Terry Evans: Overview September 7 — October 27, 2012

For more than thirty years, Chicago based photographer Terry Evans has focused her lens on the Midwest prairie, photographing both the people and the landscape. Overview presents 22 photographs from numerous bodies of work, all of which has garnered her critical acclaim.

Terry Evans was born in the heart of the American prairie, Kansas City, Missouri, spending most of her adult life in Salina before moving to Chicago. It is in Kansas, among the hay bales, grain silos and cultivated fields, that Evans’s passion for the great plains was born – a passion that has led her on a photographic journey spanning more than thirty years and countless hours 600 feet above the ground in a single-engine plane.  

Before the advent of agriculture and the invasion of the plow, the prairie was inundated by herds of buffalo, elk and prairie dogs, living harmoniously within the grassland. Decades later, the buffalo disappeared and the tallgrass has been replaced by crop circles and manicured paths. The foundation for Evans’s work started in 1978, as she focused her camera on the unplowed native prairie ecosystem. Years later, she started documenting the inhabited prairie, and the human marks left on the land. When speaking about her photographs, Evans says her images “show marks that contain contradictions and mysteries which raise questions about how we live on the prairie.”

Overview features aerial work from Chicago, Greenland, North Dakota and Kansas, plant specimens from The Smithsonian and Field Museum collections, slag processing at an Indiana steel plant, and mountaintop removal in eastern Kentucky. Taken together, these various series reveal an artist who has dedicated her career to showing human effects on the land and the ever-changing ecosystem.

Terry Evans’s work is part of numerous private and public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum of American Art [New York, NY], Los Angeles County Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We are proud to exhibit Evans’s work a few weeks before, Heartland: The Photographs of Terry Evans, a major retrospective opening at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City in mid-October. A retrospective book will accompany the exhibition.

The Steel images are available as 20 x 24" and 30 x 40" pigment prints made in editions of 15 and 10, respectively. Pieces range in price from $2600 to $6500, depending on size and availability.

The Revealing Chicago images are available as 19 x 19", 30 x 30" and 40 x 40" pigment prints made in editions of 15, 10 and 8, respectively. Pieces range in price from $2600 to $7500, depending on size and availability.

The early aerial images are available as 19 x 19" and 30 x 30" chromogenic dye prints made in editions of 15 and 10, respectively. Pieces range in price from $2600 to $4000, depending on size and availability.

The Specimen images are are available as 20 x 24" and 26 x 34" Iris prints made in editions of 15 and 5, respectively. Pieces range in price from $2600 to $3600, depending size and availability.

Please call: (312) 266-2350 for prices of specific pieces.
Prices are print only unless otherwise indicated.

Terry Evans
Cracked Ladle, Indiana Harbor, March 9, 2006
Video Link
Terry Evans
Deer Grazing on New Winter Wheat, Ottawa County, Kansas, March , 1990
Video Link
Terry Evans
Field Museum, drawer of Meadowlarks, various dates, 2001

sold out

Terry Evans
Field Museum, Echinacea, 1899, 2001
Terry Evans
Fieldstone fence, labor attributed to Confederate prisoners of war, 1860-65, February, 1996
Video Link
Terry Evans
Flora of Kansas, False Indigo, 1886 , 2000
Video Link
Terry Evans
Ice Fjord leading to Jakobshavn Glacier, 2008
Video Link
Terry Evans
Interstate 35 in the Flint Hills, April, 1994
Terry Evans
Konza Prairie, June, 1982
Video Link
Terry Evans
Lake Michigan, Beach and Dogs, Chicago, July 23, 2003
Terry Evans
Migrating Snow Geese South of Regina, Saskatchewan, 1999
Terry Evans
Mountaintop removal coal mining in eastern Kentucky, October, 2009
Video Link
Terry Evans
Oak Street Beach, Chicago, April 27, 2004

sold out

Terry Evans
Oil waste dump, Williams County, North Dakota, October 16, 2011
Terry Evans
Sage, Scribner’s panic grass, and other native grasses, Fent’s Prairie, May, 1979
Terry Evans
Sailboats and Skyscrapers, Chicago, July 23, 2003
Terry Evans
Slag Processing, Indiana Harbor, August 31, 2006
Terry Evans
Terraced Plowing, Saline County, Kansas, 1990
Terry Evans
Trees and Water, Edge of a Gravel Pit, McHenry County, March 23, 2003
Video Link