Heaven and Earth: Mars Woodhill at LHUCA in Lubbock

“Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the extent of the oceans, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves.” — Augustine of Hippo

The inscrutabilities of this planet have long absorbed the attention of Mars Woodhill. So much so, that she concentrates her study of its complex systems to their most essential level: an exploration of Earth’s basic building blocks — at least, those identified by ancient philosophies. Her current exhibition, Elements on Earth and Beyond, is on view through July 27, at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, in Lubbock. In it, Woodhill wrestles with defining the undefined (and perhaps undefinable) through an examination of the elements of fire, water, earth, wood, and metal, and humanity’s relationship to them. While she distills her subject matter to these fundamentals, it is a distillation that paradoxically defies simplification. She expands beyond the earlier works of her oeuvre — the Elements of Nature series — with her more recent Star Babies, edging beyond the complexities of the Earth and into the mysteries of a vast cosmos. 

Implicit within all of her works is the reverberating impact of human intervention upon nature. Woodhill focuses not on a struggle destined to end in an apocalypse; rather, hers is a joyous, wonder-filled tussle. It is one that, as she puts it, is “a celebration of nature — both the living and nonliving systems — fostering a deeper human connection to the earth and the universe.” As such, Woodhill’s sculptural installations situate themselves as conversations, ones that question without necessarily providing answers; it is an ambiguity with which the artist is comfortable. The works themselves hold up dichotomies for our examination, some visual and others thematic: ancient/modern, geomorphic/sleek, organic/inorganic, transparent/opaque, creation/destruction, human/nature, and cosmos/terra firma. Even the arrangement of the gallery suggests a divide, a horizon line between the earthly elements, on one side, and the firmaments on the other.

Mars Woodhill studied, as an undergraduate, with Vernon Fisher at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. It was there that she first began to paint, a medium to which she returned after a decade and a half of designing upscale furniture in Houston. Upon moving to Spring Street Studios, at Sawyer Yards, her large-scale paintings took on a decidedly textural quality. A later relocation to the Hill Country — to a land thick with fossils, trees, and stones — expanded Woodhill’s already diverse background in materials. She counts among her influences Jack Whitten, Lynda Benglis, Anish Kapoor, and Klaus Moje. All of these inspirations are evident in her constructed and painted pieces, (still) large-scale and rich in mixed media. The artist combines metals and paint, and the natural (pumice, bark, leaves, ash) with the synthetic (acrylic polymer, foam, glitter), hoping “that the juxtaposition of modern, sleek surfaces with natural materials promotes a reverence and respect for our environment.”

For example, the Elements of Nature series pairs wall-mounted assemblages with corresponding floor pieces, each set representing one of the five elements of the natural world, such as wood. In the wall paintings themselves, which recollect the aerial landscape photographs of Bernhard Lang, Woodhill cuts a void from the canvas, filling in the hole with reflective acrylic. She fits the cut piece to the floor sculpture below, like a spill onto the earth; its biomorphic shape echoes the glossy cavity above. Its palette and visual textures are recognizable, connecting the two. In this way, the individual components of the pair sit in conversation with each other. It is, Woodhill says, representative of human intervention upon nature: humankind takes from the earth, creating something new . . . for good or for ill. 

Her Series I, Editions II and IIA, from Elements of Nature, are an arrangement of ten 18 x 18-inch squares into two vertical rows of five. Each piece denotes one of the earth’s elements. A progression from her earlier series, these series reflect the ancient belief that each element had a role in the creation of the others; but they also carry the power to annihilate one another. Here, Edition II, the left column, is creation. The right column, Edition IIA, conversely, is a rock-paper-scissors game of elemental destruction: fire consumes wood, earth smothers fire, and water washes away earth. 

In the center of the gallery sit Woodhill’s five monumental floor sculptures, each representing an element. These are imbued with awe-inspiring, antediluvian mystery. They are otherworldly and magical, hidden realms enlarged and revealed. In Metal, a geode is split, allowing us to peek at the treasures within. In Water, the viewer stoops to examine the aqueous mirror, a hidden pool within a cavern.

Woodhill’s most recent series, Star Babies, launches the viewer from Earth into the heavens. Here, the artist plays with what is rigid against what (appears) soft; colorful platters, recollecting Saturn’s rings, are set against consoling gentle folds that bring to mind drapery or swaddling. In this series, the explosions of colors and textures are inspired by images from NASA’s James Webb Telescope. Here, Woodhill relies on our associations with “star” signifying hopes and dreams, and with the nascent, future-is-wide-open “baby.” In the nursery rhyme titled How I Wonder What You Are, the viewer is confronted by a miasma, an explosion of galactic birth. Each “star baby” is encircled by the laws and confines of its own creation; but within its scope of play, there is an almost organic whimsy: cradling folds, cosmic ova hinting at birth, and planetary blasts and sparkles.

While the exhibition on the whole, represents a dividing line from the earthly to the heavenly, Woodhill may blur this separation in her next body of work which, she says, will be a large-scale diptych, a slice of Earth, using all materials, geological to heavenward. Might the effect bring to mind those pedagogical diagrams of Earth’s layers, or those illustrating ancient notions regarding the separation of the firmaments? Time will tell. In the interim, Woodhill’s Elements on Earth and Beyond contents itself with an exultation in the sublime mystery of our Earth, humanity’s physical and spiritual interconnectedness to its living and nonliving components. It is an optimistic search, the object of which Woodhill seems to hint in a question she herself proposes: “Can exploration and contemplation of a new unknown entity promote a brighter, more benevolent future?” By even posing this question in the first place, Woodhill suggests that she believes that it can. 

 

Elements on Earth and Beyond, is on view through July 27, at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, in Lubbock