Marjorie Price’s exhibition of new paintings from The Bathers Series opens April 3 at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center in Frederick, Maryland, a lovely, historical town outside of Washington D. C..

Having been an avid swimmer and competitive synchronized swimmer — as well as a painter — all her life, Marjorie’s connection to The Bathers Series is an especially personal one. The theme is inspired by her love of the water; the paintings express how the body moves and feels in another element, how once released from the pull of gravity, one feels a sense of freedom and abandon. The sea is never the same; the paintings in the series explore its endlessly changing moods. For a preview of the show, please visit her website.

“Of all the many themes I’ve painted throughout my life, The Bathers Series is perhaps the closest to my heart. I grew up along the shores of Lake Michigan, and water has always been my element,” says Price. “I’m told I swam as a tot even before I could walk. I’m so pleased to have the opportunity of showing the most recent Bathers at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center.”

On April 3, at 2:00 PM, just prior to the opening of her show and in connection with the Frederick Reads event, Marjorie will present her recent memoir, A Gift From Brittany (Gotham Books, 2008, Paperback edition, 2009). The book tells about the years she lived in France in the 1960′s and her extraordinary experience of becoming a part of an ancient village in Brittany. There she met an elderly, illiterate peasant woman who lived across the road, and while outwardly the two women had nothing in common, they became close friends and transformed each others’ lives. Marjorie will answer questions and discuss the challenges and advantages of combining the dual careers of writing and painting.

2006, 34 minutes
Review by Nicolette Westfall

Lori Benson potently documents her abrupt transition from new mother to a patient with breast cancer. Although the work is only 34 minutes long, it is an emotionally charged film that reveals great insight into her struggle with a mastectomy and life afterwards.

Footage of peaceful time with her young daughter, Talula, is alternated with the cold reality of the sterile hospital setting, tests, chemo therapy, and doctors. She does not spare the viewer from the raw war cancer takes on her body. A surgeon notes the increased difficulty with reconstruction after the mastectomy, as opposed to a simply breast enhancement.

There is a photo shoot, baring her scar, done with integrity. Flowers go with her to the hospital. Soft lighting echoes the warmth her family and friends provide during the stressful times.

The stark, white lab coats of doctors and surgeons reveal the coldness of accepting life as it is. Benson is one of those women who inherit the grimness of higher chances of breast and ovarian cancer. Whether she will get cancer in her remaining breast is not known—all she can do is continue on with life, but the anxiety and worry is ever present. The majority of breast cancer cases are, however, random, and so, those women may live life thinking they won’t get cancer—until it hits—so live life instead of worrying over it.

Keeping strong for the camera, Benson tackles each stage in the process with as much energy as is physically possible, while taking care of her daughter. When she first comes back from the hospital, Talula is understandably distressed by the change and cannot be consoled. Cancer strikes to the core of not only the patient, but family and friends as well.

She wants to know whether her daughter will suffer the same tragedy. At one point, her father speaks about losing another family member to breast cancer. It is hard on men too. Life in Manhattan, however, goes on, much like the yellow taxis that stream along the streets, taking her back and forth to the hospital.

Recognizing that her own reaction to the situation is paramount to her recovery, she infuses the filming with humour. Jokes about her weight after her chemo therapy—a pound for her jeans—help everyone (including the viewer) cope with the process.

The end of the piece shows Benson swinging Talula around in a park, where there are no stainless steal scalpels or hospital gowns or IVs. They are, for the moment, safe from cancer.

by Lee Conell

“Where should I start?” I wondered when I wandered into “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the show currently on display at PS 1.

“WACK!” is international in its scope, and with over 400 works from all over the world, I don’t know if anyone could have given me a compass and pointed me in the right direction. But I’m glad I started in the room I did: The first group of work I saw were Louise Fishman’s “Angry Women” paintings, a series in which the names of female activists and artists are energetically scrawled on individual pieces of paper next to the word “angry.” There’s Angry Gertrude, Angry Jane, Angry Yvonne, and, simmering along with the rest, Angry Louise. My grandmother’s name was Louise, so immediately “WACK!” took on that feeling of personal history, of looking through the most intimate and honest photo album: No fake smiles here.

Fishman’s “Angry Women” series was an important gateway into the show for me, not just because the names softened me to the work, but also because it was so wonderfully startling to see genuine rage at the world. I’m used to demands for equality couched in pleasant language, swaddled in sweetness; after all, being called an “angry feminist” today seems to immediately invalidate any and all of your arguments. “WACK!” shows work that refuses to back away from that rage, and that’s what made the show so refreshing for me (a “third-waver”).

