Goddesses, Revolutionaries, Femmes Fatales, Wild Women, Bad Girls and Warriors

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In Twisted Sisters at the Dodge Gallery:

Nancy Spero, To the Revolution, 2001, handprinted and printed collage on paper, 48.5 x 19.75 inches. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong

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Forget the madonna/whore dichotomy. That’s a male construct. When women portray women, including themselves, a whole new set of identities emerge. In six exhibitions this spring—five solos and a curated group show—goddesses, warriors, femmes fatales, wild women, bad girls, bumpkins and a host of related personas take over.

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The artists include veterans like Audrey Flack and Linda Stein; those who live on through their work, such as Nancy Spero and Ana Mendieta; art-fair powerhouses like Mickalene Thomas; and relative newcomers like Rebecca Morgan. Here’s a look at what I saw: .

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Audrey Flack: Reimagining the Archetype of Queens and Goddesses

Gary Snyder Gallery, Chelsea
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Love Conquer All: Looks like Medusa, but it's Amor Vincit Omni

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The installation photo below gives you the scale. Image from the gallery website

Click here for more installation photos

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Audrey Flack: Sculpture, 1989-2012 at the Gary Snyder Gallery featured the work of the hyperrealist-painter-turned sculptor. I have to admit that I'm not fond of the Flack esthetic. The work seems out of time, neither classical nor contemporary, but how could I do a post like this without it?

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Maquettes of public commissions. I'm not sure if all of these have been realized, but the center maquette represents one of four 20-foot gilded bronze statues made as part of the Gateway to the City of Rockville, South Carolina. Flanking it are American Athena, left, and Egyptian Rocket Goddess.

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The installation photo below gives you the scale. Image from the gallery website
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Who is this indigenous figure with the heart, the artillery shell and the features of a young Audrey Flack? I will let you know when I find out

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Marybeth Edelson: Revolutionary
Accola Grieffen Gallery, Chelsea
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View into the gallery. The works shown below are visible in this shot

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In  Hail to the Feminists Who Produced the Revolution: Works by Mary Beth Edelson from 1971 to 2012, Accola Grieffen presented the retrospective of an artist who has worked in a variety of mediums over the past four decades, all in service to a feminist vision.

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Some Living American Women Artists: Last Supper, 1972- 2012, digital archival print with mixed media, 23.5" x 36.75" (Disclaimer: I acquired one of these prints from the exhibition)
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Above: Ana y Yo, mixed media
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Both works, in mixed media, are visible on the far wall in the installation view above. The image of Ana Mendieta with her husband, Carl Andre, on her forehead echoes the iconic Frida Khalo paintings with Diego Rivera. (Andre was famously acquitted of having killed Mendieta, who fell from a high-rise window, but doubt lingers)

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Below: What You See is What You Get, 1972, mixed media

Goddess Head, single/yellow, 1975, collage and water color on silver print, 8 x 8 inches

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Eva Lake: Femmes Fatales
Frosch and Portman, Lower East Side

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Installation view of Judd Women Targets
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In her first New York solo, Judd Women Targets, Eva Lake showed collages from three bodies of work, Judd Montages, Anonymous Women, and Targets. In several of her collages the women and the targets come together, a visual image as disturbing as it is compelling (when have women not been targets of something?). I include some of Lake's Anonymous Women here: the femmes fatales of the forties, with their Betty Grable legs and Bette Davis eyes, mysterious and unattainable, like Susan Hayward below.
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Though you missed the show at Frosh and Portman, you can see work from Lake's Target series at Chris Ashley's Some Walls exhibition space Oakland, California, in September. They won't be the same ones, though, because the wall labels at Frosh and Portman were covered in red dots.

