Yes, this is another press release which came late – after deadlines for our August issue of Carolina Arts, but it’s no reason the artist should suffer, so here it is.
The Florence Regional Arts Alliance in Florence, SC, will open its 2010-2011 Season of its newly renamed Gallery 412 with Last Words, a fiber arts show by Susan Lenz. Currently entering its 3rd year of operation, the Gallery and Shoppe will annually feature shows that open on the first Thursday of each month and continue through the last Thursday of each month. Arts Alliance President Greg Fry indicates, “Our plan is to schedule a diverse array of artists each year, and we encourage our exhibiting artists to ‘push the box’ in terms of their artistic exploration. We hope the result will be many exciting shows for gallery goers over the next 12 months and hopefully in the years to come as well.”
Last Words will be on view from Aug. 5 – 26, 2010.
Susan Lenz indicates that despite two terrible childhood experiences with needle and thread, she fell “head over heels in love” with embroidery as an adult and dreamed of a time when she could indulge her passion as a professional artist. Finding time to pursue her passion was a virtual impossibility because she already filled every waking hour managing a custom picture framing shop that had 13 employees. In 2001, she downsized her growing business, rented space in a cooperative studio setting, and started “making art’ from bits of fabric and lengths of thread. Her years in operating a business served her well. Her new career became an extension of the existing corporation.
Long hours devoted to production were already Lenz’s normal work ethnic. Association with local artists provided her with an excellent mentor who immediately advised her to build a resume, enter shows, submit for art opportunities, and create an inventory book documenting every creation. These advantages, combined with inspiration from travel, medieval and renaissance history, and modern technology, are the core of her textile work.
In the fall of 2008, Lenz was awarded a MacNamara art residency on Westport Island, ME. While there, she read a suggestion in Jeanne Williamson’s The Uncommon Quilter about making grave rubbings on fabric. There are family plots and historic cemeteries all over Maine. She made a rubbing and then an art quilt. She has been quilting ever since. She comments, “The ability to communicate the passage of time, the human desire for remembrance, the issues of both personal and universal mortality are reasons that will make quilting with grave rubbings one of my textile passions for a long, long time.”
As Lenz’s series developed, new ways of working the concepts came into being. Collected epitaphs became free motion machine embroidered words on sheer chiffon banners. Artificial flowers from the cemetery dumpsters brought color and actual tokens of remembrance into a physical space and transformed it into a spiritual oasis of tribute to human existence. Angelic digital images were transferred onto printmaking paper and combined with bits of lace, samples of antique handwriting, sepia photographs, buttons, keys, and other found objects. Lenz herself admits, “A site specific installation called Last Words was born and continues to inspire new work.”
Operating at 412 South Dargan Street in the emerging Arts and Cultural District in Downtown Florence, the Florence Regional Arts Alliance is the “chamber of commerce” for the artists, arts organizations, school arts teachers, and school arts programs of the City of Florence and Florence County. The Arts Alliance is committed to preserving, supporting, and promoting a vibrant arts community by providing grants to artists, organizations, teachers, and schools; by recognizing students, individuals, and businesses through a comprehensive program of awards and scholarships; by offering community programming that showcases the performing arts, the visual arts, and the literary arts; and by serving as an advocate for the arts to business, civic, and governmental leaders. All initiatives of The Arts Alliance are premised on the basic organizational core value that recognizes the arts are fundamental to quality of life, education, and economic development in today’s knowledge-based economy, an economy that will require innovative, imaginative, and creativity to address the critical issues of the 21st Century.
For further information call the Alliance at 843/665-278, e-mail to (fraa@florencescarts.org) or visit (http://www.florencescarts.org/).
Editor’s Note: Susan Lenz is also having a solo exhibition at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park in Charleston, SC, from Sept. 10 through Oct. 10, entitled, Personal Grounds. The exhibit is part of the annual MOJA Arts Festival which takes place from Sept. 23 – Oct. 3, 2010, in Charleston. The mixed media installation will feature 48 free-motion machine embroidered chiffon banners in the soaring two-story central space and a series of over 100 portraits depicting every day people and the decisions they’ve made. For further info about this exhibit contact Erin Glaze at 843/958-6484 or visit (www.charlestonarts.sc).
