1998
What the Soul Would Speak, ASU Harry
Wood Gallery, Tempe
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2008
Pushing Paint Around, Scottsdale Museum
of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), Scottsdale.
Ides of March, ABC No Rio, New York.
Cold Sweat, Brooks Barrow Gallery,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
2007
Modified 15, Cattle Track Studios, Scottsdale.
Cue 5, Cue Art Foundation, New York.
2006
Bergman, Chenoweth and Marill: De-natured,
The Icehouse, Phoenix.
New American City: Artists Look Forward,
Arizona State University Art Museum,
Tempe.
Recent Acquisitions, Part I, SMoCA,
Scottsdale.
2005
Les Petites, eye lounge, Phoenix.
Home, ARC Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
2004
Garage S, Collective Gesture Group, Phoenix.
2003
You STILL Draw Like a Girl, 6th Street
Studios, Phoenix.
Drawn, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson.
$99 Show, Irvine Center for the Arts,
Irvine, California.
6 x 6, eyelounge, Phoenix.
Arizona Biennial ’03, Tucson Museum of Art,
Tucson.
2002
Group Exhibition, ASU Art Museum, Tempe.
Sue Chenoweth and Helen Padilla, Main
Street Gallery, Cottonwood.
Private Eyes, Out North Gallery, Anchorage,
Alaska.
2001
Group Exhibition, Main Street Gallery,
Cottonwood.
2000
The Gallery Space at Pro Arts Grace Van
Vorst, Jersey City, NJ.
1999
Cups ’99, Mesa Contemporary Arts, Mesa
Arts Center, Mesa, Arizona.
Arizona Biennial 1999, Tucson Museum of
Art, Tucson.
1998
You Draw Like a Girl, ASU Downtown Center
Galleria, Phoenix.
1997
Painters Invitational. Memorial Union Gallery,
ASU, Tempe.
7th Biennial 7-States, Dinnerware
Contemporary Art Gallery, Tucson.
SELECTED PUBLIC ART
2006
Solar Continuum, a Gallery 37 Project,
West Valley Arts. Collaborative
Mosaicsundial for the Avondale Public
Library, Avondale, AZ
2004
Little Doors, Phoenix Office of Arts and
Culture, temporary public art project,
Phoenix
2003
Word House, Wikki Stix installation, Tempe
Public Library, Tempe.
Espiral, a Gallery 37 Project, West Valley
Arts. Collaborative spiral-shaped mosaic
resting space for Verrado, AZ
Back Wall City, Art Mentor Program Project,
3-D mosaic, Phoenix
(with Melinda Bergman).
2002
Totem Poles, Art Mentor Program Project,
3-D mosaic, Phoenix (with Melinda Bergman)
Cloud City: Across the Edge of Ordinary,
Artist-designed Transit Shelter, City of Tempe
Public Art Program, Tempe.
(with Nina Solomon)
Circadian Rhythm, a Gallery 37 Project,
West Valley Arts. Collaborative painting on
aluminum for exterior of Boys and Girls Club,
Avondale.
Animal Tree, Child Care Center, Phoenix
Office of Arts and Culture, Phoenix.
Powder coated steel, ceramic tile.
From the Earth’s Imagined Four Corners,
Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, Phoenix.
Mosaic and cement resting space.
(with Nina Solomon)
2001
Recyclamation, a Gallery 37 Project,
West Valley Arts, Water Reclamation Center,
Goodyear, AZ.
Reading Rock Wall, hand made mosaic,
Sunnyslope Elementary School, Phoenix.
1999
Arcadia Passages, handmade mosaic wall,
Arcadia Neighborhood Learning Center,
Scottsdale.(with Nina Solomon)
1998
The Never-ending Journey,
intergenerational public art project,
ceramic tile mural, Shadow Rock Church,
Phoenix.
(with Nina Solomon)
1997
Habitat for Learning, learning environment,
Sunnyslope Elementary School, Phoenix
(with Laurie Lundquist)
Take Someone’s Hand, mosaic tile mural,
Beatitudes Agelink, intergenerational
child development center, Beatitudes
Campus of Care, Phoenix.
(with Nina Solomon)
1996
Prima Vera, mosaic tile mural,
Sunnyslope Elementary School, Phoenix.
(with Nina Solomon)
FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS AND AWARDS:
2009
Legacy Investment Grant,
Ted Decker Catalyst Fund, Phoenix.
2008
Inaugural Monoprint Project Grant,
Ensemble DevMan of Arizona, Phoenix.
2006
Creative Capital retreat recipient.
Artist Project Grant,
Arizona Commission on the Arts,
Phoenix.
2005
Artist Career Advancement Grant,
Arizona Commission on the Arts, Phoenix.
Studio recipient, Cue Art Foundation,
New York.
2004
Professional Development Grant,
Arizona Commission on the Arts, Phoenix.
Studio recipient, Cue Art Foundation,
New York.
2000
Contemporary Forum Artist Materials
Fund Grant, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix.
Professional Development Grant,
Arizona Commission on the Arts, Phoenix.
1998
Research Travel Grant,
ASU School of Art, Tempe.
Research Travel Grant,
ASU Herberger College of Fine Art, Tempe.
1997
Graduate Research Support Grant,
ASU Graduate College, Tempe.
J.E. Rise Award for Excellence in Painting,
ASU School of Art, Tempe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2009
Vanesian, Kathleen, Sue Chenoweth Predator and Prey. Exhibition catalog essay.
