It’s surprising what a grid can hide — and reveal — in plain sight.

Ghenov creates her works by rearranging materials until they take on new forms.

Knoxville artist Lynne Marinelli Ghenov uses grids to scaffold the surface of her works with intersecting parallel lines forming points of departure and arrival — and a structure without restriction.

Ghenov’s recent works, such as “Wrestle-less Dreams,” “Track and field,” and “Baptization After Prepared by Initials,” use rub-on transfers of baroque-esque renderings featuring floral bouquets, ribbons, and bows; she manipulates or deconstructs by cutting and rearranging them into mesmerizing compositions of a hallucinatory quality.

“I’m reconstructing them in a new way,” she says. “The reconstruction happens on photo paper upon which I have printed a base image. I sometimes scan ledger paper. I often purposely construct my drawings so that it is difficult to figure out what is happening with the materials.” 

Sometimes it’s almost impossible to detect how the finished piece is made — and she says part of that is the nature of the materials and part of that is intentional.

Ghenov’s early days offer insight into her art practice. She was born in Philadelphia, Pa., and grew up a practicing Catholic about 45 minutes away in the southeastern Philly suburbs, in the township of Medford, N.J. Her brother is five years older, and little Lynne spent a fair amount of time alone. 

“I was always making things throughout my childhood; I was obsessively decorating and rearranging my room to the point of taping stuffed animals on the wall,” she says. “We had an extra room and I remember there was an Encyclopædia Britannica and a desk and an ironing board, and I often spent time in the room scavenging for a Ticonderoga #2 pencil or ledger paper; my dad had one of those calculators that printed out paper and I remember trying to draw patterns on the paper. I didn’t have a ton of art materials as a kid, so I used whatever was around.”

Ghenov’s mom and dad recognized their young daughter’s talents, and she was enrolled in private drawing and painting classes by 6th grade. 

“I especially loved graphite and charcoal drawing,” Ghenov says. 

She received several scholarships for Saturday art classes from Philadelphia’s Moore College of Art throughout high school, and later graduated in 1998 from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art with a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in sculpture.

“I enjoyed art school, but after graduation there was a lot of pressure to be a conceptual artist in New York,” Ghenov says. “I took a break from creating art after I graduated from Tyler — and my studio practice was inconsistent. I worked for the Please Touch Museum in Philly, and one nonprofit led to another; I spent time with a furniture maker (in the early stages of a company space that had no ventilation); there was a brief interlude where I thought I might go back to school for a degree in counseling — but I quickly decided that wasn’t for me.”

Ghenov’s current show is “memory embank,” which opened on Sept. 7 at the Goodyear Gallery at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and runs through Oct. 4.

She is influenced by the mixed-media artist Radcliffe Bailey, who said, “I’ve always felt like the only way I can heal myself is to go back through memory, learn from memory.” 

Indeed, today, Ghenov rummages through an attic of memories, the artifacts of her parent’s lives, and discarded objects of the culture she occupies. She uses vintage materials to create collages and drawings that are opaque puzzle poems: vintage décor dry-rub transfers and graphite on paper printed with images from ledgers. 

“I reuse things, and my cost is low — and I save paper and ephemera; I try to use what I have,” she says.

The work requires patience to create and patience, in equal measure, to appreciate. It has a painterly quality of colored pencils and graphite grays sensitively rendered as a watercolor wash. 

Ghenov moved to Knoxville in 2o15 with her husband, Rubens Ghenov, an associate professor in the School of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tennessee; their son, Galliano (now a freshman at UT and a prolific musician who records under the name Antadie); and high school-aged daughter, Mia.

“When I’m creating my work, I’m not creating with selling in mind, but of course I want people to see my work. I love sharing my work, and I made a conscious decision a few years ago to have more regular studio visits of artists coming through here,” she says. 

As we talk, the train toots in the background of her shared studio space in an unremarkable 700-square-foot house in Vestal, just a minute or two from Loghaven Artist Residency, the 90-acre woodland retreat where she works as an associate. 

“There is an amazing community of artists here in Knoxville,” Ghenov says. “I certainly want to continue to be a part of the larger conversation concerning art and artists in our community.”