Going and coming

Baggage, probably the least attractive aspect of travel, is loaded in more than one sense. Lugging bags doesn’t always foretell a jaunt to the beach or an exotic adventure. For refugees, baggage means the loss and uncertainty that comes with displacement. And of course, on a clichéd, psychological level, “baggage” carries the weight of twisted memories, deep fears and pathological weaknesses. In any dimension of reality, dealing with the stuff is unavoidable.

Last year, 18 artists from six countries lugged their real and metaphoric bags to the Caversham Center for Artists & Writers in Balgowan, South Africa. Among them were three Atlanta-based artists — Kojo Griffin, Diane Solomon Kempler and Wayne Kline. There they worked with director Malcolm Christian during three-week printmaking residencies, the results of which are on view in Baggage at City Gallery Chastain this month.

Kojo Griffin’s serigraphs will look familiar to Atlanta viewers. He continues to picture sinister storybook scenes featuring animal and doll people. His signature imagery has always been charged with the emotional baggage of sadness, anger, depression and regret.

Wayne Kline’s lithographs revolve around a world of symbols representing male and female identities and four religions. Among the prosaic icons he depicts are a heart, a swastika, the Third Eye and the Yin and Yang.

Diane Solomon Kempler is the only one of the trio whose work appears truly transformed by her transatlantic crossing. Having always worked in 3-D, she was challenged by the shift to two-dimensional artmaking. In contrast to her out-there organic sculptures, Kempler’s screenprints are subdued, self-effacing works. She imagines time as a kind of baggage. Her artist’s statement describes the temporal environment as a “container in which to place and carry all our experiences, thoughts and memories.” Ghostly funnel shapes are the vessels that hold past, present and future in “A Point of Time,” where she depicts creative energy as a hand inside a spiral flourish.

Caversham also influenced Willie Little’s approach to artmaking. Like Kempler, the Charlotte-based photographer, painter and storyteller tried printmaking for the first time in South Africa, using the image of a shopping bag to portray America’s consumerist obsession. Text embedded in a series of muted collagraphs, screenprints and chine collé reflects his thoughts on American arrogance and human rights violations.

South African writer Peter E. Clarke employs the outline of the same disposable bag to a different effect. Vivid language overlays his color-rich linocuts and screenprints. “Lament” deals with the curse of AIDS, while “Passing Through” remarks on the existential dilemma of coming and going. Also South African, master printmaker Gabisile Nkosi describes a spectrum of family dynamics — from marital violence to a child’s comfort zone — in two emotive linocuts. Her fellow countryman Molleki Frank Ledimo satirizes the colonization of Africa and modern global politics in screenprints with a rich expressionist character.

This is the second year of The Hourglass Project, a program developed to encourage international dialogue with South African artists. Atlanta participants were exposed to some sophisticated conceptual printmakers at Caversham. One wonders how the experience will affect their aesthetic and personal perspectives in the long term. Little says he left South Africa with a clearer vision of his own humanity and America’s influence on the world outside. Albert Adams, his South African counterpart, notes, “As important as the journey to Caversham was, what I have found since I left is [that] the journey has allowed me to travel deeper into myself.”

Baggage continues through Sept. 8 at City Gallery Chastain, 135 W. Wieuca Road. 404-257-1804 . Mon.-Sat. 1-5 p.m.??