Alongside that rage, “WACK!” demonstrates the exhilaration of speaking to the past and changing history through works like Mary Beth Edelson’s “Some living American women artists” which depicts a black and white xerox of “The Last Supper” in which the apostles’ faces have been replaced by women artists – Georgia O’Keefe is Jesus. Many of the artists in Edelson’s work are also in “WACK!” making “Some living American women artists” an interesting complement to the exhibition itself.

Edelson’s collages, which wink at the past, are very different from Martha Rosler’s “Body Beautiful” or “Body Knows No Pain” series, which is among other things a brutal examination of the media’s portrayal of women. One of the works from the series “Hot House, or Harem” was used as the cover for the exhibition catalog; in it, images of naked women, who look like they could be pulled out of a number of magazines today, crowd the page. Like “Hot House, or Harem” Much of the art in “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” remains relevant: Senga Nengudi’s twisted pantyhose filled with sand reflect a weight from maintaining the feminine image that is still prevalent, and Margaret Harrison’s twisted superheroes (including “Banana Woman” — enough said) are still perfectly ironic.

The show’s wall text are bare and brief, offering the artist’s name, the work’s title and and little else. Because of this, I never felt lectured at during “WACK!” and it was easy to relate to the work and to place the work in a contemporary context. While some historical background throughout the show would not necessarily take away from this effect the close-lipped wall text makes sense: When the viewer approaches each artwork without a curator whispering its accepted meaning in her ear, the work continues to have space to grow and to generate new meaning. Maybe you’ll see your grandmother, a housewife with six children, staring out at you in “WACK!,” or maybe you’ll see yourself.

Art lovers crowded into the Pen and Brush for the opening of “Full Circle: A Tribute to the Cultural Diversity of Women’s Art.”

Heavy rain and thundershowers could not hold back the crowd from visiting the Pen and Brush, New York on March 8, where awards were announced for the latest exhibition, “Full Circle: A Tribute to the Cultural Diversity of Women’s Art.”

Hunter Clarke of Ardencroft, Delaware took first prize with her work “Parental Instinct 3, Watercolor on paper, 12 x 16″, 2006″ part of the Bestiarius series featuring half-animal, half-human images of pregnancy. Other award-winners included Lynn Miller and Barbara Seewald, with honorable mentions going to Israeli artist Dafna Grossman and Kathryn Wagner.Clarke, who attended the ceremony with her family, said her work was “inspired by being pregnant, and the bizarre, animalistic nature of the experience of having a life grow inside oneself. I felt a kinship with predators who hunt and kill to find food for their young, and with those animals having a strong parental instinct.”

The parent-child bond was also explored in the works of Leah Kornfield Friedman and Susan Friedman Schrott. This mother and daughter pair each entered their images “Jewish Sisters” and “Autumn Gypsy Rose” to be juried, coincidentally and unbeknownst to each other. The images represent each artist’s interpretation of Rose Wander Kornfield, Leah’s mother and grandmother to Susan.

The show was wildly popular, with Pen and Brush reporting the largest turn-out of visitors yet for an artists’ reception. Approximately 280 art lovers attended.

Full list of winners:
First Place: Hunter Clarke, “Bestiarium: Parental Instincts 3″
Second Place: Lynne Miller, “American Still Life”
Third Place: Barbara Seewald, “Silent Knight”
Honorable Mention: Dafna Grossman, “Untitled – 01 Right”
Honorable Mention: Kathryn Wagner, “Curtain (2005)”

Don’t forget to visit the “Full Circle: A Tribute to the Cultural Diversity of Women’s Art” virtual exhibit, going on now in Studio HCE.

Images by Diane Saarinen and Peter Fusco.

The VARGA Gallery of Woodstock, New York, recently concluded the annual Women’s Show–an event showcasing more than thirty artists of diverse styles and themes. The show featured a solo exhibition by surrealist visionary Cristine Cambrea and Corinne Dolle, (a.k.a. Coco), whose pin-ups have appeared in The Village Voice and The New York Times. In addition the show also featured workshops and opportunities for audience participation, all elements that make the Women’s Show and the VARGA Gallery must-see features of Woodstock.

Cristine Cambrea is a Vermont-based artist and self-described surrealist visionary. In 2007 she sold-out a six-week solo show in NYC’s Meatpacking District. She has upcoming exhibits in New York City and London, and opened The Cambrea Stone Gallery in Vermont with her husband, independent filmmaker Drew Stone. Her paintings are “a map of experiences, feelings and energy and the relationship between their physical, emotional and energetic environments.

VARGA, owned by Christina Varga, is not your mother’s gallery. In addition to providing a creative outlet for emerging artists, Christina’s vision includes representation of “outsider” artists, self taught artists, and artists who are often overlooked by the so-called mainstream art establishment because they lack the credentials or formal training often seen as necessary to the successful execution of creative work. Of equal concern to Varga is the rather exclusive nature of the art world and the traditional lack of female representation. Angered by what she describes as “disdain” for such artists, she became committed to an inclusive vision for her own gallery.

