Questions of Travel | Susan Goethel Campbell
Susan Goethel Campbell
Lost City No. 1, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
Susan Goethel Campbell
Lost City No. 2, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1/2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
Lost City No. 3, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
1 artist proof
Lost City No. 4, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
1 artist proof
Lost City No. 5, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
1 artist proof
Lost City No. 6, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
1 artist proof
Lost City No. 7, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
1 artist proof
Susan Goethel Campbell
Lost City No. 8, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
2 artist proof
Lost City No. 9, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
1 artist proof
Lost City No. 10, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Goyu paper
23 1⁄2 x 31 inches
Edition of 5
2 artists proof
Lost City No. 11, 2020
Two-layer perforated woodblock print on Kozo no. 8
25 1/2 x 39 inches
Edition of 4
Water Places 1, 2021
Wood block print on custom panel and digital print on dibond
32 x 74 inches
Water Places 2, 2021
Wood block print on custom panel and digital print on dibond
32 x 74 inches
2:10 video
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there… No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?
–Questions of Travel, Elizabeth Bishop
Susan Goethel Campbell | Questions of Travel
January 22 – February 28, 2021
Planthouse, in collaboration with Aspinwall Editions, is pleased to present Susan Goethel Campbell | Questions of Travel, the first exhibition with the artist at the gallery. The exhibition includes eleven prints from her series Lost Cities. The prints all made while in lockdown are being shown in New York for the first time.
Click here to view the exhibition checklist.
Click here to shop the exhibition.
Each Lost City print comprises two layers of thin Goyu paper printed in colors from birch plywood and perforated with tiny hand-punched holes. The hues and wood grain patterns evoke aquatic or snow-covered environments, and the perforations suggest networks of lights that delineate settlements, urban grids, thoroughfares, and bridges. Some of these holes only pierce the top layer of paper, exposing the printed paper’s color underneath; other holes go through both layers, revealing the bright white of the backing board.
Susan Goethel Campbell is a multi-disciplinary artist based in metropolitan Detroit. Her work considers the engineered environment as a natural process. The integration and erasure of human agency over broader global systems is a concept central to Campbell’s practice. Her work is realized in several formats, including prints, drawings, photographs, video, and installation.
Artist Statement
I like to fly at night, in a window seat. I consider the lights of the sprawling metropolis below as if it were a drawing. The quality of the line is paramount, while the science of linearity seems irrational. Without the ground and a sightline, there is no convergence.
In January of 2020, I started a series of perforated woodblock prints after a Caribbean trip. During my trip, however, I flew during the day. My window seat became a site of conflict between rational thinking about coastal cities, rising sea levels, and the seduction of water. The intense hues of blues and greens eventually won over. As the horizon disappeared, so did I, and I found myself floating in a subliminal space.
This experience inspires my Lost City prints. They are situated somewhere between the cognition of space and materiality. I use color to imply that the ground plane is aquatic. Like a pianist who always has their foot on the pedal, I sustain color to create space. The more saturated a hue, the deeper the water. Interruption comes through perforations in the color field—a reminder of the print’s physicality as an object made of paper.
Since the pandemic, I have not been on a plane. Because of this, my work in the studio is shifting. I am relying more on my memory of physical places and the original spark that triggered my senses. Color can have sound, and light can be physical. Staying on the ground has not been a bad thing; it has opened up my work and imagination.
Campbell’s work has been exhibited internationally in Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Slovenia, and throughout the United States. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the New York Public Library, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the University of Michigan Special Collections Library.
Campbell received a Kresge Artist Fellowship In 2009 and has been awarded residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Flemish Center for Graphic Arts, the Jentel Foundation, Beisinghoff Print residency and the Print Research Institute of North Texas.
She has taught studio art at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, including on the faculty of both the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the College for Creative Studies. She has been a visiting artist in numerous institutions of higher education throughout the country.
Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Saturday 12-6 PM – By Appointment – info@planthouse.net