PENNY CERLING
Penny Cerling was born July 6, 1946 and grew up near Chicago. She earned her BA from Iowa State University in 1972 and moved to Houston two years later with her geologist husband and two young sons and embarked on a career in graphic design. Jack Boynton helped her land a teaching position at the University of St. Thomas that she held from 1979 to 1982. Meanwhile, she took a printmaking class with Suzanne Manns at the Glassell School of Art and fell in love with the medium. She discovered the Little Egypt Enterprises print shop in 1980 and quickly became one of master printer David Folkman’s most eager and reliable assistants, taking over the etching press that had once belonged to Bob Camblin and Joe Tate. At Little Egypt, Cerling collaborated with dozens of artists including Camblin, Don Redman, Lucas Johnson, Earl Staley, Charles Schorre, and a host of others. By 1988, activity at Little Egypt had begun to wind down and Cerling launched the Cerling Etching Studio in a converted warehouse space adjacent to DiverseWorks near I-10 north of downtown. After a divorce and a downturn in Houston’s art market, Cerling became a registered nurse in 1995 and worked with printmaker Holly Lewis as Tembo/Cerling Collaborative in a Heights bungalow until 2000. While she’s since left printmaking behind, she continues to create detailed pen and ink drawings of plants, seeds, knots, bacteria, molecules, and sundials, some of which were collected in the 2007 publication “The Starving Artist and the Art of Nursing.” In 2018, she was the subject of a solo show at Houston Baptist University, and in 2019 United Airlines commissioned a large triptych for Terminal C at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Notes: Pete Gershon interviewed Penny Cerling at her home studio on July 22, 2019.
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