A Guest in Wonderland
Fayette Artist Peggy Guest Focus of Ashby-Hodge Gallery Exhibition at
CMU
FAYETTE, Mo. – With the opening of its next exhibition Jan. 17, The
Ashby-Hodge Gallery of American Art at Central Methodist University is
inviting visitors to enter the wonderful, wacky and whimsical world
represented in Fayette resident Peggy Guest’s prodigious outpourings of
art.
Titled “A Guest in Wonderland: The Multi-Media Works of Peggy Guest,”
the exhibition will run through March 2. A reception for the artist will
be held from 1:30-4:30 p.m. Jan. 22.
More than 60 works will be featured in the exhibition – a multi-media
potpourri of art fashioned by the highly creative Guest, whose unbounded
imagination transcends conventional approaches to the visual arts by
leaps and bounds. In her collective works, horses have wings, bears and
assorted bugs wear colorful clothing and medieval dragons puff curling
wisps of smoke and float through the air with bemused expressions.
Guest’s colorful art embodies the creative richness of Lewis Carroll’s
“Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” with L. Frank
Baum’s characterizations in “The Wizard of Oz” mixed in. It is art for
all ages – bound to delight children and to bring out remembrances of
youth in adults.
“It’s going to be a magnificent show,” said gallery curator Joe Geist.
“Her imagination just doesn’t stop – it’s just wild!”
The panoply of Guest’s art embraces pastels, colored pencil sketches,
watercolors, pen and ink drawings and large, three-dimensional and
sculptured pieces. Flowers are represented in one series of art works,
and an anthropomorphic array of animal life in others.
Many drawings and paintings have satirical titles reflecting subject
matter, such as “Foxglove,” which features an impish red fox sneaking a
peak of a foxglove plant from behind a tree; “Lady Slipper Orchids,” a
bright red pair of a girl’s slippers surrounded by colorful orchids; and
“Tiger Lilies,” a series of Asian tigers prowling through a jungle of
tree lilies. A four-panel work that starts with plants and animals and
concludes with a characterization of CMU’s new Student and Community
Center aptly reflects the eclectic nature of Guest’s art.
“Look long enough at my work,” Guest says in her artist’s statement,
“and you’ll see a story. If you take the time, and the
chance, these
characters will draw you into their world and make the trip worthwhile –
a world … compliments of your own imagination.”
As with “The Walrus and the Carpenter” poem in Lewis Carroll’s classic
“Through the Looking Glass,” when viewing Guest’s art, the time has come
to talk of many things … “of shoes and ships/ and sealing wax...of
cabbages and kings/ And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs
have wings."
Gallery hours will be from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday. For additional information on the exhibition or
to schedule a group showing, contact Dr. Joe Geist at (660) 248-6324
(gallery) or 248-6304 (office). The gallery is handicap accessible.
Guest, who holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Park College, has
also studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute, University of
Missouri-Columbia and Columbia College. She is well-known in
Mid-Missouri, especially for her murals in public buildings, including
an historical depiction of early Missouri history in the Howard County
Courthouse, Ronald McDonald House Family Room mural in Boone Hospital in
Columbia, and a newly completed mural which she donated for the
children’s wing of the Fayette Public Library.
Guest believes in sharing her art as a social responsibility: other
donations of her work have gone to the Ronald McDonald House, University
Hospital, in Columbia; University of Missouri-Columbia Museum of Art and
Archeology; Fayette Area Public Trust (for fund raising); Howard County
Fire District; and Animal Rescue Volunteers in Sims Valley, Calif.
Guest’s reputation as a multi-media artist has brought her invitations
from a number of institutions throughout the country to display her art.
These include a show in Chicago in June at the American Association of
Botanical Gardens and Arboreta; a show in the Lauritzen Botanic Gardens
in Omaha, Neb.; the Steinhardt Gallery-Brooklyn Botanic Gardens in 2004;
Powell Gardens in Kansas City in 2001; and previous exhibitions at CMU.
Upcoming plans include an exhibition to open in April at the Unity
Gallery-Country Club Plaza in Kansas City and work on a series of
“whimsical: three-dimensional pieces” for the Ronald McDonald House
Charity silent auction.
