Hidden Cities

Copyright 2011 by the Women’s Caucus for Art. The book author and each artist here, retains sole copyright to their contributions to this book.

Catalog designed by Karen Gutfreund

Cover Design by: Rozanne Hermelyn, Arc and Line Communication and Design. www.arcandline.com

ISBN: 978-0-578-07658-4

Hidden Cities

2011 National Juried Exhibition

Presented by the Women’s Caucus for Art

Juror: Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC at New Century Artists Gallery

530 W 25th St # 406

New York, New York 10001

February 1 – February 12th, 2011

HIDDEN CITIES

Artists were invited to explore their idea of their Hidden City, real or imagined, in an array of media, with the theme broadly interpreted from an activist, political or personal context. We asked them to convince the viewer of its viability, a live space filled with passion and imagination!

“No matter our place in society, we all have our Hidden City, a place of refuge from gender, race, class and sexual exclusions, a place that shapes the feminist viewpoint. Some cities, like wrapped boxes, conceal unexpected gifts, others are riddles and lyrical abstractions. These are performative spaces where we may imagine retribution for injustices, righting wrongs or conversely, delving into the dark side.”

FROM THE PRESIDENT

I want to welcome you to the 2011 Women’s Caucus for Art annual juried exhibition. The theme for this year’s exhibition is Hidden Cities. From over 894 pieces by 363 artists, the juror, Lisa Phillips, Director of the New Museum, NYC, had the daunting task to choose the 48 pieces of work in the exhibition and catalog. I would like to thank Lisa for her time and vision. I also want to thank the members of the national exhibition committee who worked so diligently to pull off this exhibition. A special thank you to National Exhibition Chair Karen Gutfreund for her leadership, creativity, drive ..and for the many hours she put in to make this exhibition a success.

When the first WCA national exhibition was held, women artists were struggling for recognition, inclusion and representation. Despite the many inroads made by feminist artists in the 70’ and 80’s, women today still find themselves on the outside...in their own ‘hidden city.’

In the book “After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art”, it is noted that while we have gained ground we still have not reached parity.

“Examining the number of solo exhibitions by women artists from the mid 70's...we can see that the situation did improve until the 1990's but that it appears to have reached a plateau. In the 70's women accounted for 11.6% of the gallery solo exhibitions. In the 80's, 14.8% In the 90's the number increases to 23.9 percent but the percentage has dropped recently to 21.5%. This number is only slightly better than the number of women's' exhibition which is 18.7%." While the numbers of women exhibitions has increased 'it really has only kept pace with an expanding market. Women still have roughly 1 opportunity for every 4 opportunities that are open to men."

These statistics should not dismay us but should be a renewed call to action; to work together; to inform and educate; to find new avenues and ways to celebrate and support women artists; to take the hands of the women artists who in the 1970’s refused to be kept out.

So I invite you to come in, to experience, to be moved, to see and to hear the vast, rich voices of the women in the WCA’s national juried exhibition, ‘Hidden Cities.’

The‘ Hidden Cities’ exhibition is held in conjunction with the Women’s Caucus for Art’s 39th annual conference, live space: women + art + activism. The exhibition is one of several events that culminates in the Lifetime Achievement Awards and Live Space Gala honoring: Beverly Buchanan, Diane Burko, Ofelia Garcia, Joan Marter, Carolee Schneemann and Sylvia Sleigh. Also being honored is Maria Torres with the President’s Award for Art and Activism.

- Janice Nesser-Chu, President, Women’s Caucus for Art

About Women’s Caucus for Art:

Founded in 1972 in connection with the College Art Association (CAA), WCA is a national member organization unique in its multidisciplinary, multicultural membership of artists, art historians, students/educators, and museum professionals. The mission of the Women's Caucus for Art is to expand opportunities and recognition for women in the arts.

