May Issue 2001
Spartanburg County Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC, Features Works by Teresa Prater, Rima Jabbur & Scott Eagle
by Jill Jones
The haunting, grand-scale
charcoal drawings tell only part of the story in Seven Gates
of Ritual, an exhibit by Pacolet, SC, artist Teresa Prater
opening May 7 and running through June 24 at the Spartanburg County
Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC.
Just as integral are the artist's one-of-a-kind handmade books. "I consider them an extension of the narrative," says Prater, an associate professor of art at Converse College, in Spartanburg. "It was my intention that the drawings serve to pull viewers in. The books, hopefully, will make them linger."
Together, the two form an installation that is both dramatic and intimate - what Prater describes as "a primal journey into the self." Each of the seven drawings and its accompanying book represents a different life passage. While the symbolism she uses is personal, the themes are archetypal: birth and death, parenthood, the search of spirituality, the discovery and development of self.
Viewers become part of the ritual by approaching each station or "gate," studying the drawing and then removing the accompanying book from the box placed on a pedestal before it. The gates may be approached sequentially or at random. "You may find yourself drawn to one more than another, suggesting you are at a specific stage in your own life," she says. "While these are foremost my own gates of ritual, it was my intention that they represent universal ideas - that they encourage people to think about their own life passages."
Seven Gates is the result of a year's sabbatical, much of it spent honing and exploring her bookmaking. "It's more interesting to me right now than my drawing," says Prater, whose work in charcoal has earned her numerous awards, one-person shows and an increasingly national reputation. "I guess it's because I know I can draw. The bookmaking is a greater challenge - a more complex three-dimensional art form."
The images in the books are achieved in a variety of ways, including photographic processes, Xerox transfers, ink washes, drawing and painting techniques and computer manipulation. By layering images with text, she creates a piece of art that is both more personal and very different in feeling from her signature charcoals. "The books are also more precious to me than my drawings." she says, admitting that some volumes she would never sell. "A lot of the writing is stream-of-consciousness - like a diary or a journal. It's intensely personal, so at times I let the text fade out or disappear. I want people to have glimpses of it, but not to read it word for word."
Prater made her first artist's books in 1987 while a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. At the time, the idea of creating one-of-a-kind books as an art form was little known, even in artist circles. Prater didn't think about it again until three years ago, when the increase in popularity of artists' books led her to teach a special topics course at her college. She found it a wonderful opportunity to incorporate text in her art - a natural release for an artist whose work is narrative.
While artists' books can be made out of anything, most of Prater's use handmade papers, acetate, vellum, cloth and occasionally wood. She frequently uses a Codex format, meaning the hooks open on the spine, and experiments with such binding techniques as Japanese stab binding, Coptic open spine binding and closed long-link stitching.
Not surprisingly, her books have become increasingly complex as her skills grow. "It's such a different process from drawing," says Prater, who received a grant from the SC Arts Commission to complete the project. "The craftsmanship is the challenge. It's very precise, intellectual - mathematical. I like creating multiple images and then figuring out how I want them to work together."
Even so, she approaches her bookmaking intuitively, as she does her drawing. "What I have at the end is a book that has many layers," she says. "Layers of images, layers of text, layers of meaning."
Also exhibiting through June 24 at the Museum of Art are Rima Jabbur of Winter Park, FL and Scott Eagle of Greenville, NC.
Like Prater, both are figurative artists as well as art faculty. Jabbur, who will be exhibiting in the museum's Milliken Gallery, teaches at Rollins College and works primarily in oils. "The associations which I am evoking in my paintings are pre-verbal - closer to the way one things when daydreaming," she says.
Eagle, whose mixed media pieces will be shown in the museum's Burwell Gallery, bases his paintings on dreams, children's drawings, mythology and art history. He is a lecturer in the art department at East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.
Jill Jones is a freelance writer and artist in Spartanburg. She is on the exhibition committee of the Spartanburg County Museum of Art, the Board of Advisors of the Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, NC and has written for Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Your Health and The New York Times. Jones also covered the arts (among other things) for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal for about 12 years.
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