Target No. 10 (Susan),  2008, 15 x 11 1/2 inches

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Above and below: from the Anonymous Women series, 2011-2012

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Wild Women, all 30 of Them

Dodge Gallery, Lower East Side

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Above, view from front to back, left wall: Summer Wheat painting, Lorna Williams sculpture

Below, front to back, right wall: Judith Linhares painting

These two images courtesy of Dodge Gallery

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Twisted Sisters, curated by gallery owner Kristen Dodge and independent curator Janet Phelps, was a compendium of what my mother would have called "unladylike and undignified behavior." The curators strove to incite and unsettle, repulse and amuse, which is exactly what they did in a sprawling, multigenerational show of work by 30 artists, 11 of whom I've singled out here. In part it was the subject matter—Summer Wheat's self-pleasuring figure greets you when you enter—as well as materials used messily and with abandon. Ah, sex, mess and excess! The space felt a bit like walking into a giant Id, an experience of don't-mess-with-me badness that I can only describe as extremely liberating. 

Farther down the right wall:  Xander Marro grid of silkscreens and mixed-media diaromas of women holding guns
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Gallery view from back to front

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In the lower level space, from left: Patricia Cronin, Alison Schulnik, Serena Cole, Katherine Bernhardt; Mickalene Thomas sculpture

Mickalene Thomas, Brawlin' Spitfire Wrestlers, 2007, resin, paint, Swarovski crystals; courtesy of Lehman Maupin Gallery

This and two previous images courtesy of Dodge Gallery.

Below, on the other side of the lower level: Four photographs by the late Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Facial Cosmetic Variations)

.The photographs document the artist with shampoo in her hair. I pulled these images from the internet, so they are not shown in the horizontal order in which they were installed in the gallery

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Rebecca Morgan: Bad Girls

Asya Geisberg Gallery, Chelsea

The Smoker, 2012, graphite and oil on panel, 26 x 22 inches

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In Cabin Fever at the Asya Geisberg Gallery, the recent MFA graduate Rebecca Morgan showed a collection of transgressive dope smokin, Cheeto-eatin, fleshy figures—"bumpkins," she calls them—who could have been the love children of  R. Crumb and J. Clampett. These are the People of Walmart when the're not out shopping. And was it me, or did they all look alike, including the ugly figures described as Self Portraits? I'll be honest, they creeped me out. But it's just the artist exorcising (or exercising) her Appalachian demons. One of the reasons she can pull this off—and I'm not sure she does so entirely—is that her lighthanded combination of graphite drawing and oil washes mitigate the heaviness of her figures and their weighty circumstances. 

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Above: Self Portrait post MFA wearing a smock of a former employer, 2012

Below: Homecoming Picnic, 2012

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Selection of  page-size "self portraits" and "Bumpkin" drawings

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Below: I love New York, 2011, 30 x 24 inches. This is an actual self portrait

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Linda Stein: Warrior Women

Flomenhaft Gallery, Chelsea

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Installation view of The Fluidity of Gender

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With a collection of wall-hung and pedestaled sculptures, and of body costume that is presented as sculpture, Linda Stein challenges gender roles. I'm not sure I see "fluidity" here. What I see are female forms in decidedly unfleshy materials: wood, metal, leather. I would describe them as the embodiment of women who take no shit. If that's fluidity, I'll take it. I must admit that I'm partial to Wonder Woman, substance and shadow, shown below.

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Justice for All, 2010, collage and archival inks, paper and wood, 79 x 24 x 9 inches

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Marketing Mondays: Staying Connected

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In last week's MM post, Own Your Space, I talked about the various options for buying. Many artists responded with their own stories of properties bought or built. One artist responded with this question:

The financial benefits of working at home are inarguable, but how can I overcome the social and creative hurdles of working in isolation?

Sometimes if feels as if you can't win. When you spend all your income-producing hours earning enough to pay the studio rent, you don't get much studio-visit time. And when you have a more affordable setup in an out-of-the-way place, no one makes the trip out.

I can suggest a few bricks-and-mortar options
. Regular visits to the gallery cities near you (an anonymous Philadelphia artist commenting in the same post says s/he takes the Bolt Bus up to Manhattan once a month)
. Get to the openings, where everyone is more social
. Visit open studios in your area
. Form a crit group with other artists, or even a reading group, to maintain contact with your peers. If you can't use your home when it's your turn to host, come up with an inventive solution: a room in the local library, art center or college, perhaps. Or volunteer to be the event organizer in lieu of meeting in your space
. Consider a short term rental when you need to show work to dealer or curator. Or rent/barter the use of a friend's in-town studio (could you trade artwork or a service?)

