Pollen Count

February 27 – April 5, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 27, 2025, 6-8PM

View the exhibition checklist here.

Download the exhibition catalog here.

Planthouse is pleased to present Pollen Count, a solo exhibition by Susan Goethel Campbell. This is Campbell’s second solo exhibition at the gallery and features new works on paper from her ongoing series, Garden Repair.

For this series, Campbell reflects on gardens and their natural cycles as they evolve and devolve with the passing seasons. This pattern of constant change—planting, growth, decay, rebirth—is reflected and expressed through her multidisciplinary process-based work.

Pollen Count considers how, from afar, a garden in late summer could begin to look a bit murky; bees have dusted petals with yellow-greens and orange-reds, leaves have turned lacey from gnawing insects, and the original planted symmetry has faded. The processes of disintegration come together to create the quality of a tapestry, worn over time.

These cycles inspire Campbell’s own processes of creation. She works with handmade Japanese paper, stained with natural and synthetic dyes. Once printed, sewn, and perforated with holes, the paper attains a textile-like quality. Similar to the intricate systems of a garden, these pieces require close examination to reveal the reflection of a world we cannot see. And, like all of Campbell’s work, Pollen Count considers the connections between global systems and the local environment.

Campbell will also be featured at the Planthouse booth at the IFPDA fair at the Park Avenue Armory, New York, March 27-30, 2025

Susan Goethel Campbell is a multi-disciplinary artist and printmaker based in metropolitan Detroit. Her process-based work and research consider the dynamic qualities of the built environment and its impact on different ecosystems. Central to Campbell’s practice are questions about the integration and erasure of human agency over broader global systems, including weather. She realizes her work in several formats, including prints, drawings, photographs, video, and installation. 

Campbell’s work has been exhibited internationally in Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Slovenia, and the United States. Museums that include Campbell’s work in their collections are the National Museum of Women in the Arts, New York Public Library, Yale University Art Gallery, Portland Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Detroit Institute of Arts, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, Toledo Museum of Art and the University of Michigan Special Collections Library. Residencies include MacDowell, The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, The Banff Centre, Frans Masereel Centrum, the Print Research Center of North Texas, the Jentel Foundation, and others. 

Link to exhibition statement.

Susan Goethel Campbell, Garden Repair No. 7, 2025, Walnut and Procion dyes, embroidery and hand-perforations on Japanese paper, 55 x 59.5 inches (detail)