On a sunny day, the trees above the frames on the wall on Wooster Street dapple the art those frames contain. For the latest installment of Studio Duda’s outside art gallery — begun in May as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic — this interaction with nature is particularly apt.
In one of Zoe Matthiessen’s ink drawings, a bird feeds its young an insect, an unvarnished look at the beauty of natural forms and the casual predation that animals do. In another full-color illustration in the same frame, Matthiessen depicts a more disturbing image, of a bird hung from a tree branch, strangled by a twisted set of six-pack rings.
One form of death is part of nature; another is a crime against it. And if you look more closely, the crime continues. There’s trash woven into the nest in the first image. And the butterfly may be a plastic fake.
Ian Christmann Photo
Matthiessen.
Matthiessen has been exploring the relationship between humans and the natural environment in her art for years, with a distinctly political bent. “Deeply frustrated by the impact of corporate and political chaos upon our environment and society, Zoe Matthiessen rants with her dip pen, addressing topics that impact us all, such as plastic pollution, environmental deregulation, corporate greed, deforestation and corrupt politicians,” her accompanying bio states. Matthiessen’s choices of subject matter and the way she renders her images have garnered her an audience.
The New Haven-based artist is self-taught; her work appeared in the New Haven Independent starting in 2017. In 2018 Art New England magazine picked her as its top 10 emerging artists of that year and gave her an artist’s residency in 2019. Her work now appears regularly in The American Bystander and The Nation. Her work has been exhibited in the Yale Peabody Museum, the New Haven Lawn Club, Endicott College, and the SVA Chelsea Gallery. Her first children’s book, The Last Straw, will be published in North Atlantic Books in January 2021.
Matthiessen has collected her environmentalist art under the heading “Ecocide.” Not all of Matthiessen’s work makes an overt statement, however. Her “Outside” series is mostly landscapes, many recognizably in and around New Haven. If in “Ecocide” her work confronts the death of nature at the hands of humans, in “Outside” her linework captures the energy inherent in the natural world, the power of light, wind, and water, cycles of growth and decay, the movement happening all around us. Her landscapes are alive. In her “Creatures” series she shows a distinct knack for imbuing her animals with a sparkling, alert, personalities. Her drawings of people likewise capture their likeness and sometimes much more.
Studio Duda has set up the space on its studio front at 173 Wooster St. “in the hopes of bringing the arts back to our community in a difficult time,” the accompanying signage reads. Exhibitions of the prints are for sale, and “a portion of the sales will be donated to local businesses helping those of us in need.” Studio Duda’s mission and Matthiessen’s dovetail nicely, showing us how community support and environmental concerns can come from the same impulse. Both ask us to consider our place in the world, to think of ourselves as part of a greater whole — of humans and nature. In that sense, the decision to mix Matthiessen’s more overtly political work with her landscapes and portraits of animals makes a statement in itself. The more pointed pieces make a case for much greater stewardship of the natural world. The landscapes and portraits of animals show why we should do that; they illustrate the life we would be saving.