Cyberspace offers greater specificity and geographic diversity
. Maintain a blog, or comment regularly on several. You can do this from anywhere, yet the community can be rewarding
. The Facebook community is large. If you don't let it take over your life, it's both fun and useful
. In particular, Facebook groups allow people with particular interests to "meet" regularly. The group can be open--which means that anyone can read the comments, "listening in" as if the meeting were in a public park; or closed, which means it's more like getting together in someone's living room or studio. In both instances, artists are from dozens of  locations. I belong to groups in both categories, and I find that the friendships, exchange of ideas and personal support have become important the busier I become and the more isolated my work sometimes makes me. Start a group and invite people to join it.
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Readers: How do you stay Connected?

"Improbable Topographies" in Provincetown

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For the past six years I have directed the International Encaustic Conference in early June, now held in Provincetown. In addition to the three-day event, which drew 250 artists from around the world, there were a number of exhibitions at the galleries in town. I'll be posting about everything (eventually) on a Conference blog, but here I'd like to show you the exhibition I curated for the Rice Polak Gallery.

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The window at the Rice Polak Gallery offers a tiny overview of Improbable Topographies. If you look through the doorway, far right, you will see the scupture by Moriarty that opens our tour, which follows

Here: A closer view into the window, which features work by Nancy Natale, Christine Kyle, Laura Moriarty and myself

For the second year in a row, the Rice Polak Gallery hosted a concurrent exhibition. Last year Marla Rice and I co-curated Surface Attraction, in which we looked at the ways artists exploited the succulent slather, woozy drip, rich patina and translucent richness of their materials. This year she suggested I curate it myself. Thank you, Marla.

The show, which ran from May 30 to June 8, was called Improbable Topographies. Building on last year's concept, I wanted to dig deeper, physically and metaphorically. I selected the work of seven artists (six artists and myself*) who approach their work not only with a richness of surface but whose work, intentionally or not, exhibits a physical relationship to terrain. Because wax is worked in a molten state, it can be poured or cast as well as painted. Its cooled surface can be carved and shaped. My intent was to show eruption, flow, upheaval and erosion in ways that are evocative of geography and geology, if not actually plausible. These terrains are unlikely, yet not entirely unfamiliar.                                                    

Laura Moriarty: Stockpile,  2012, stack of 28 cast wax "bricks" each 3.5 x 5 x 2"

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Moriarty's work in its niche in the window, as well as another Moriarty on the pedestal and three carved paintings by me

Looking into the gallery, counterclockwise from bottom right: Moriarty, Mattera, Ruth Hiller, Nancy Natale.  Specific views coming

Above: Laura Moriarty, Cairn, 2012, seven stacked pieces, app 12 inches high

Below: Flattop, 2012, three pieces, approximately 10 inches high.  I stacked these sculptures per the artist's instructions. there is nothing holding them up except balance, and let me tell you that I held my breath the entire time the works were on exhibition

Laura Moriarty works three dimensionally. Inspired by elevation maps and geography books, she casts tectonic cross sections of what she imagines might exist below a depicted terrain. I imagine Moriarty a maker of mountains in a diminutive parallel world, forging a landscape with peaks that reach heavenward and valleys that plunge into the abyss, eons of geologic time buried within their mass. Do you suppose it's significant that Moriarty lives in the Hudson Valley with the Catskills in full view? I do. She recently published a monograph, Table of Contents, in which she takes a scholarly approach to her oeuvre, placing it into the context of science. You can see the connection to geology and land-based art

It was this work of Moriarty's which inspired my curatorial effort, and I selected work in its relation to hers.

Joanne Mattera: Vicolo 37, 2008, carved encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches

In my own work, I carve into the layered surface of each painting, creating formalist landscapes whose trenches reveal unexpected terrain. This is the most sculptural series I have done or expect to do, and while my intention is not landscape I am pleased by the geologic suggestion. The series began in 2007 and continues, most recently with the smaller work you see below.

