PERSONAL | Universal
Curator’s Statement
Over my many years spent in a gallery environment, recurrently I see how a narrative or ‘story’ embedded in the artwork is an emotional and powerful force that connects the artist and viewer. This is a unique narration without text, narration without a sound, and without the artist-storyteller being present. Mining deeper – when the artist pulls from their own life experiences and uses their personal narrative as well as their hands to craft the work – the resulting piece has a distinct and soulful energy.
The author and neurologist Oliver Sacks spent his life studying the brain and how it deals with perception, individuality, and memory. In his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other Clinical Tales, he wrote, “We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative, whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives, a ‘narrative,’ and that this narrative is us, our identities. If we wish to know about a man, we ask ‘what is his story — his real, inmost story?’ — for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through and in us — through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives — we are each of us unique.”
Included in this exhibition are works expressing personal narrative while engaging larger and broader universal stories. Much like the exquisite corpse parlor game, the artist provides the narrative genesis and the viewer completes the story with their individual experiences.
Kathryn Gremley
Director, Penland Gallery
PERSONAL | Universal
Jessica Calderwood
David Chatt
Shawn HibmaCronan
Stuart Kestenbaum
Sarah Rose Lejeune
Anne Lemanski
John Littleton
Yoonmi Nam
Corey Pemberton
Amy Tavern
Shoko Teruyama
Kate Vogel
Susan Webster
In Praise of Hands
It’s not just the people
who live in the city
who’ve lost the thread
that ties them to the woven
world of stones and earth,
fields alive with pollen and wings.
Who among us understands
how oceans rise and fall,
currents swirling around the planet
with messages in bottles
floating on the water.
When the tide is out
we can go to the shore
dig clay with our bare hands
and make something beautiful from it,
a vessel with thin walls
that holds a canyon.
In both hands, like an offering,
we can hold the memory
of eroded stones and earth,
eons contained in this empty bowl.
We can fill it with water
that reflects the sky that has
witnessed everything since
time began, we can drink and be blessed,
clouds gathering over us.
In Praise of Hands by Stuart Kestenbaum, from Prayers & Run-on Sentences
© Deerbrook Editions, 2007
To inquire about works in the exhibition contact us at 828.765.6211 or via email at gallery@penland.org