3 minute read
Meet Her: Susan Martin Meggs
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Lafayette Street in Paris(Oil Stick & Pencil)
PHOTOS BY MARLEN LUNA
LIFE: Greenville artist Susan Martin Meggs has a master’s degree in educational administration from Fordham University and a master of fine arts in painting from the University of Wisconsin. She has worked in a variety of media, including sculpture; printmaking; oil, acrylic and watercolor painting; drawing in pen and ink, pencil and oil pastels; mixed media; and environmental and performance art.
CAREER: Susan lived In New York for 30 years in the vibrant SOHO art district and worked as an exhibit designer, commercial artist, educational administrator and professor at The Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, Western Connecticut State University, New York Institute of Technology and College of New Rochelle. She exhibited at Sotherby’s and was curator of exhibits and education for the National Museum of the American Indian and a guest lecturer in Native American art and culture at colleges throughout the East Coast. After moving to North Carolina, Susan joined the art faculty at East Carolina University and served as a member of the Honors College faculty. She is professor emeritus in the department of interior design. Her research publications have focused on service-learning, interdisciplinary pedagogy for art and healthcare, and the use of virtual reality as a learning environment. She has presented scholarly papers nationally and internationally, including Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sapienza University in Rome, and Glasgow and Chester Universities in England. Honors include the Marquis and the Covington Who’s Who in America, and the ECU Scholar-Teacher and Wall of Fame awards.
ARTIST INFLUENCES: Her art is strongly influenced by her surroundings as a sense of place. As a personal, engaged experience, a sense of place becomes a constantly morphing transformation of identity relative to past and present. Her works are largely divided between personalized graphic interpretations of landscapes and cityscapes. Common elements linking various series involve the perception of the effects of light and shadows. Architectural structures and natural elements are shown affected by light and/or atmospheric or weather conditions. Larger landscape drawings depict the local environment where the imagery of new growth is seen in relationship to decaying structures, which serve as a metaphor for the cycle of life. Embedded in some of these works are physics equations that represent a theory to explain the origins of life.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND HER WORK? Her work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is on display at Joyner Library through Nov. 30. The black and white prints, “COVID-19 Series,” represent a personal response to the pandemic and an interest in the effect of light and cast shadows. In this series, people are seen only as cast shadows, eliminating a presence. Images are paradoxical
14 Her Magazine — April 2021Her Magazine — November 2021 NichePubs www.reflector.com/her
(Covid Series)- Shadows- The Covid Quere (Digital Print) Rural Cycle of Life Hinman Tree (Oil Stick) (Covid Series)- Shell Shocked Shadows, Family Album 1(Digital Print)
with multiple layers of meaning that express hope and angst. Shells and beaches are associated with tranquil family vacations. Conversely, the transparent shells in these works suggest both the elusive nature of the virus and by their shape, a pox. Shells are also skeletons of once living beings, and broken shells suggest loss and broken lives. The shadows bring up a host of narratives: we are shadows of our former selves; the virus is an elusive threat that lives in the shadows; shadows imply a looming darkness or an imaginary presence. The paradoxes of light and sunshine and children playing contrast with the shadow of the unseen. Her work is also in the permanent collections of Chase Manhattan Bank and Maytag Corp. as well as numerous university and private collections in the United States and abroad.
