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Beverly Penn, Naturalia, bronze
galleries [ 1 ] & [ 2 ]
foregrounding paradise: beverLy penn
thirty years of bronze sculpture
January 20 – march 6
reception: january 20, 5–7 pM
In Foregrounding Paradise, Beverly Penn, celebrated sculptor and Distinguished Professor Emerita of Texas State University, invites viewers to reconsider nature’s role in everyday life. The exhibition spans thirty years of Penn’s career, bringing together her meditative botanical sculptures—intricate bronze casts of plant life—alongside her immersive 2002 installation At the Edge of Paradise. This installation represents Penn’s contribution to a collaborative project with artist Jill Bedgood, developed during their joint Rockefeller Foundation Study Center fellowship in Bellagio, Italy.
An open grid of columns and arches, At the Edge of Paradise melds the architectural grid—often associated with the triumph of the human mind over matter and nature—with allusions to some of Rome’s most significant architectural sites. As curator Dana Friis-Hansen noted in his essay for the installation’s 2002–03 debut, these vertical columns are interspersed with what Penn describes as her “garden experiments:” hybrid constructions of cast classical architectural fragments, bronze botanical forms, soil samples, laboratory paraphernalia, and flexible metallic conduits. These outgrowths were inspired in part by Penn’s visits to the immaculate gardens of the Medici Villas in the Florentine countryside, Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Pompeii, Isola Bella, the Boboli Gardens, and the gardens at Villa Lante, as well as the timepieces and measuring instruments on display at Florence’s Museo di Storia della Scienza. Together, these elements commune with the overgrowth and surreal blooms of her later work.
By placing these bodies of work in dialogue, the exhibition traces Penn’s career-long investigation of ecology and environmental politics. Grounded in a responsiveness to place—from the Texas Hill Country to northern Italy—Foregrounding Paradise raises questions about how we define, preserve, and foreground nature in an age of constant human intervention.
about THE ARTIST
An internationally recognized artist and educator, Beverly Penn’s work is included in major collections across the United States, including the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; Racine Art Museum; El Paso Museum of Art; the Moody Foundation; and Yale University Art Gallery.
She has been commissioned for several public art projects. Key projects include Unity in Diversity (Las Cruces, NM); the Community Core Sample Project and the Threshold Project (with Steve Wiman, Austin, TX); the Natives Project at Whole Foods Headquarters (Austin, TX); and large-scale installations for the Carte Hilton and 719 Ash Hilton Hotel in San Diego, CA. She is the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Artist Award Grant, a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Barcelona, Spain.