WCA is committed to education about the contributions of women, opportunities for the exhibition of women's work, publication of women's writing about art, inclusion of women in the history of art, professional equity for all, and respect for all individuals without discrimination and support for legislation relevant to our goals.

OUR MISSION

The mission of the Women's Caucus for Art is to create community through art, education, and social activism

We are committed to:

 recognizing the contributions of women in the arts

 providing women with leadership opportunities and professional development

 expanding networking and exhibition opportunities for women

 supporting local, national, and global art activism

 advocating for equity in the arts for all

For more information visit: www.nationalwca.org

ABOUT THE JUROR:

Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC

Lisa Phillips was appointed Director of the New Museum in December 1998, and arrived in April 1999. She is the second person to occupy that post in the museum’s 30 year history. Since it’s Founding in 1977, the New Museum has had a unique role in the New York art world as a leading destination for new art and new ideas and is Manhattan's only dedicated contemporary art museum. She lectures on contemporary art at museums throughout the world and has served as a Visiting Critic at Yale University and as a panelist and juror for the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Public Art Commission, and the Fulbright Fellowship Review Committee.

Under Ms. Phillips direction, it is respected internationally for the adventurousness and global scope of its curatorial program. In 2003, with the Board, she initiated a major capital campaign to fund a new building project that resulted in a 60,000 square foot new world class cultural destination which opened in 2007 designed by the cutting edge firm, SANAA. In late 2007, the New Museum opened on the Bowery, having raised over $64 million and having established an endowment for the first time in the Museum’s history. She has more than doubled the New Museum’s income and membership; increased profile and visibility through higher quality programming, rebranding, and marketing initiatives; expanded Board from fifteen to thirty-eight members; developed long term partnerships with corporations; dramatically expanded education and youth programs; and took on Rhizome, a new media organization as an affiliate.

Prior to joining the New Museum, Phillips, was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She organized such landmark exhibitions as “The American Century Part II: Art and Culture” (1999), “Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965” (1995), “Frederick Kiesler” (1989), and “Image World: Art and Media Culture” (1989). She presided over mid-career surveys of Richard Prince (1992), Terry Winters (1992), and Cindy Sherman (1987), in addition to overseeing the 1997 Biennial Exhibition and serving on the curatorial team for each Biennial between 1985 and 1993.

JUROR’S STATEMENT

Hidden Cities

What is a hidden city? A place or space that could be real or imagined, invisible to the eye? A place buried by time? By history? A place of recovered mysteries, memories and histories? A refuge from the world, an aspirational space for the future? Or a place unavailable to the conscious mind? Perhaps even the mind itself?

There are as many responses to this poetic concept as artists represented here and it is clear that 'Hidden Cities' has a special resonance for women. A hidden city is a necessary free zone for the imagination, a place where women can recreate the/a world in their own vision. It is a place of inner peace, strength and safety, and a haven for exploration of the 'self certainty and self doubt' we all have. several of the artists have repeatedly referred to it an their work, as a place of regeneration and renewal, a place to nurture the mind and soul, a place of equality and justice , a focus for order and completeness or a portal into unknown and profound experiences.

Whatever the motivation and interpretation, these artists have given us wonderful images for contemplation. They also use a wide range of means from high tech like ground penetrating radar to map a leaf cutting ant colony or a fictional world created in the virtual reality of Second Life to low tech approaches where common objects are transformed and woven into new cosmologies. New worlds are available in such prosaic objects as worn t-shirts, cast off shoes, old band-aids, or tin cans which await the artists hand to show us the beauty and redemption in the common place. Hidden cities are all around and inside us waiting to be animated, discovered and revealed.

By: Lisa Phillips Toby Devan Lewis Director New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC

Caroline Bagenal

Blue Domes

Wood, plastic, metal, paint, found objects

Variable - installation

2007-10 Gallery

The Blue Domes evoke many cities, real and imagined, ancient and futuristic. They suggest Etruscan tombs as well as stupas and temples. The brilliant blue color draws attention to the repetition of shapes. Each form is composed of similar elements but each is different. The domes are made from everyday materials, lids, tins, and bowls but in assembling and painting them they are transformed. Several function as reliquaries with objects of personal significance hidden within.

