Barry Underwood 

Wendover II (for John)
2011
pigment print
40" x 50"

(b. 1963 – Wilmington, DE) By introducing lighted elements and foreign objects into uninhabited landscapes, Barry Underwood manipulates space to, “reflect human disturbances, metaphorically suggesting how society divides and surveys landscapes or how humans force their will on the natural environment.” Created to be viewed from a singular, flattened perspective and preserved through photograph, his work stands apart from traditional land art. Through his photographs, Underwood asks the viewer to consider nature, their relationship to it, and how it is viewed, consumed, and altered by human interactions.

In this artwork, Underwood installs rope lights at mathematically pre-determined intervals and depths across the fields of Wendover Air Force Base in Utah. The three lines of glowing symbols refer to three different influential people who have impacted Underwood’s work: the artist John Baldessari, the artist John Pfahl, and the astronaut and civic leader, John Glenn.

Underwood received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in Photography and Theatre from Indiana University Northwest. His work can be found in a diverse array of collections, including the Akron Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Rockefeller Family Art Collection, Petaluma, CA. He is the recipient of a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts & Culture (2013) and the Cleveland Arts Prize in Visual Arts (2011), among other awards. Underwood is Associate Professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

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