Vicolo 64, 2012, carved encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Continuing around the gallery toward the corner, we come to two paintings by Ruth Hiller, with the Moriarty sculpture in the foreground

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Ruth Hiller manipulates scale, making the microscopic tangible.
Eerie-seductive orbs seem poised to burst from a custardy-smooth surface. I'll be honest: It took me a while to embrace this work, as the visual associations--to germs, to alien life forms--was strong. "I am continually interested in exploring the juxtaposition between what lies beneath, or out in space, and our perception of beauty and exquisiteness," the Boulder-based Hiller says of her work. Formally and technically the work eventually seduced me.

Ruth Hiller, above: (Symbol), 2011, encaustic 2 x 12 inches

Below: Capricorn, 2012, encaustic on panel, 24 x 12 inches

 

As we continue around the gallery, we pass the work by Hiller and Moriarty and come to  assemblages by Nancy Natale and two small sculptures by Christine Kyle. Specific views follow

Nancy Natale, above: Promised Land, 2010, mixed media with encaustic, 27 x 42 by 2 inches

Below: Thinking L.D., mixed media with encaustic, 48 x 60 x 2 inches

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Nancy Natale constructs geometric assemblages reflective of urban geography—book parts, tar paper, rubber, and strips of metal limned in wax, all held together with  the staccato rhythm of metal tacks. Perhaps because of its coloration or its title, Promised Land, is evocatiove of a more pastoral landscape. Natale describes these works as bricolage, or what she describes as "collage with muscle."

Christine Kyle: Cover Girl and Baroque, both 2008, encaustic on fired clay

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Christine Kyle builds up channeled surfaces in wax on fired-clay forms. The mounds call to mind hillocks or barrows; the elongated forms suggest creatures that might have emerged from the earth itself. They evoke in me a sense of the ancient. Without a reference to scale, these sculptures appear monumental yet when you see them in situ, they are actually quite small.

Corner view, with Kyle's Buttons, 2009, encaustic on fired clay, below

 

As we continue to move around the gallery, Kyle's elongated sculpture marks the spot between paintings by Willie Little

Willie Little evokes a topography with rust, oil and wax. While Little's spare compositions  are the least sculpturally topographical in the show, his surfaces are texturally rich. Oxidation and patination create a sensual crust of ironn and copper suggestive of mining and landscape.

Willie Little: Red Blue Rust Totem, 24 x 24 inches

Continuing around the gallery we return to face the entry. Larry Calkins' paintings are to the right of the doorway, just as Laura Moriarty's Stockpile is to the left

In pastoral fantasy mode, Larry Calkins creates landscapes whose surfaces have a palpable presence. Pears as large as watermelons bow the branches of a slender tree; a robed figure with two heads--one a crow, the other with a man's face and huge rabbit ears-- navigate an arboreal terrain. Considering the latter, I'd describe figure and ground as equal parts Tim Burton and Renaissance Siena.

Larry Calkins, above: Hometown, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Below: A Perfect Union, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

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*About the curation:
This was very much an artist-curated show (unlike Textility, for instance, which required  a more stringent curatorial perspective and no curator inclusion). Crosscurrents abounded here: We were brought together by a common event, our work united by a common medium and a physically related concept. Moreover, I share gallery and exhibition relationships with these artists. I tell you this not so much in the vein of "full disclosure"--though I always try to be transparent on this blog (even if my tagline reads "journalistically suspect)--but as a peek into how this exhibition came about.

Moriarty and I have curated together and are currently showing together in Super Saturated, an exhibition curated by Kenise Barnes, which I wrote about here last week. Hiller and I are represented by the Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson and showed together in the gallery's room at Aqua Art in Miami this past December. Natale and I are represented by the Arden Gallery in Boston, and I have written about her work on this blog. Last year at the Encaustic Conference Kyle received my Director's Award, and I've followed her work enthusiastically since then. I own work by each of these artists.

Both Calkins and Little are represented by the Rice Polak Gallery. I have visited the gallery regularly for years and know Marla Rice from those visits. Seeing the work of Calkins and Little, as well as several others on her roster, emboldened me to approach her last year about working together. This was our second effort together.