Savannah funiture maker and artist holds pop-up show at Gallery 2424

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Josephine Johnson
| Savannah Morning News

When lighting designer and furniture builder Marta McWhorter isn’t setting up and running shows at the Lucas Theatre or working on custom projects in her carpentry shop, she might be firing ceramics at Savannah College of Art and Design or greeting visitors at Kobo Gallery in the historic district.

Multifaceted and meticulous, McWhorter’s diverse, wood-centric pieces debut in a solo weekend pop-up event opening May 2, at Gallery 2424, 2424 Drayton St., Savannah. “If I Could, I Wood,” features a compilation of handcrafted furniture, art objects and sketches, concluding May 5, with final reception from 3 to 6 p.m.

A production electrician and emerging fine artist, McWhorter moved to Atlanta from North Carolina in the early 2000s working in stage crews to light concerts and large corporate events. In the city, she learned about SCAD, applied to the art school, and was accepted. She found her way to Savannah in 2004 and continued working in event production to defray college costs.

Running lights at the Johnny Mercer, Trustees, and Lucas theaters, she met Brandon McWhorter. The pair got together, had two children, and McWhorter inevitably found it necessary to put her art school aspirations aside to raise their new family. But she always kept her eye on art.

“Shortly after our second child was born in 2007, I began working at the Telfair Museum in the education department,” recalled McWhorter. “That was the beginning of a very important professional relationship that inspired me to stay focused on my own creative ideas and keep making art.”

To keep the family going, and when she could, McWhorter worked in lighting, most notably at the Lucas, where she’s contributed for more than 18 years on projects that include the annual Savannah Music Festival. And when bills were really tight, she’d venture back to North Carolina for a long weekend working with her brother, a respected carpenter, to assist him with custom cabinet projects. It was during these working weekends when McWhorter began making clear connections between her endeavors on stage and aspirations in fine art.

“Doing production work and lighting, building set pieces that maybe last three weeks before ending up in a dumpster—that lack of permanence was really starting to drive me crazy,” emphasized McWhorter. “I was beginning to understand I wanted to pour my heart and soul into something less ephemeral. I wanted to create functional pieces of art that had permanence.”

In 2011, McWhorter joined local art cooperative, Kobo Gallery, where she found space and encouragement to explore how and what she wanted to say in her work. Around this time, she also established her own live events company, McWhorter Productions, and in 2015, she rented her own shop to start making what she saw in her mind.

But the real gamechanger occurred a few years later when her husband landed a job at SCAD. One of the benefits of fulltime employment with the college is that one’s spouse or child can take one class free per quarter.

McWhorter jumped at the chance, focusing her efforts on the school’s furniture design program. Since 2019, she has regularly taken one class per quarter and now has about two years until she graduates with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree.

“What an amazing opportunity,” reflected McWhorter. “My SCAD classes have really built my confidence not just in making furniture but also in how I approach the custom work I do. My husband jokes it’s the one class that I take seriously as a 40-hour-a-week job. But people have started to notice my work and are reaching out for me to build different projects. I am so grateful for the opportunities that SCAD has brought.”

A few months ago, Top Sail, the rooftop bar at the Cotton Sail Hotel hired her to build two, 12-foot-by-4-foot indoor/outdoor bars. McWhorter combined 188 pieces of different varieties of wood in creating both laminated tops, a technique definitive of many of her larger designs.

For “If I Could, I Wood,” McWhorter selected recent furniture work and fine art in combination with sketches and process videos. During the pop up’s four-day run, McWhorter will be at Gallery 2424 to welcome patrons and speak about the pieces. All work is for sale.

“This show is a way for me to bring a lot of these school projects, which started as prototypes, and present them as finished projects,” said McWhorter. “Since I’m often at the theater, in class, at Kobo, or building custom orders, I’ve had little time to highlight the art I am making. These art pieces, furniture, sketches, and sculptural works present a retrospective of what I’ve been up to. And if something you see inspires, but you want something custom, let’s talk. I am ready for new commissions.”