Susan Ressler (ed.), "It's All About the Apple, Or is it?" Women Artists of the American West, West Jefferson, NC: MacFarland Press.
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/ressler/Ressleressay1.html#Campbell
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Artists-American-Susan-Ressler/dp/078641054X
Excerpt:
Rational Being is the central image in a series of five "stained glass windows" created by Kathleen Campbell, entitled Modern Theology Or a Universe of Our Own Creation. As in "It's All About the Apple, Or is it?" the "Or" in her title suggests alternatives to theological conventions. Constructed of Duratrans, a photo-based and mass produced material used in commercial applications (such as back-lit Kodak advertisements found in most camera stores), Modern Theology queries the conflation of commerce, science and spirit while infusing a beatific light that suggests redemptive possibilities.
Eleanor Heartney, "Art and the Spiritual," essay in Thresholds: Art and the Spiritual: Expressions of Art and Spiritual Life," exhibition catalogue, City Gallery at Waterfront Park, Charleston, SC, December 4, 2003 - February 1, 2004.
Excerpt:
An even more critical view of our failure to be stewards of nature appears in works from Kathleen Campbell's Modern Theology or a Universe of Our Own Creation. Updating the stained glass tradition with the use of electronically illuminated light boxes, she presents ironically conceived saints and angels who preside over a technological society, which has lost its connection both to nature and God.
Jolene Rickard, essay in Modern Theology Or A Universe of Our Own Creation, exhibition catalogue, Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, November 12, 1995 - February 11,1996
Excerpt:
John Mohawk, a contemporary Seneca historian, has argued that, "The genesis myth not only displaced humans from Nature, but substituted the Church for the metaphorical earth as mother and placed a pope or priest as father figure instead of the sky spirit world." Here Rational Being appears as Adam, acknowledging the expulsion from the garden and reverberating through history the environment created by the assumption of western scientific rationalists and the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Campbell appears to imply, the west's token acknowledgement of the destructiveness of its methods and assumptions is no longer enough. Dead birds suffocated by crude oil are the lexicon of popular culture. Yet these omnipresent images reveal a kind of subterfuge - the depiction of destruction becoming, in a way, a contemporary ruse, allowing society to acknowledge the on-going destruction of life while not having to accept the responsibility of change. While the encroaching objects and images in her installation - black plastic, black oil and black burnt coals on the earth's topsoil - light the room with their softly beautiful glow, they reveal a society gridded and trapped in a rationalist mode that no longer seems capable of sustaining life. Once the west rejected Paracelsus" argument that "the whole world is knit and bound within itself: for the world is a living creature" - these dead birds were born.
Laura Stewart, "Angels in Modern World Reflect Current Values," The Daytona Beach Sunday News Journal, December 18, 1994, p. 6H.
Excerpt:
Just when it seems everything possible has been done with hand-painted photographs, an exhibit like the one at the Casements comes along. And blows away all preconceptions, all expectations.
Kathleen Campbell"s prints are that amazing. Most of the New York artist"s 13 luridly painted black and whites are in an updated medieval altarpiece format, with large central panels flanked by smaller side panels. Their subtle association with ancient ritual leads a religious tone that amplifies their subjects, angels or other vaguely supernatural beings whose attitudes seem strangely aloof. Angels like these might make even the most devout soul hesitate about ascending to the Pearly Gates. The wings unfurled behind a remote, indifferent woman in a gauzy gown emphasize the double nature of her title: "Gilded Angel." Curving rows of coins attached to paper serve as her wings, glorious and crass at the same time. Two related contemporary icons, "Angel with Wings of Clay" and "Plastic Angel," also mix different messages. The handsome man reclining before a backdrop decorated with wings made of clay, seems to curl his lip at his viewers, as does the female of "Plastic Angel," shown in the same languid pose. She's just as lovely, exotic in her divinity and erotic with her bedroom eyes and a slinky gown.
Modern and disturbing, these angels are flawed. These are angels of lust and commerce, of the quick buck and get-rich-quick values: angels in a modern world. Jolting reminders in a holy season of how far contemporary culture has wandered from the ancient awe of heavenly host, of Wise Men and of peace, they're disconcerting. They"re also very beautiful and not a little amusing..., Her illusions astonish because of their quirky compositions and the associations they spark. As photographs, they seem to depict reality. But their luminous hues place them in another dimension, a realm where such unearthly beings may really exist. But these angels are more. Hip to existential tangles, on the cutting edge of style and attitude, they're cynical and cautionary, and very very sexy. It"s that human quality that makes Ms. Campbell"s angels less than angelic and also more than angelic: mortals, with spiritual sides revealed but still bound by ties to the earth. Alluring and yet repellent, they're recognizable because of their titles and attributes - wings, stars and pseudo-biblical draperies. Barely the descendents of the graceful heavenly hosts in altarpieces by Giotto and van Eyck, they nonetheless stand between heaven and earth.
At a time when societies approaching a new millennium seem corrupt, Ms. Campbell's angels are perfect contemporary icons. Seen as divine beings, they promise something far less than mercy. And, seen as projections of contemporary values, they're even more chilling. If these are our angels, we understand, the society that produced them has a lot to worry about. However we see them, the angels reflect the world that created them. They're us: humans, posed as angels. And we're those angels, stripped of our wings and free - for the moment - from the awful light flickering over them, glorifying and bruising.
Robert Hicks, "Photographer is 'Angel' of the Impossible," The Villager, West Village, East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Tribeca and the Lower East Side, NYC, Vol. 68, No. 29, December 9, 1998, p.16
Excerpt:
For her New York City debut, "Photographs of Non-Existent Beings," at the Soho Photo Gallery through January 2, Campbell's large-format, hand-colored portraits of "angels," created from models set in staged tableaux, will challenge our notion of what is sacred and what is ordinary in a sometimes serious, sometimes humorous mixture of the real and unreal. "Our society claims to be very rational and scientific, yet everyone knows what an angel is. There's a whole irrational side of us that's repressed. We could easily destroy the world with this irrational side that we deny," says Campbell.
Campbell is both artist and educator. Her work appeared recently at the 1998 Houston FotoFest....Campbell began thinking about how Americans see themselves as rational, scientific beings....She began to uncover social, political and cultural contradictions which became embodied in her portraits of angels.... "The work that I've done refers back to a sacred tradition in art. I use that as a vehicle for saying things about contemporary life.... When I first started the angel series, I just liked the idea that you couldn't take a photograph of an angel. There was this element of absurdity in saying that you were going to do that....(but) They're (also) about the things that we unconsciously worship....We worship technology. We worship science. Our cultural attitudes imply that we have phony values. Plastic angels. We're seduced by things hat are tacky and not good for the environmen.... In our lives, she concludes," We're always hoping for some transcendent experience, but we're always grounded in a disappointing materialism."
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