“There is certainly a greater respect for outsider and self-taught artists now than 10 years ago, but I was turned off from approaching galleries from a few experiences…and being treated with disdain. It’s the disdain that chaps my ass. I can’t stand it. So when I opened my gallery I knew that I did not have the “credentials” to decide which art was acceptable in the art world’s eyes and which art was credible and salable. I never had aspirations to be exclusive, as in to exclude people. Obviously I make some decisions as to what I find  aesthetic, but more important to me is nurturing the creative spirit in artists, especially self-taught, outsider and visionary artists. These kinds of artists are VISIONARIES.”

Her desire to create an outlet for showcasing female artists remains a driving force behind the highly successful Women’s Show, which has enjoyed tremendous popularity for more than five years. Yet Varga maintains that she is not interested in propagating separation along gender lines, but rather in working together to find common ground while cultivating shared creative spaces. In her support of self taught and outsider artists, Varga expresses a specific interest in the work of those she refers to as “visionary” individuals, whose contributions she feels are necessary to achieve societal transformation and transcendence of cultural barriers. She believes that every major leap in understanding has been accompanied by creative work, and that the nurturing of this work is an essential part of what it means to support art as an aspect of social change.

“I believe we are in a transformative period in our consciousness,” says Varga, “ and the growing pangs of evolution come through most readily in the creative processes of humankind. Every major leap in understanding and consciousness is accompanied by art and creativity and I seek to support the conscious leap from dark and churlish war-ridden fear mongering to an acceptance and understanding that each and every one of us are connected, speak a universal language and that art transcends all communication barriers. Upon seeing, or in the case of blind or visually impaired people, feeling, we are communicating with others. Specifically, I feel a need to support women artists because I know through the years it has not been easy for them to come up through the oppressively male dominated art world.”

The Women’s Show featured selections from the travelling art exhibit called “1 in 8: The Torso Project” founded by Pam Roberts.

In selecting work for the Women’s Show at VARGA, the goal was to include work with a message, but also to allow the exhibits to stand on their own, imparting the artist’s intentions. While many do center on a particular issue, such as selections from the “1 in 8 Torso Project” about survivors of breast cancer, Varga refrains from trying to characterize women’s art as limited in scope or content. She does not try to define what women’s art “should be,” but rather aims to support expression as it is and as defined by the artists themselves. (Interview Questions, Christina Varga)

“I don’t think women’s art should be anything in particular. I am often surprised by the work women create, and a lot of it can be quite dark. But on an intuitive level I think that women are very sensitive to emotional context; their works are packed with feeling and they stand on their own.”

This emphasis on the voice of the artist, whether established or emerging, is an aspect of Varga’s vision that resonates with many women, who are tired of the obligatory characterizations or defiance of notions about what women’s art is “supposed” to focus on. Many women might also respond to her message about the validity of the self-taught artist, and the convergence of our history with grassroots communities in response to creative and political marginalization. While it is true that acceptance for outsider art has grown tremendously and that the participation of women in the arts has increased, there is still an aspect of rebellion and self determination to these movements that form a part of an honored legacy for which galleries like VARGA continue to pay tribute.

People are repulsed by and obsessed with hair. We worry with it, manipulate it, punish it, alter it, style it, redesign again and again, cry as a result of its unruliness, and use it as a measuring stick by which to judge others. 

In her artist’s statement, Diane Jacobs, a visual artist from Portland, Oregon, braids the cultural superstitions surrounding human hair alongside the controlling act of forcefully shaving a person’s head for incarceration. After shaving her head in Italy in 1993, Diane began noticing other women with bald heads and the stigma placed on a person’s hair depending on their cultural background. She said that she felt “liberated” as a result of losing her locks, and began to notice the implications of hair types and styles as well as the racial and ethnic stigmas of hair.

As a self-proclaimed book artist, Diane’s artwork began with explorations in typeface and derogatory words used against women. Through her interviews with women about derogatory words used as slurs against them or that they had hurled toward other women, Diane encountered different perceptions for words. After weaving strands of paper into a bra, panties, and wigs that were printed with derogatory words, her work “unconsciously” underwent a metamorphosis to include hair as well as transparent or reflective globes and spheres symbolic of thought and ideologies. She asked friends for hair and used her own, adding an element of the exceptionally personal and intimate to her installations and mixed media images. In a recent lecture, Diane said, “I use hair because I am interested in the texture and the color range. It comes from a person, a personal intimate place. It’s loaded and I like that.” And later she said, “Using text in my work just made me think about what I was trying to say more.”