Beth Barron

Implosion

Found band-aids/Hand stitched 52 inches diameter

2009 Gallery

I've run away from home.

From the dark familiarity of constant desire and smothering fear. No map or sign or guide to mark the course.

I stitch my way out of and into open space.

Sarah Bielski

“Amazon” considers the gendered construction of what we term the ‘natural’ environment. Here, grass begins to stand in visually and metaphorically for human hair, specifically female pubic hair. Simultaneously, it represents the perpetuation of the lawn and its care as the pursuit of the suburban male. The work confronts the culturally condoned ways of manicuring both the yard and the human body while exploring the burden of upkeep in both. In a surreal dialog, the grass becomes a hidden city within the larger context of the panties, the interior of which is a hidden city itself.

Jackie Branson

Split Canon Flying Crosses

Steel, adhesive, computer parts, carpet, wire, hardware

13.25 x 7 x 16 inches

2010 Catalog

Split Canon, Flying Crosses is from a body of work that focuses on the challenges of social situations and contrasts between introversion and extroversion. Structure and materials depict exterior protection and interior domestic luxury, aggression and defense. By repurposing materials that symbolize function and comfort, I explore inherent issues of social interaction, such as feminine versus masculine, domesticity versus confinement, and approachability versus avoidance.

Corrida = Bullfighter

Oil on Canvas

59 x 39 inches

1994 Catalog

I am an artist and sculptor. My style opens a new page in Impressionism Art History. I am an Expressionist with strong sarcastic themes. I am a pioneer because I am the first Artist in World Art History who ever painted a nude human body using yellow and red colors as background.

In "Corrida," red panties, allegorically symbolizing the bull's horns, demonstrate that it is very easy for women, embodied by the matador-temptress to manipulate men, represented by the bull. The irony is that universally, the male believes it is HE who seduces (conquests) the woman, but "Corrida" reveals this to be a false reality as it is the female who easily control the male with her sexuality.

Kia Mercedes Carscallen

Systemic

Video/ video projector / vinyl flooring

2 x 3.5 feet

2009 Gallery

Using video performance and projection, Kia Mercedes Carscallen explores how an individual body cannot be healthy in a social system that is ill. In Systemic, performed by Kia, she plays with the notion of being comfortable in one's own skin while bearing the heaviness and constant pervasiveness of oppressive cultural systems which mask individuals in fear and denial. It is here she reveals persistent desire –through vision – to become something new. The personal bodily engagement which is a hallmark of Kia’s work evokes the exertion required, at the level of muscle and tissue, to see what one is conditioned not to see.

Marie Cenkner

Scarlet Ibis In Buffalo

This photograph was taken in a beautiful man made 'natural habitant' in a large city zoo. The birds appeared to be content, barely noticing the people or the extremely large cage in which they were being held captive. The rectangular ceiling cast a shadow on the water that was echoed in the positions taken by the four Flaming Ibis. Did they know that they were confined, restricted? Did it matter to them as long as their basic needs were being met? Are we humans any different? The hidden city that confines them is revealed only through those shadows that the building-cage casts over its residents.

Photuris Flashing Flesh

Bronze, glass, LED lights, and glow paint Room installation, 2010 Catalog

Photuris Flashing Flesh is a dark immersive space that evokes a hidden city of nostalgia, evolution and rage. Like fireflies, bronze vaginas are captive in flickering mason jars-while the viewer hears my personal vagina monologue in the background:

This small muscle transforms into a plot of land that is tough enough to withstand the conquering and pillaging of its pretty paradise pink There is a monumental strength in it's stubborn refusal to become extinct.

