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September Issue 2004
The City Gallery in North Charleston, SC, Features Works by Susan Sorrell
The
City Gallery at the North Charleston Performing Arts/Convention
Center Complex in North Charleston, SC, will present the exhibition,
Hanging On By A Thread, featuring a fiber retrospective
by Susan Sorell from Sept. 2 - 29, 2004.
Sorrell should place a warning on her site -Beware, heavily embellished
decorative work ahead - as her work is bright, colorful, creative,
fun and over embellished. For Sorrell it is not the clean paired
back message of Modernism or even the hodgepodge of overly pretentious
imagery that we now see as Post-Modernism.
Sorrell creates textile collages but there is no paired back aesthetic here, as she breaks the rules producing richly textured surfaces that incorporate beading, painting, printmaking, photography, computer images and found objects in what can only be describe as full throttle, over embellished, and richly decorated style.
This heavy handed over
embellishment will not appeal to everyone, but it is a breath
of fresh air, which is far from empty headed or simply eye candy.
For a long time artists that used pattern applied techniques with
such a heavy decorative hand were tolerated or worse still simply
ignored, until Miriam Schapiro's Decoration Movement in the 70s
and 80s. You can see the influence of this movement and other
artists such as Susan Shie, Faith Ringgold and Joyce Scott are
two other artistic influences.
Sorrell's work brushes up against the edges of many boundaries
set in established art practice. There is no "less is more"
philosophy in play here. This results in questioning good and
bad taste, high and low art while also taking textiles as a medium
out of the domestic sphere and all its associated practicality,
into the realm of art. When set in this context you can see that
Sorrell's highly textured work is not mere eye candy alone.
Sorrell trained at Winthrop
University in Rock Hill, SC and Converse College in Spartanburg,
SC. She has worked as a graphic designer, art instructor, and
artist. Sorrell has also won numerous awards and has shown her
work all over the United States.
Sorrell will be offering a "meet the artist/demo" on
Sept., 25, 2004, from 1-5pm at the gallery.
For more information
check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, or call Olga Bixby
at the Gallery 843/308-4709 or 843/745-1087. Or e-mail Sorell
at (sorrell@creativechick.com) or at (www.creativechick.com).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.