Complementary Impressions

Renee Magnanti and Bill Pangburn are an artist couple who work independently of one another, but often exhibit together. Each artist inhabits conceptual territories that, while distinct from one another, reflect a connective affinity in the media in which they work, particularly printmaking, and their shared interest in artistic processes that are methodical, handmade, and craft oriented. Complementary Impressions offers an introduction to the work that they each pursue.

Renee Magnanti focuses on the role women have played throughout time, often anonymously, in the development of culture and science across the globe. Her lifelong interest in pattern, especially her study of motifs found in textiles, eventually led her to these themes. Bill Pangburn raises questions of the interlacing of time, beauty, and existential need through the rendering of impressions of nature. He draws his imagery from the interaction of natural forces, such as currents, tides, and winds, found in and around bodies of water.

 

The staging of the exhibition Complementary Impressions creates a dialogical juxtaposition of the two artists. In the first room of the gallery hang two elongated vertical woodcut prints by Magnanti, The Encyclopedia of Women's Daily Life and Korean Women. For these woodcuts, Magnanti worked with unfinished cherry wooden boards with live edges that show natural cracks. Patterns and lettering are cut into these printing blocks with very fine lines, giving the works an ornamental appearance with a sense of history both in the wooden matrix and their concepts. 

 

In both pieces Magnanti uses text passages, original and/or quoted, to tie her patterned compositions to historical fact, reinforcing the importance of women in the shaping of culture and society. This approach is found throughout her work on exhibit and in general, and it is the precision and complexity of the work that captivate the viewer. Viewed from a distance, the pieces have a textile delicacy. On closer inspection, they become readable carriers of information.

 

On the opposite wall, Bill Pangburn presents three vertically formatted woodcuts. Two of these pieces, SloFlo and Jaguars Love to Swim, relate to Magnanti’s work in scale and their respective locations in the gallery. 

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Both artworks engross the viewer with their calligraphic lines. In both pieces Pangburn is able to utilize the woodcut medium successfully to create painterly, flowing structures. As the imagery becomes denser, elements overlap lighter zones or interweave with the medium gray formations created by the finest hatching, as is the case in Jaguars Love to Swim. The result is a subtle spatial effect in the prints. Pangburn's works are abstract. However, the viewer experiences a distinct bodily presence. The intuitive lines and the blob-like condensations open up fields of association that go far beyond the motif of water, which the artist cites as his primary reference.

 

The feel of the Asian paper on which both artists print gives their work a sensuality all of their own. This supports both the pictorial effect of Magnanti's graphics and the organically flowing effect of Bill Pangburn's woodcut prints.

 

In addition to her woodcuts, Magnanti presents examples from two other groups of her work. An iconic image-object (Hanson Mosi), created using her carved encaustic technique, forms the transition to an extensive series of colored etchings on found cloth napkins (Untitled 2021-25). Installed around a doorway, the artworks form an architectural gateway to the second room of the gallery. Through this gateway one sees a horizontal woodcut about Women of Science/Woodcut by Magnanti. 

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In this room Bill Pangburn presents six woodcuts entitled A River Apart Reflections. First shown in Dafni, Greece, these prints were part of an installation displayed in an unused building at the psychiatric center in Dafni, an ancient healing site. In this series Pangburn associates the spatial layering with the layers of the subconscious. Additionally noteworthy are the two preparatory studies (Naches Studies) for Pangburn's upcoming exhibition at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, where he will create a gallery-wide installation based on observations of the Naches River. 

 

With Complementary Impressions, Magnanti and Pangburn offer the viewer insight into how two artists can share a passion for the rich tradition of a specific medium, yet use it for their own ends. It is through the close consideration that the work elicits that the commonalities and distinctions between the artists are understood.