Penland Show Suggests Storytelling

Compared to artists who create films, novels, and theater, artists who make paintings, photographs, and sculpture have a hard time literally telling a story. However, they can be very effective at making artwork that suggests one.  That is the idea behind a new show at the Penland Gallery titled, “All This Happened, More or Less: Five Artists’ Use of Implied Narrative.” The title of the show comes from the first line of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Slaughterhouse Five,” and the artists in the show are printmaker Susan Goethel Campbell, photographer Maggie Taylor, ceramic artist Shoko Teruyama, and mixed-media sculptors Anne Lemanski and Stephanie Metz. Shoko Teruyama and Anne Lemanski just received the prestigious North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. The exhibition, which runs through September 19, will have an opening reception on Friday, July 30 from 7:00 – 8:30 PM.

Maggie Taylor’s digitally-constructed photographs are exquisitely-colored scenes that show fantastic characters and impossible situations that might remind the viewer of “Alice in Wonderland” or very odd fables. In one of her pieces, a tree with bare roots hovers over a large hole in the ground. Jewel-like butterflies float around the tree and a ladder descends mysteriously into the hole. It’s clear that something is happening here, but it’s not all that clear just what it is.

Anne Lemanski has been working for some years on a series of animal sculptures made by covering welded-copper frameworks with various materials that help push the work into the realm of social or political commentary. One of her pieces in this show, for example, is a large sea bird made from a shiny black material to suggest that it is soaked in oil. Stephanie Metz also makes animal forms, mostly from felt. She has series of pieces that show the imagined life cycle of a Teddy bear and another series of felt skulls that document the different “species” of Teddy bear.

Animal imagery is also important in the work of Shoko Teruyama. She has made a series of functional plates, sculptural jars, and bird forms that are decorated with complex scenes featuring a number of different animals. The fifth artist in this group show is Susan Goethel Campbell, who presents a terrific series of prints that combine dark-colored backgrounds with swirling white patterns that were created by punching holes in the paper. The patterns are based on data charts that represent the movement of wind, smoke, and other atmospheric phenomena. Some of the resulting images could suggest meteor showers, while others are more like giant schools of fish. Like most of the other work in the show, the exact meaning of these images is not clear, but there is the strong suggestion of movement or some event.

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