Summer 2004

Bobby Garro Sutton
Drawing Connections to Nature

On his way to a science class at the University of Chicago, Bobby Garro Sutton looked up and saw a bird of prey perched in a parkway tree. An undergraduate studying art and Spanish literature, Sutton couldn't identify the species. So he rushed to class to tell his professor, who brought in a field guide. When Sutton identified the bird as a Cooper's hawk, he said to himself, "I'd like to see those every day." For the native of Hyde Park in Chicago, now age 40, this was the start of a long process of getting closer to nature through art.

As a youngster, Sutton made comics to sell to friends. He painted temporary murals on the rock walls at Promontory Point along Chicago's southern lakefront. For a while he even dabbled in tattoos. After high school, Sutton became a certified pipe fitter and worked in construction. After spending some time in Rome, where he took art history classes at the American University, he decided to fulfill a promise to himself, and he returned to enroll at the University of Chicago.

In 1996, Sutton sought a summer internship with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Working with a restoration crew in natural areas around the county, he learned firsthand about many more creatures that inspired him. In his downtime, Sutton began making botanical drawings of wildflowers. "Drawing something is my personal way of acknowledging something sacred about it," he says in a quiet, patient voice.

Since then, Sutton has helped with restoration at numerous preserves, most recently with the North Branch Restoration Project, close to his current home near the Chicago River. He also volunteers with Mighty Acorns, taking children on trips to natural areas. Working as a pipe fitter for part of the year allows Sutton to devote the rest of his time to his art, as well as to roam the countryside of Peru, his mother's homeland.

Through such experiences, the natural world has become more and more prominent in Sutton's paintings and drawings. He often sits for hours in the forest preserves to draw, sometimes revisiting a single plant many times over the course of weeks to see how it has changed. His projects range from seasonal sketches of volunteers restoring Paintbrush Prairie to elaborate ink depictions of cosmically interconnected ecosystems. He often creates pieces for specific events, such as the portrait of the late conservationist Deb Petro (CW, Summer '03) he recently unveiled at a workday held in her memory.

There's also the cabinet-like diorama, called a retablo, that he brought to a Somme Woods workday a few years ago. "Each side of it relates to a different part of nature and a different cardinal direction," Sutton says, explaining how the forest preserve volunteers used the retablo's symbolism, based on Oglala Indian beliefs, to explore the forces at work in natural-area restoration. The south side, painted yellow, symbolized growth. The west was black, for thunder and rain, the powers of destruction and of making good. For the volunteers, it also symbolized fire, a natural process that allows for new growth. "And north is white," says Sutton. "That's the cleansing wind, the great white giant."

The last side, the east, was red, symbolizing the "herb of understanding" and the way conservationists often must learn by "sitting on a log, looking at the plants, and trying to understand what the plants are trying to say."

— Ben LeFort

Sutton is currently a resident artist at the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative. He has illustrated several past articles for Chicago WILDERNESS like Farewell to The Fox. Visit bobbygarrosutton.com and see Fun in the Field from the Man on the Street in this issue to view more of his illustrations.