In February of 2019, Emily Payne went for a month long residency at The Vermont Studio Center. As she has done in other residencies, Payne challenged herself to arrive with no preconceived notion about what she would do there.

After going to the library to gather inspiration from Calder and Louise Bourgeois, she took a walk in the cold and seemingly colorless Vermont. The road was lined with the spindly long needles of pines and she spotted the bright forms of branches with the needles splayed out in the open air.  “Out of a sense of slight desperation," she said, "I picked a bunch of them up and carried them into my studio and displayed them at various distances from the wall. The sun began to come into the studio and the shadows that the pine needles cast became my starting point.”

 “I could see that the reason I was drawn to these forms was not only the color but the extraordinary wiriness of them,” said Payne. “I began to see them not just as objects but the shadows themselves became a beautiful drawing that nature was creating. I could see them everywhere.”

The combination of the wire sculptures in various sizes and the negative space of their shadows drawn in graphite on Payne’s preferred substrate of book covers has transformed the gallery into an installation that is both fascinating and deeply satisfying.