This monologue is a call to arms for the vagina to evolve into a predator.Like the females of its namesake, the photuris fireflys devour males, striking back against eons of violent oppression in male-dominated cultures, striking back with evolved, empowered resistance.

Jessica Riva Cooper

Sprouting at Bone

Ceramic, glaze, underglaze, acrylic ink, oil clay 132 x 108 x 140 inches

2010 Catalog

In my installation Sprouting at Bone, the world emerges with fruiting plant matter, color and form bursting forth from quiet gardens and bringing chaos to ordered spaces. Hidden Cities are places and people that Nature has reclaimed by creeping over structures and bodies. Wild floral growth subverts past states, creating the preternatural from this transformation.

Sherri Cornett

Hidden Cities Chrysalis

Welded steel, copper wire & sheeting, kiln formed glass, mirrors 43 x 26 x 13 inches

2010 Catalog

My Chrysalis Series, based on Jungian Marian Woodman's concept of building symbolic protective spaces evolved into my Ancestresses & Wise Women installation, within which I hold Conversations Among Women. Time after time, the conversations touched on the need for women to look within themselves and develop their strength, courage, and integrity before working to change the outer world. In this wall sculpture, I return to the sheltered form of a woman's core with multiple mirrored elements to facilitate such explorations.

Anne Dushanko Dobek

Promises Promises IV

Hanging elements within air space, fabric, wood, wire fencing, assorted manipulated found objects

6 x 6 feet

2010 Catalog

Hidden Cities can be a refuge or, in many instances, a trap. For the tens of thousands of young women who come to the United States with promises of marriage, their new life in an American city is not a house but a brothel. 'Promises, Promises III' is part on an ongoing series which addresses the sex trafficking of young girls and the hidden networks which exist to move, use and abuse them. The cagelike structure of this sculpture references chicken coops, fencing and the subhuman conditions in which these children are held captive..

Sally Edelstein

Growing Up and Liking It

Paper

48 x 58 inches

2008 Catalog

Over the past 50 years women have had to navigate thru a plethora of often conflicting imagery about our role in the world. Using collage as a means of examining social fictions the fragments of these mass media images remain imprinted in each of us and we often remain shattered in different pieces, some imprinted by feminity others by feminism. Women have been accustomed to compartmentalizing ourselves into many personas simultaneously.

M. Chava Evans

Cite/Site

Reclaimed paperback novels, wood and plaster

5 x 5 x 5.5 feet

2009 Gallery

Near my childhood home was a low, dim building on the edge of the Jewish cemetery-a genizah. Old holy books, from the collections of the recently deceased, re-organized themselves in vegetal masses until, once a month, they were buried. My rabbi went to learn one idea from of each book before it was buried. I came with. As I constructed this piece, I thought about Barthes metaphor of text as the site of infinite citation. The genizah is a space of aggregated citation, a unstable purgatory for abandoned wisdom. My haven.

Tracy Walter Ferry

Untitled #1

Real-time M.R.I., plastic cowboys and indians, balloons, screws, nails, metal and wood

36 x 48 x 48 inches 2010 Gallery

This series is based on my extensive and past experience as a registered nurse, which gave me insight into the human body in a completely intimate way. As a registered nurse, I have seen what is hidden inside our bodies. These pieces are abstracted self-portraits, spaces within the body of a woman that don't exist in men. Much of the work is interpreted from a feminine perspective, of how often our heart disease is misdiagnosed and of our roles as mothers who are concerned with what toys our children are playing with.

Peep Show

Catalog

“Pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women’s bodies and souls…” Andrea Dworkin.

“Peep Show” hides the reality that in order for porn shops to exist, women and children must be exploited. Pornographic depictions of women are showcased on street corners, magazines and billboards so often and repetitively that these images appear normal. Hidden under the facade of glamour, fashion and beauty is the insidious reality that each day in our country and throughout the world, women and children pay the price of pornography with their lives.

