Featured Artists Exhibit Sep/Nov 2024

Featuring Bill McAllister, Susan Finer and guest artists Peg Gignoux and Karli Pendergraft. With a special exhibit curated by Joe Grant, director of Starworks Glass and featuring the work of Takuro Shibata, director of Starworks ceramics and Mac Metz, director of Starworks metals. Also in this exhibit we’ll feature FRANK in Focus in association with the Triangle-Wide photography festival CLICK, to celebrate the wonderful photographers of FRANK.

Opening Reception September 27, 6-9 pm

Bill McAllister

In Huangshan, China, Bill photographed the magic of that area’s natural wonders. His photos are presented in the manner of 8th century Chinese ink paintings depicting this most special place. Bill uses his expert eye in capturing the landscape, always finding interesting textures, engaging compositions and dreamy atmospherics.

Susan Finer

For Susan, beauty is found in the imperfections of rough tree bark, plush moss, peeling paint and rusted metal. You can find this wondrous splendor in what she calls her “tactile memories.” Her intuitive abstract fiber art constructs a diverse terrain stitch by stitch, knot by knot, and layer by layer. She creates worlds where organic and linear, chaotic and ordered come together, where ragged rips, untidy snippets, and messy protrusions meet up with orderly lines and grids. 

Karli Pendergraft

Pendergraft has spent much of her life immersed in the natural world, drawing inspiration from its intricate patterns and subtle energies. She uses clay to translate her observations into tangible forms. She draws inspiration from diverse natural phenomena such as mycelium networks, branching root systems, oceanic life, and cellular structures. Her art gives you a space for reflection and wonder, encouraging a deeper appreciation of the delicate and profound rhythms of nature.

Joe Grant

Joe is the Glass Director for Starworks. In his “Gossamers” series, Joe blows the glass extremely thin, stretching the colors until they begin to fall apart. Balanced between refined form and a loss of control, these works celebrate the joys of color and the transformative qualities of glass to look and feel like fabric and textiles. Joe also collaborates with metalsmith Mac Metz to make abstracted glass flowers that transition carefully to the graceful lines of their stainless steel stems. 

Mac Metz

Director of the metal studio at Starworks, Mac works primarily with metal, stone, glass and wood to create work that conveys allegorical references to past events and specific scientific principles. Looking at his work, you see the push and pull of materials: soft wood next to cold steel and transparent glass paired with solid stone. His beautiful sculptures have been exhibited in Estonia, Finland and Japan, and we are very excited to see this work at FRANK.

Takuro Shibata

Since becoming the director of Starworks Ceramics, Takuro started researching local clays. His work beautifully presents the transformation of wild clay — untouched and raw, with kilns fired with wood from local sawmills and the surrounding land. These magical ceramic pieces appear to grow and move, echoing the capriciousness of the natural world.

Marguerite Jay Gignoux

Marguerite’s stitched canvases hold small and large marks with layers of textile ink coloring lengths of linen. This sturdy cloth holds the history of her French-American family. Dropping in a few sweeping and crooked stitched lines suggests a setting; a garden, a dwelling, a path. These minimal shapes and washes of color invite you into Marguerite’s idyllic world.