While she continues to print typeface for her installations and images, the hair tells its own stories. As Diane writes on her website, hair is encoded with an individual’s DNA. Receiving hair from people with various ethnic and racial backgrounds, Diane saw a reflection of the world within the different colors on an individual strand of hair. She discovered the stories of generations. People who intentionally cut their hair for Diane’s art entrust her with their personal histories as well as the DNA history of their families. Even strangers feel compelled to mail her chunks, braids, clips, curls of their hair. She works with an undying lineage of former comb-overs, perms, pigtails, french braids, cornrows, bobs, layers, buns, and mohawks.

Certain religious doctrines project spiritual and/or personal power onto a person’s hair and refuse to cut their divine locks (Diane mentions Rastafarians, Sikhs, and Hasidic Jews on her website). Still, some Christian fundamentalist groups, like Pentecostals, forbid women to cut their hair. Diane has sewn stars and diamonds with individual strands of hair. Those symbols reflect the diverse points of view concerning hair. It is trash under the feet of women at the beauty parlor, a sacred locket pressed into a photo album or keepsake box, a magical charm, spiritual power, and a controlled growth. The absence of it can be an oppressive humiliation, a self-conscious blemish, and an act of transformation. The process of transformation materializes in Diane’s work.

After George Bush’s controversial first election, Diane created a small book of hand-made paper (shredded New York Times and LA Times were used to make the paper) and hair. She called it “The Hairy Times” in order to show the manipulation and confusion of the major media outlets within the United States. “The Hairy Times”, and her work following it, questions political perceptions.

While her online gallery contains images of the majority of her work, I was able to see three of her pieces in person at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN, where she is currently one of six artists from Portland, Oregon, with work on display in the exhibition, “Six Points.” 

Global Inversion, 2008, 7′ x 5′, felt and human hair, acrylic ball

In the piece “Global Inversion”, Diane sewed hair into the image of an inverted world map on a 7′x5′ piece of felt. Hanging in front of the map is a small reflective globe (reminds me of a smooth, bald head), through which the map appears right-side-up (due to the flipped reflection, the globe has a map of hair). Her image reveals the small personal way that we often encounter views of the outside world. Often, the world apart from ourselves and our own culture appears upside down or backwards. Diane said that world change requires a major transformation. Her work searches for a point of unification while giving voice to divisive opinions or ways of looking at an object as well as the world.

Inspired by the book “Abolition Democracy” by Angela Davis, the portfolio “REP-HAIR-ATION” uses text, images, and hair to display a definition of incarceration, illustrating how the US penal system is designed as a continuation of the institution of slavery. Diane gives voice to the separation felt by children of inmates. With a perception for dual meanings, one page of the portfolio shows two pairs of scissors and an unfinished, unraveling braid that has been snipped away from the scalp—a reminder of the identity loss behind repetitious steel bars as well as the children who have been cut off from their parents.

Diane Jacob’s work is conditioned in dual meanings: the intimate and the public. From the derogatory to the sacred, Diane combs out spaces that entangle viewers in their perception of women, hair, and world change. The people who give hair to Diane allow her to make a collective, political statement through the use of a personal medium.

Shana Thornton-Morris reads about, researches, and explores her curiosities. She also blogs frequently at http://storytimeout.blogspot.com/

Every year, the Japan Media Festival is held in a different prefecture in conjunction with the national holiday, Culture Day. This year, the festival was held in Tokushima Prefecture, where I live. I attended the exhibition of prize-winning manga, electronic games and anime with my eight-year-old son. While he was off checking out the video games, I had a look at the award-winning manga.

I was pleased to see that three of four excellence prizes were awarded to women artists. Of particular interest was Ohoku, drawn by Fumi Yoshinaga , in which historical roles are reversed. In this story, women are shogun. Although in reality powerful men had hundreds of beautiful women at their disposal, in this drama, women wield the power. When they seek sexual satisfaction, they choose from the 3,000 beautiful men in the inner palace (ohoku).

In Japan, manga stories are serialized in monthly magazines and then, when complete, later published in book form. Although Ohoku is not yet complete, the judges were so impressed with this social commentary that they awarded Yoshinaga an Excellence Prize.

Other prizes went to Ima Ichicko for her gorgeously drawn Hyakkiyakosyo, in which, according to judges’ remarks, “beautiful and scary specters make us aware that death and life exist very close to each other, ” and Hiromi Morishita, who employs a singular style to tell stories about the lives of the denizens of a big city neighborhood in Osaka Hamlet.

Kazuko Chikuhama, the writer of Shiritori, was awarded an encouragement prize along with illustrator Kenichi Chikuhama.

In a nation where women leaders in politics and business are few and far between, it’s encouraging, indeed, to see women making waves in media.

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Suzanne Kamata is the author of Losing Kei and the editor of the anthologies The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs.