ROCHESTER, MN .- For the final exhibition in Rochester Art Center’s 2015 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series, Chad Rutter, a St. Paul-based artist, explores an individual and cultural fascination with natural disasters, and the ideology that surrounds them. Narrowing the focus specifically to the aftermath of tornados, which particularly impact the Midwestern United States, Debris Field—referring to the affected area after such events—presents new, large-scale graphite and soil drawings, as well as a site-specific installation using Minnesota soil, applied directly to the gallery wall with acrylic gel medium.

Sourcing images of floods, landslides, and other natural phenomena online, and then digitally altering and removing some of the visual content, Rutter creates hand-drawn renderings of these landscapes by projecting these digitally-processed images onto paper. For Debris Field, the images are sourced from three of the most devastating tornados in the United States in recent memory: the category EF 5 tornado in Joplin, MO, in May 2011; the EF 5 tornado in Moore, OK, in May 2013; and the E4 tornados in Pilger, NE, in June 2014. Rutter’s graphite and soil compositions depict the nearly unrecognizable visual landscape of these affected locales. Addressing how the media’s propagation of repetitive, sensationalist streams of photos and coverage enables rapid, detached consumption, Rutter’s drawings intentionally obscure this familiar visual information a deliberate exercise in slowing down the experience of viewing these images. With this work, Rutter continues to investigate how we understand natural disasters in the information age, asking us to reconsider our complex relationship to the natural world by reframing how we talk about and process these events.

Chad Rutter (b. 1978, York, NE) is an artist living and working in St. Paul, MN. He makes work in a wide range of media exploring themes of place-based experience in the human-altered landscape. He received an interdisciplinary BFA in drawing, print and installation from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and an MFA in sculpture from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His work has been exhibited locally and regionally in venues such as The Soap Factory, Soo Visual Arts Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In addition to his studio practice, Rutter founded the artist book publishing imprint Mystery Spot Books in 2011. Mystery Spot has exhibited nationally and internationally in events including the LA Art Book Fair, the Tokyo Art Book Fair, Photobook Melbourne, the Vancouver Art Book Fair and in numerous gallery exhibitions. Distributors include Printed Matter, Inc. in New York, and Ti Pi Tin in London. Mystery Spot titles can be found in archives and collections including The Indie Photobook Library in Washington, D.C., the Midway Contemporary Art Library in Minneapolis, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.