Islas Encantadas Series: Materia Prima I

Michelle Stuart

1981

A quiet, tactile drawing that embeds actual Galápagos earth with graphite and a narrow strip of gelatin-silver seascape photographs to evoke a specific island place.

From afar it reads as a dark, textured panel set into a patchwork border, and up close a row of tiny high-contrast photos cuts a thin, luminous horizon across the rough, earthen surface.

By fusing site soil, drawing, and photography, Stuart blurred the line between document and object, extending drawing into environmental and material-based practice and offering a new way to record and commemorate landscape.

Palette

Art Terms

Gelatin silverprint (developing-out paper) Graphite Drawing Collage Landscape Found object Contemporary art

Exhibitions

Religious Folk Art of the Southwest

1943

Committed to Print

1988

Some American Prints, 1949–50, from the Museum Collection

1951

Sculpture and Sculptor's Drawings

1941