seeingRED 1 Print

Although Susan Venable's hands are the adept tools of a master artisan, the spirit and intellectual rigor of her work reveal that both her heart and her head owe their first allegiance to the fine arts. "¨ Mostly working with rigid steel and thousands of prickly copper wires, her ideas transform the materials into emotional and serene wall reliefs. They skirt the edge of minimalism and textural complexity....a paradox in itself.....a major theme in her work. Today she is well known for her highly distinctive, multi-dimensional work, elegantly poised somewhere between painting and sculpture."¨ Venable's abstract constructions are her own invention, and consist of a series of stacked steel grids, woven with varying lengths of copper wire and juxtaposed with encaustic paintings. "Susan Venable works at destroying our preconceptions, thus teaching us a valuable lesson. We must carefully evaluate and analyze before we jump to conclusions. It is a lesson with implications far beyond the appreciation of art" Orville O. Clarke Jr.