Chris Drury (artist)

Chris Drury (born 1948 in Colombo, Sri Lanka) is a British environmental artist. His body of work includes ephemeral assemblies of natural materials, in the mode associated with Andy Goldsworthy, as well as more-permanent landscape art, works on paper, and indoor installations. He also works on 3D sculptures (three-dimensional).

Some of Drury's lasting works are "cloud chambers", darkened caverns constructed of local rock, turf, or other materials. Each chamber has a hole in the roof which serves as a pinhole camera; viewers may enter the chamber and observe the image of the sky and clouds projected onto the walls and floor. On paper, he uses a variety of unusual media---notably mushroom spore prints, dung, and peat---as a source of color and patterns, which he might overlay with text or fingerprints, or underlay with maps or other geographic images. More recently, Drury has produced works associated with the body, working in residence with hospitals and incorporating echocardiogram data and blood into his art.

References

• . Drury's website.
• Also ISBN 0-8109-3246-6.
• Covers Drury in context with Herman de Vries, Nikolaus Lang, Richard Long and Giuseppe Penone.

Further reading

• Drury's artwork "Carbon Sink" was commissioned by the University of Wyoming. After about a year, it was taken down following after pressure from energy industry and political officials.
• More on the Wyoming University decision to remove Drury's sculpture, and a comparison to Indiana University's handling of pressure regarding historical murals on campus showing the Ku Klux Klan's ascendancy in the 1920s.