Holly Sumner
Luminescent Radiolaria

Mixed Greens is thrilled to present Luminescent Radiolaria, a site-specific window installation by Holly Sumner. Known for her work that often combines informational diagrams with depictions of a living organism, Sumner will present large-scale ink drawings of Radiolaria on translucent logarithmic paper for each of the three windows on 26th street.

In her past work, Sumner has explored the poetic relationship between various forms of abstraction using natural history compendiums, field guides, and old zoology textbooks as a source of inspiration. Both the images and scientific data from these sources inform the structure and composition of the work. Drawings of an enlarged living organism such as plankton or seaweed are laid over colored blocks and lines that resemble flowcharts and diagrams, portraying information invisible to the naked eye through the alteration of scale and graphic charts.

For the window installation, Sumner created large ink drawings of Radiolaria, which are tiny zooplankton (0.1-0.2 mm diameter) that produce intricate mineral skeletons. Found throughout the ocean, they are key components of the marine ecosystem along with phytoplankton. Drawings of these microscopic organisms are made on multiple sheets of logarithmic paper, a material once commonly used for plotting scientific data but now replaced with calculators and computer software, and attached together. Drawing images of tiny marine creatures collected from old textbooks on a medium obsolete in its intended field of use, Luminescent Radiolaria romantically captures a past moment of visually recording and communicating natural life.

Holly Sumner received a BFA from Alfred University and an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the Boulder Museum for Contemporary Art, CO and Skep Gallery, NYC. Group exhibition venues include BRIC, Brookly, NY; Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; A Gallery Contemporary, Martha’s Vineyard, MA; Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY; The Drawing Center, NYC; and DUMBO Art Center, Brooklyn, NY; Exit Art, NYC; Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento, CA; Ellsworth Public Library, ME; and Artists Space, NYC. She was awarded a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and her drawings are included in the flat files at Pierogi and Kentler International Drawing Space. She currently lives and works in Beacon, New York.

For more information, please visit hollysumner.net


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