Sketchbooks
Drawing is a near daily practice and I have used the book form for several decades. This includes regular sketchbooks documenting mundane aspects of day to day life. Themes that have emerged from recent books include music lessons, soccer practices, airplane seats, and meetings. In 2020 at the start of lockdown, I began a daily practice of drawing zoom meetings while they were happening – in real time.
I have also used accordion-fold moleskin notebooks for investigations of the built environment. This includes a larger research project into landscape legacy of the chemical and nuclear industry in the United States. Hooker 102nd Street is an expansive drawing that spans a three-year period observing and recording the fence at Love Canal, a toxic waste site in Niagara Falls, NY.
Other book projects include large-scale handmade accordion fold books that have allowed me to create oversized drawings, often on a 1:1 scale of particular and personal locations, such as my kitchen counter.
Joan Linder, Night flight, 2019, 5 x 16”, ink and watercolor on paper
Joan Linder, Morning Flight, 2018, 5 x 16”, ink and watercolor on paper
Joan Linder, Hooker 102nd Street, 2013-17, 5 x 720” ink in 6 moleskin notebooks.
Installation @ Mixed Greens Gallery, NYC photography, Etienne Frossard
Joan Linder, Main Street, 2012, ink on paper, 5 x 120” one of three books
Joan Linder, Maine Street (partially closed), 2012 ink on paper, 5 x 120” one of three books
Joan Linder, Zoom Lessons, 2020, 5 x 16”, ink on paper
Joan Linder is known for making large-scale drawings with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of marks. She finds inspiration from her immediate surroundings, often in quotidian subjects.
Her conceptual and observational work has been included in exhibitions venues including Kunstahallen Brandts, Gwanjgu Art Museum, Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, Museum Fine Arts Boston and the Albright Knox Art Gallery. Her work has been written about in Art News, Art in America, the New York Times and Hyperallergic among others. She has completed permanent public commissions in NYC for the subway though the Metropolitan Transit Authority and for an elementary school through Public Art for Public Schools, and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY. She has received numerous grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo and MacDowell.
Linder is a Professor of Art at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York and is represented by Cristin Tierney Galley in NYC.
insta @joan_linder