Charleston-based visual artists Bri Wenke and Sam Rueter have collaborated many times over the last five years of their friendship – from putting on large-scale, immersive art installations to live-painting nude models at the Grand Bohemian Hotel. Now, the figurative-painting pals are taking their creative bond to a new level with the recent opening of a shared studio space in West Ashley.
Wenke and Rueter are using their new space on Lango Avenue to host community workshops, collectors nights and figure drawing classes. They’re paying forward the option of self-expression through making art — which the two artists revealed as crucial in their personal journeys, along with their friendship, in a recent interview at the new studio.
Creative partnership feeds into artwork
Rueter and Wenke first met as vendors at the Charleston Night Market around 2019 while they both were getting started in their artistic careers. Each moved to Charleston a few years before, Wenke from Connecticut and Rueter from New York. They quickly bonded and began to inspire each other to take creative risks — Wenke showing Rueter her bold palette knife techniques and Rueter sharing expertise on how to make soft and colorful watercolors.
“Our friendship started through bouncing ideas and style off of each other,” Rueter said. “I didn’t have anyone else in my life who was also simultaneously building themselves as an artist from scratch, so when we met, that changed everything.”
Wenke added, “We both went through fiance breakups around the same time. We had a safe space in each other that we didn’t have before. As our friendship grew, we were able to validate each other and create a support system.”
They were painting mostly landscapes at that time and together learned the figurative techniques for which they’re now known while working out of studios at Redux, vending at the market and building followings on Instagram.
Wenke said, “We just started doubling down on our art, and ourselves…there was all this newfound energy going back into us and our work.”
The resource they had in one another “enabled us to do a lot of the big things we’ve done,” Rueter said, referencing their immersive art exhibitions, like Consumption, in 2021 and most recently, Resurgence, in 2023.
Power in the female form
Wenke’s works use thick layers of paint in bold reds, blacks and blues, as her expressive figures gaze brazenly back at the viewer, or, in some cases, unravel from a human form into thick globs of paint. Meanwhile Rueter, who also has a popular substack account where she writes on the themes of her work, delves into figurative storytelling with multiple-figural scenes in drippy washes of neon color. In her artist statement, Rueter writes, “ [making] figurative work as a woman is about taking back the power of the female form.”
Both artists also found in painting permission to unpack trauma and find authenticity in their voices.
““[Painting] felt like a medium I could go to where I could say things that I couldn’t verbally say in my life yet,” Rueter said. “There’s so much that women aren’t allowed to talk about… I think making honest works that ‘go there’ gives women permission to talk about these things.”
Both artists tackle societal views on femininity, power and control. They use posture and body language to depict the tension between societal fascination with the female body and the lack of safety that comes with it.
Wenke said the female form is a “battleground,” and she leans into that in her work, which is also informed by her study of history. “The female form is such a currency in our world. It sells everything, it’s what everyone desires to have or to control…There’s so much power in having a female body, and yet it also makes you a big target.”
Wenke specifically takes inspiration from the concept of somatic healing — “the things we don’t talk about, we hold in our bodies,” she said, and her newest series of paintings, Collective Hygiene will dive deeper into this energetic theme. She uses “aggressive” hues of red and defiantly postured figures to talk about “dirty pain,” a phrase that refers to the psychological, emotional or cognitive stress that we take on.
“Dirty pain is what no one wants to look at, no one wants to address. We all feel it genetically. It comes from the roots of this country, what it was built on…it comes from cycles with our families… it is violent and it is gory, but it’s fucking honest and it’s looking right at you, even if it’s just one eyeball. They’re showing all their layers.”
Her palette knife technique only furthers the idea that we all have layers — physical manifestations of our emotional experiences.
Rueter similarly does not shy away from taboo topics in her painting, including chronic pain and intergenerational trauma. Though her handling of paint shows a softer touch, embracing the tender side of the healing process.
“As I was going through that personal process of unpacking,” Rueter said, “I started putting it on the canvas. Talking about these conditionings that we all need to like work to unravel, especially as women…. My body has just been literally in a clench, fight or flight for 20 something years. You can’t live like that, but so many women are. The work is a vessel for that.”
Her female subjects are often set in scenes of girlhood, like braiding each other’s hair, picking flowers, lounging alone after bathing. During the interview, Rueter is in fact working on her biggest painting yet, a scene where all the versions of her past selves sit at a dinner table together.
“It’s about making peace with them, accepting them,” she said. “They were working with what they had, and they got me to this next version of myself and so on and so forth… It’s about self acceptance. Like, I’m not there, but I’m on the journey, and it’s about honoring that.”
Creativity has been a place of healing for both artists – with Wenke saying she’s grateful for what she calls ‘the current.’
“Even when I was living inauthentically, there was still this subtle pulse below the surface, pulling me towards creativity.” And now, with their new studio space, workshops and classes, (as well as retreat offerings through Rueter’s other creative venture, a women’s retreat company she co-founded called Ember and Solis), they’re showing others how to tap into their own currents.
“We’re bringing people in, and teaching them art, getting them working with their hands and meeting new people,” said Rueter, who in fact got her start as an art educator. “It’s been really cool to make this space happen, to have people share in it with us, and find their own voices and inspirations.”
Learn more about Sam Rueter, Bri Wenke and the offerings at their studio on Instagram at @sruetercreates and @artbybri.
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