2008
Coates, Bill, State Grants Pave way For
Arizona Artist, Arizona Capital Times,
September 12.
Fusaro, Joe, Art 21 Blog, Storytelling,
October 8, http://blog.art21.org/author/joefusaro/page/2/
Fusaro, Joe, Art 21 Blog, Mining for Ideas:
Sketchbook to Installation, October 1,
http://blog.art21.org/2008/10/01/miningideas-part-3-from-sketchbook-to-installation/
Vanesian, Kathleen, SMoCA’s Pushing Paint
Around, Phoenix New Times, June 10.
2007
Andrews, Scott, Contemporary Arts in
Arizona, Here and Now,
HearSight Magazine.]HH h
2006
Novelli, Jo, ‘2 for 1: Denatured,’
http://pjnovelli.blogs.com/2_for_1/2006/1
1/denatured.html
New American City: Artists Look Forward,
Arizona State University Art Museum,
exhibition catalog.
Inaugural Member Artist Catalog,
eye lounge - a contemporary art space,
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson.
MacKay, Jill, Creative Garden Mosaics,
New York, New York: Lark Books,
2003, pages 9 & 157.
2006.
Holden, Wynter, Natural Instincts: The
Mother of Invention, Phoenix New Times,
November
Arizona, 21st Century City, Booth-Cillborn
Editions, London, England/Abrams, New
York, 2006.
Lyons, Joel, 944 Magazine. October
Holden, Wynter, Urban Evolution,
Phoenix New Times, October 26.
Kenney, Rich, Artist’s Canvas Mind Games
Granted a Room-sized Wish,
The Arizona Republic, March 25.
2004
Cavallo-Collins, Gina, Renewing the Resolve,
Downtown Phoenix Magazine, November.
Silverman, Amy, Tour de Force,
Phoenix New Times, March 4.
2005
Silverman, Amy, Out of the Box: On Seeing
and Healing, Phoenix New Times, October 6.
Naves, Mario, Small Charms, The New York
Observer, February 28, page 18.
The Artists Initiative Public Art Projects
Catalog, City of Phoenix Office of Arts
and Culture.
Vanesian, Kathleen, Girls Uninterrupted,
Phoenix New Times, October 9-15, page 51.
Arizona Biennial ‘03, catalog,
2002
Sussman Susser, Deborah, Do Pho Is Go,
Phoenix New Times, December 12-18,
page 61.
Morris, Paul, State of the Art, an Iinterview
with SMoCA Director Susan Krane,
Valley Guide Quarterly (summer), page 53.
Bloomston, Carrie, The Sounds of Existence:
Sue Chenoweth At Modified,
Shade Magazine, June, pages 30-31.
Cover, Art Detour Guide, March.
Cover, Downtown Phoenix Magazine,
January.
Hunter, Sherrie Warner, Creating with
Concrete. New York, New York: Lark Books,
2001, pages 11 & 143.
Martin, Forrest, Up My Alley,
Downtown Phoenix Magazine, April.
Vanesian, Kathleen, The Magnificent
Obsessive: Valley Artist Sue Chenoweth,
Phoenix New Times, February 15-21,
pages 61-62.
1999
Rose, Joshua, Cups Runneth Over,
Get Out Magazine (Mesa Tribune),
October 7, Page 13.
TEACHING
2002 - Present
Metropolitan Arts Institute, Phoenix, college
prep visual and performing arts high school,
Advanced Visual Arts.
AFFILIATIONS
Collective Gesture
eyelounge, Phoenix, past member
Cue Art Foundation, New York
Metropolitan Arts Institute
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary
Arts, Artist Advisory Board member
The Artist Space: The Irving Sandler Artist File
Artregister
Sue Chenoweth – Predator and Prey
ISBN 978-1-60743-401-6
Exhibition Curator and Catalog Editor:
Ted G. Decker
Sponsors of the Exhibition and Catalog:
Ellyce and Eddie Shea
Randy McGrane,
Ensemble DevMan of Arizona
Ted G. Decker/Ted Decker Catalyst Fund
Catalog essay by Kathleen Vanesian
Published in conjunction with the exhibition
of the same title by Sue Chenoweth,
Ted G. Decker, and Ted Decker Catalyst
Publications
Copyright ©2009 Sue Chenoweth and
Ted G. Decker
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any known or
unknown information storage and retrieval
system without advance written permission
from the publishers.
Catalog Design: Eddie Shea,
Eddie Shea Design, Phoenix, Arizona
Photography: Aaron Abbott, Sue Chenoweth
Printed by: Prisma Graphic Corp,
Phoenix, Arizona
Acknowledgements:
Amy Frentz, Curatorial Assistant
Beatrice Moore and Tony Zahn
Chico Fernandes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Eddie Shea, Eddie Shea Design, Phoenix
Ensemble DevMan of Arizona, Phoenix
Joan Prior and John Armstrong,
Armstrong-Prior, Inc., Phoenix
José Freitas, New York, NY
Kathleen and Richard Vanesian
Lisa MacCollum, LisaMac Design, Phoenix
Marcos Dana, DUREX ARTE
CONTEMPORÂNEA, Rio de Janeiro
Neil Borowicz, argo, Phoenix
Sandy Long, Armstrong-Prior, Inc., Phoenix
Sue Chenoweth:
srchenoweth@yahoo.com
www.schenoweth.com
Ted G. Decker:
ted@tedgdecker.com
www.tedgdecker.com