art exhibit opening in September at the Meadows Gallery

orky Stuckenbruck remembers driving home with her parents one evening, more than three decades ago, through the night-cloaked San Fernando Valley. As the family’s car crested a hill, the twinkling lights of Los Angeles spread out before them. “That’s so beautiful!” Corky exclaimed, much to the chagrin of her scientist father. He launched into an impromptu lecture about conservation. One day, he warned, there won’t be enough energy to go around.

That lesson stuck with Corky, now an artist and professor at Texas Woman’s University. She integrates natural elements into artwork that represents the cycle of life and Earth’s fragility.  Corky gathers grapevine, blue stem grass and anything else that catches the eye around her Argyle home. Her husband, Mark Smith, an artist and professor at Austin College, balances Corky’s attraction to nature. He prefers abstract designs and uses a computer to sketch paintings.  Their creative differences distinguish them as a couple.

That’s the beauty of Couples Who Create, an art exhibit opening in September at the Meadows Gallery inside the Center for Visual Arts in Denton. Artwork by eight couples, including Corky and Mark, will be displayed through October.  The couples’ artistic similarities and differences will be expressed through a variety of mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, collage and 3D. Competition seems inevitable when both spouses share the same field, but Mark credits Corky for helping him grow as an artist. “She loves my work more than I do,” he says.

Corky and Mark often work as a team, but they keep separate studios on opposite sides of their property. In her studio, Corky is working on a triptych collage and creating spherical shapes covered with dyed, handmade paper. The sphere series is a metaphor for the Earth, illustrating the effect humans have on the planet. “We were always taught that it would always be here and we’d have more than enough resources. I think the last 20 years have put a question mark on that,” she says.

Her fascination with nature and history goes back to her years as an undergraduate at the University of California. Corky was weeks away from graduating with a degree in anthropology when a roommate’s art project changed her life. She enrolled in art school where she learned to weave colorful wall hangings on a loom. Arthritis eventually forced her to seek out new ways of making art. “I think it’s part of [being] an artist to change,” says Corky. “Very few artists are doing now in their 50s what they were doing in their 20s.”

Contemporary art and sculpture influenced Mark at a young age. His parents, a musician and an amateur sculptor, filled their home with abstract paintings. Mark’s own abstract pieces are often inspired by his interest in science and the mechanics of the human brain.  For one piece, he created several small paintings that are each a part of a larger painting. Once hung together they create an overall effect Mark likens to a school of fish or a flock of birds.

Mark believes he and Corky share a common theme, although they express it differently.  In the end, it all comes back to nature.  “I think we have converged in our beliefs that nature is the glove that holds people and things together,” says Mark. “I think the cosmos, atoms and subatomic particles and human brain cells are all a part of the same fabric.”  Art, too.  

by nevin arslan and jayme rutledge