Beverly Penn

Résumé du livre

Beverly Penn: Foregrounding is the first comprehensive examination of the artist's expansive 30-year career. In a mission to call attention to botanical systems, Beverly Penn uses cast bronze to foreground the fundamental role of plants to human life and to our existence. When considering Penn's process, the viewer finds that her artwork is at once a found object and a memorial to the found object. The specimens she collects in the wild, many of which are invasive species, disappear in her use of centrifugal casting. The precise replicas, simultaneously tough and malleable, are woven intuitively to create reimagined botanicals. The final sculpture results in a bronze memorial to what is now gone at her artistic hand.Richly illustrated are Penn's main bodies of work to date, which are preceded by brief insights into her individual series. The monograph includes Penn's ongoing projects Weeds: Plexus, Weeds: Chimera, and Weeds: Fractured Landscapes, followed by the series Timelines, Taxonomy, Hybrids, and Arcadia. Included with the plates are scholarly essays featuring curator Suzanne Ramljak and art historian Kathryn Blair Moore, and a conversational interview between Penn and botanist Tanisha M. Williams. In her feature essay, Ramljak underscores the topic and namesake of the book, Foregrounding, and examines Penn's work as a counter to the phenomenon of plant blindness. Moore identifies the ways in which Penn's sculptures call back to Renaissance-era representations of nature. Finally, Penn's voice is brought alongside Williams as they discuss the scientific topics that inspire and motivate Penn's practice, while providing insight into her artistic process. Each text offers an opportunity to view additional work from Penn's oeuvre including public projects, prints and drawings, and studio photographs. The publication is designed by award-winning book designer M. Wright and published by French & Michigan.