Pentaculum Winter 2022

January 9 – March 4, 2022 | Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is proud to feature works by this year’s Winter Pentaculum Studio Coordinators; Adam Atkinson, Suzi Banks Baum, Brandon Donahue, Jason Schneider, Max Seinfeld, and Rena Wood. Also included in this exhibition is slide show featuring the work of participating invited artists, and a collection of writers’ short stories, poems, and essays. This colorful exhibition represents the spectrum of work created in a variety of media supported in the studios at here at Arrowmont.

Adam Atkinson. Bunched Up. Copper, sterling silver, cherry wood, stainless steel, 2021. 4″ x 2″ x 5″.

Adam Atkinson Adam Atkinson is a metalsmith, curator, and educator. He received an MFA in Metal Design at East Carolina University in 2019, and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Practices at Boise State University in 2013. Atkinson’s work documents relationships between gender and the body using adornment and small-scale sculpture as formats for exploration. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Wayne Art Center, Boone Art and History Museum, and Nagoya Zokei University, Nagoya, Japan, among others. Recent curatorial projects include Spectral Matter, an ongoing LGBTQIA+ exhibition platform, and Ripple Effect: 168. He has been awarded numerous residencies including the Emerging Artist Residency at the Baltimore Jewelry Center and is currently in the three-year residency at Penland School of Craft. He has been a faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, Boise State University, and has taught workshops across the United States.

Brandon J. Donahue. Souvenir 2. Acrylic on HIPS Plastic, 2021. 21″ x 21″

Brandon J. Donahue is an artist working in painting, assemblage, and public art. Donahue received his B.S. from Tennessee State University and M.F.A. from The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Donahue has exhibited nationally and internationally including the 13th annual Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba in 2019. He is represented by David Lusk Gallery in Nashville and Memphis, Tn and is an assistant professor of Art at the University of Maryland College Park. Donahue now lives and works in Baltimore, MD.

Suzi Banks Baum. Song Journal. Concertina, eco-dyed and hand painted, plant dyed embroidery, dyed silk ribbons, 2021. 7.5″ x 6.25″ x 2″

Suzi Banks Baum dwells at the crossroad of literary and visual arts. A writer, mixed media and book artist, Suzi expresses the holy ordinary. Her devotion to daily creative practice is the super-food for her signature teachings: Backyard Art Camp, the Powder Keg Writing Workshops, and Advent Dark Journal. Suzi travels to Gyumri, Armenia to teach the book arts to women artists. She will teach at the Genesis Retreat Center in the winter of 2022 and at Snow Farm Craft School in May 2022.

Suzi is formally trained as an actor and spent the first part of her life as a theatre professional in Louisville, Kentucky and New York City, NY. Her work has been exhibited at PRESS in North Adams, MA, the 10 x10 Festival in Pittsfield, MA, the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers in Great Barrington, MA, Motherhood Out Loud in Boston, MA, and at the Museum of Motherhood in New York City. She has been part of a mail art exchange with artist Karen Arp-Sandel called FeMail, which was a featured installation in the Rites of Passage project curated by Pooja Ro Prema. Her artist books have been exhibited at Arev Art in Yerevan, Armenia, at No. Six Depot gallery in West Stockbridge, MA and archived at the Brooklyn Art Library, and in personal collections.

Her first book, An Anthology of Babes gives voice to 36 artist mothers. Her writing appears in the inaugural edition of Kerning literary magazine (2021) and in The Collection: Flash Fiction for Flash Memory by Anchala Studios and the Walloon Writers Review. A selection from her memoir-in-progress won third prize in the Hypertext Literary Magazine Doro Böhme Memorial Contest in the fall of 2021. Follow her on Instagram for a look inside her daily practice @suzibb.

Jason Schneider. Rocket. Corrugated cardboard and paint, 2021.      22.5″ x 11.5″

Jason Schneider explores the inherent beauty and character of corrugated cardboard in both functional and sculptural forms. The study of the fine use and function of this low-status, recyclable, and often overlooked material is what drives his curiosity.

The artwork presented here is from a new series, titled “COLOR follows FORM follows TEXTURE”. It is work that studies the texture of corrugated cardboard on various coopered forms. The corrugated texture creates a distinct experience of light and shadow that changes in appearance with each directional cut of the material. Color is then used to add contrast to the paper and alter the visual weight to each form.

Jason Schneider is a studio furniture maker who works with traditional woodworking processes in non-traditional materials to create unique three-dimensional objects. He received a BFA in Furniture Design from William Paterson University and an MFA in Furniture Design from San Diego State University. Over the past two decades, his work has been widely exhibited at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, CO; Aspen Art Museum, CO; Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, PA; Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA; and the Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase, NY; among others. He has given lectures and demonstrations at woodworking workshops, Universities, and symposiums across the country, as well as at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA. He is the former Studio Coordinator of the Furniture Design and Woodworking program at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. Currently, Jason is an Assistant Professor of the Woodworking and Furniture Design program at Northern Michigan University.

Max Seinfeld. Dripping Blue. Ceramic, 2021. 5″ x 5.5″ x 4.5″

Max Seinfeld is a full time studio artist in South Windsor, CT. He served as Assistant Director in 2019 and later became Director of Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts in New York for two years. He makes one of a kind abstract ceramic sculptures out of porcelain, earthenware, and non-traditional materials. In 2014 he received his BFA from the University of Hartford, Connecticut, and finished his postbaccalaureate studies from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2015. Following a two year residency at The Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY, and an assistantship with Doug Peltzman, Max continues to assist a number of ceramic workshops at art centers across the country including Arrowmont, Peters Valley, Haystack, and Penland. Max continues to exhibit and teach private lessons, workshops, nationally as well as internationally.

“I create objects that examine the interplay of contrasting relationships such as the slight movement of a solid material or a coarse texture that looks soft. Studying compositional elements such as line, color, and texture allows me to create a sense of tension through contrasting materials or form. The interaction of artificial and natural color in each composition creates a playful quality that is drawn from observations in contemporary media such as the quality of the color pink in a bubble gum advertisement or the allure of a red cadillac. Playing with a set of words that do not usually sit next to one another allows me to capture the sensation of a lingering touch, or an inching grip. Creating small scale solid objects allows me to stress the intimacy in size and the seductiveness of weight.”

Rena Wood. Cellular Memory. Hand embroidery on vintage linens, 2018 – present. Dimensions variable.

Fiber artist, Rena Wood received her BFA in Fibers from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from the Department of Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an Assistant Professor of Fiber Art at Tennessee Tech University’s Appalachian Center for Craft.  As a Fiber Arts educator, she has taught workshops on embroidery and fiber processes at art centers and craft schools throughout the country.  Previously, she was a Visiting Instructor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.  Rena has been an Artist in Residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston, TX, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN, and at the Craft Alliance in St. Louis, MO. Her work has been shown nationally in solo and group exhibitions. She was awarded the Joanne Purrington Folley Memorial Award for Excellence in Needlework at Fiber Art International in 2016.

“My work gives physical form to the ephemeral sense of memory. The time I spend working is marked by each stitch, each knot, and each repetitive act of my hands. The result of my slow and repetitious hand work connects my process to the biological phenomena occurring all the time, gradually growing, multiplying, or deteriorating.  I use stitching to create drawings on the surface of cloth to show a suspension between formation and falling apart, tangling and unravelling, the acts of remembering and forgetting, and to represent time passing and time stopped. I am intrigued by ideas about the visual aspects of how memories might appear in our brain and the changes that occur as memories are lost.  My current work, Cellular Memory, questions where memories are held in our body; it suggests that our memories are what make us who we are as individuals.”