Andie Thrams
PAINTING & BOOK ART
Backcountry
Andie Thrams Backpacking in High Sierra Foxtail Pines
Backcountry is a series of unique (one-of-a-kind) artist’s books created in the backcountry wilderness of California’s Sierra Nevada. I started the series during the pandemic year of 2020 when my husband and I spent most the summer backpacking in the Sierra. Each book illuminates a particular place or experience, often with hand-lettered field notes addressing environmental grief (solastalgia). Materials used are small and light enough to carry long distances inside a pack: ink, watercolor, and gouache on folded sheets of paper, sometimes with twigs dipped in ink, and soil, leaves, and bark staining the work. Back in the studio, I add gold and palladium leaf to bestow a sense of the sacred. My Sierra field work has been supported by the University of California Merced’s Sierra Nevada Field Stations in Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, for which I am very grateful.
Click below to view individual books in this series.