Paper city Artist creates urban scene at Owens

Artist Amanda Burnham wants viewers to walk into her drawings, even walk on her drawings.
In the Terhune Gallery at Owens Community College she has built a city street all her own with house
paint, drawing paper and masking tape. She invites viewers to populate this urban corner complete with
street signs and marquees that only hint at their meanings.
Burnham’s "Urban Signs," an installation and exhibit of drawings, is now on exhibit at the
Terhune Gallery through Feb. 10. She will talk about her work tonight at 7 followed by a reception at
the gallery. Her drawings are also being displayed in the library on Owens’ Findlay campus .
Burnham is a Northwest Ohio native who teaches at Towson University in Maryland. She was born in
Northwest Ohio, moved with her family to Mississippi, then returned in to Sylvania Township, where she
graduated from Southview High in 1997.
Burnham said her mother also provided her and her brother with sketch pads. She was sketching for as long
as she remembered.
When she went off to Harvard College, she knew she wanted to major in art. There she discovered the urban
landscape that would shape her work, though its impact wasn’t felt right away. She later earned her MFA
in painting. It wasn’t until she had moved to New York City after college and started working in art
related jobs, including graphic design and illustration that she realized "I could be an
artist," focusing on her original work.
At the time, she said, her work focused more on portraiture, though her figures were influenced by
graphic novels and comic books.
As she did her graduate work at Yale, she came to view this early work as derivative.
Burnham asked herself: "Can I realize a story about people that doesn’t have any literal images of
people in them?"
The buildings then took on almost human character. The work showed the mark people left on these scenes
without showing the people themselves. The viewer becomes a character in the story.
These took the form of drawings, often drawn on the scene, some completed on scene, some finished from
sketches. Others like the improbable image looking down on a Delaware highway manipulated photographic
images. The scenes are not idyllic, and bear only subtle indications of the cities the scenes are from.
True to their gritty nature, Burnham prefers not to frame them, rather with those exhibited at Owens,
the drawings are pinned to the wall, their ragged edges exposed, adding to their raw character.
Burnham said she always wanted to expand these images, make them larger "to engage the viewer’s
body," but early attempts weren’t satisfying.
That’s how she came upon the idea of turning a larger space into a three-dimensional drawings, with torn
paper, jagged painted lines, finely rendered steel fence, signs, "turning it into something that’s
large and enveloping."
Her first such installation was in 2008 in Loyola University in Maryland.
At first she took careful measurements and tried to carefully plan out what she would do. That didn’t
work. "When you’re not in it, it’s very difficult to imagine physically what you’ll do with
it," Burnham said.
So now while she still measures the space and creates sketches in advance – 80 percent of which aren’t
used, she leaves plenty of room for improvisation. "There are aspects of every space that allow you
to construct ideas you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do," Burnham said.
The Owens space is open, but not quite rectangular, it has moveable partitions that gave her a chance to
create a wall. On the floor is a sidewalk made of drawing paper. So far it is white, unsullied.
Viewers she said are reluctant to walk on it. After all you’re not supposed to touch the images in a
museum.
At Benrimon Contemporary in New York, where she also has a show and installation, that reluctance gave
way as people crowded the gallery. Their footprints on the sidewalk added another dimension to the
piece.
All her installations are temporary. She photographs them extensively, and that’s her only documentation
once they’re removed.
The Owens show, she said, is welcomed chance to bring her work home. "It’s great to have the
opportunity to do something that’s really accessible to my family and people I grew up with."