Beverly Penn - Still Nature at McMurtrey Gallery through November 23

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Beverly Penn - Still Nature
at McMurtrey Gallery through November 23
by Todd Camplin

McMurtrey Gallery has a positively beautiful exhibition this month with Beverly Penn displaying
her cast metal sculptures of flowers, vines, and leaves. McMurtrey Gallery is a small intimate space
and some of Penn's work nearly swallows the walls. Then others are tiny and dainty, displayed in
just the right spaces to highlight each work. It was like the gallery space and Penn's work was
designed together to complement one another.

The show titled, "Still Nature" is Beverly Penn's attempt to not only capture nature,
but reshape it. The large pieces used geometry as the guiding principle. You would
first see a large circle or oval, when inside you would start to see swirls that resembled
the Golden Mean. Each vine had details of leaves and flowers. The metal was every
evident, but when I looked at images of the work on the website I could not have
possibly understood the complexity, until I saw it in person. I enjoyed the fact that
the work hung slightly off the wall, so a wonderful shadow played on the wall.

Beverly Penn’s smaller work is attempting to give a completely different approach to
the same idea. The large pieces are shaped and arranged, but the smaller work seems
to reflect a more scientific categorizing method that appeals to a more intellectual
and conceptual side than just a pure aesthetic investigation. I love how each plant is
pinned to a rectangular object or metal piping, like you might see in a back room
museum collection. Some work even has bar codes to drive the categorizing idea
home. I think the pieces with piping and bar codes are constructed to feel more
random and almost contradict the scientific organization that the work implies.

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Strangely, I came away from the show feeling that any part of the piece was about to fall
off and break. Like the plants were of organic matter and this was a temporary exhibition.
The illusion is further strengthened by the painted surface. Personally, I was more attracted
to the smaller pieces for their intellectual quandary, but the large pieces are what got me
excited to visit the gallery in the first place. McMurtrey Gallery is always a must stop when
I am in Houston, but this show made the visit all that more enticing. See Beverly Penn’s metal
works, which are up until November 23rd.

Maelstrom - 9' x9' x 6x' - bronze 2011

Genius Loci: Villa (detail), bronze, 84" x 84" x 8"