As the old saying goes, it all depends on how you look at it. From that standpoint, it’s apparent that artist Stephanie Woody-Groshelle sees things through a distinctive lens.
“As a child, I watched people, animals and everything around me,” she said. “I could see everything about, say, an elephant — standing up, moving around, feel the dried cakes of mud on its body and even the smell it. To draw or paint anything, I simply had to have known it and experienced it firsthand. As I grew older, I was able to recognize this special way of perceiving but wasn’t yet ready to think of myself as an artist.”
Woody-Groshelle attended Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory and found she had no aptitude for a standard career like nursing. In fact, she was unable to pass the prerequisite course in chemistry. However, she was able to come to terms with her natural penchant if only the college would allow her to pursue a special course tailored to her interests and talents. Through the auspices of two of her mentors who recognized her special gifts, she was granted an independent study. She was then free to engage in art history, figure drawing and painting, printmaking and advanced printmaking (which she especially enjoyed), all of which resulted in earning a unique degree in fine arts.
One of her mentors, Doctor Winters, suggested that she go to England to obtain a master’s degree at Leeds and become a teacher. Once there, her consciousness and range of techniques were greatly enhanced.
“For instance, I’d mix colors, and wild things began to happen,” Woody-Groshelle said. “I learned to make my own colors and was greatly affected by what the different mixtures had on me. Like shades of colors like crimson were so powerful I couldn’t draw for a while. It was magical the way the pigments took over and dictated the form, the colors converging with content. Like something was giving way, and I had to go to England to become. To move from being a representational artist to an abstract painter.”
Not only that, in her studies she learned about the Bauhaus movement in Germany which combined a wide range of painting and graphics, fine arts with arts and crafts. The goal was to meld applied arts with life so that art had social relevance, even including such things as furniture design as an art for the people.
No matter the medium Woody-Groshelle was working in, the gauge was always the vibrancy of the effect it had on her unique sensibility and its potential out in the real world to touch people’s lives. For instance, a wall hanging made up of vivid colored lines, rectangles and squares could have a marked effect on the world of fabrics, tapestries and weaving.
Back in the U.S., she brought her newfound understanding of the possibilities of art to this area’s public schools while continuing to develop her own distinctive style of painting, making prints, etc.
“Some years afterwards, I just wanted to make people happy,” Woody-Groshellee said. “Because people naturally want to do art in some way. Everybody is tired of Facebook, the internet and YouTube. They want a good old-fashioned art-studio experience which is why I am here at the Black Mountain Center of the Arts. Because I know how to give it to them. They want to create their art and take home their pictures or, say, printmaking that they love.
Woody-Groshelle is presently offering an experience with gel plates, an offshoot of functioning art and the people, shades of the Bauhaus at the old Black Mountain College and the experimenting they did back in the day.
“In the same way, I take rules away, I take boundaries away,” she said. “They get to lose control and directly interact with the materials. I free their minds, which is what they hunger for. They can take it home and put a frame around it or make greeting cards and share their creations in all different ways. This town is a special arts environment, people want to create things, and I help them make it happen.”