Christine Giancola

Gelatin Silver Print 24 x 20 inches, 2007

Grace Gray-Adams

Maps of my Hidden City

Digital scans and actual dryer lint framed and arranged in the corner of 2 walls

68 x 50 inches

2009-10 Gallery

I have been using dryer lint as a medium since 1980. I'm interested in the story of my existence the lint captures: a piece of tissue from a cold or a pubic hair from a lover. My life is recorded in this debris which contains a hidden world or microscopic city of my daily footprint.

CTRL ALT DEL, Migration #5

Acrylic, found imagery, encaustic, embroidery, cement glaze

40 x 40 x 2 inches 2010 Gallery

I've lived in over 31 zip codes. I've lost count having moved city to city and back again. With my CRTL-ALT-DEL series I'm examining the concept of creating 'do-overs', juxtaposing the digital realm manifesting in the personal. One swift keystroke wipe everything out to reinvent oneself. Start over in this new place, digitally it's clean, a pristine series of zeros and ones; the real world doesn't operate like that. Wiping everything out over and over, the layers of life and memory get thin, unsubstantial, and disintegrate.

Bellavista-Huelva, Spain (1984-86)

Oil and metallic leaf on canvas

48 x 36 inches

2010 Gallery

An overwhelming sense of warmth envelops this painting. My fond remembrances of living in a small coastal city in southern Spain color this artwork in shades of red over a variety of gold leaf. All is not rosy hued though, as my scrapings of the river reveal successive hidden layers, just as the undercurrents of an uncertain childhood meander in and out of the vague realm of memory. This city is real and a construct, built by an adult looking back.

Carol LaFayette

Archival Inkjet print 32.25 x 32.25 inches

I work in a read-only landscape, where technology makes earth art invisible to the land itself. For atta, I used Ground Penetrating Radar to map a vast leafcutting ant colony. This convinced a group of entomologists to abandon their backhoe, which completely destroys the subject of study. Work in progress, a 'local nervous system for the ruburbs,' enhances sensing shared among people, flora, and fauna. I am also creating a wearable system so that one may experience ultraviolet and infrared light, infrasound and ultrasound.

atta data cube

2007 Gallery

The Baby is Sick

Oil on canvas

18 x 36 inches, 2010 Gallery

Dramatic portrayals and heavy line use for varying subjects in Expressionist art is often the inspiration for my paintings. The simplification and breakdown of objects into their parts, as children sometimes view things, is represented by my early fascination of cardboard, cutout paper dolls. In viewing subjects in terms of their parts, one can then learn to appreciate the subject as whole. I use heavy lines and outlines in my paintings to represent emotion and to isolate the figure in a cutout effect. The figure is then supported by tethered shapes that cushion or define the space. “The Baby is Sick” is the imperfect, but realistic view of sick babies whether with a minor or serious illness. It is not the expectation we have when entering the world of babies.

Our desire to comply is entangled with our need to resist. The need to resist emanates from the mind - my safest, most heavily fortified refuge and the ultimate hidden city.

Sally Grizzell Larson

Crystal Yachin Lee

Digital photography on archival watercolor print, edition of 4 21 x 16 inches

2009 Gallery

Focus was selected from my recent solo exhibition Travel Study. This image was taken on a bright, breezy day in San Diego. The standing bird on a high cross is suggestive of the ultimate inner peace and strength, so needed in this hectic world, which is gained from living in the presence of God. The blue sky represents the tranquility of the soul. My compositions are greatly inspired by Chinese painting and calligraphy, in which negative (background) space is considered an integral part of the composition, rather than merely empty.

Crystal Yachin Lee

Pull

Digital photography on archival watercolor print, edition of 4 21 x 16 inches

2010 Catalog

Pull was selected from my recent solo exhibition Travel Study. This image was taken on an early morning in downtown Santa Ana, while watching a construction crane working with great caution. It is similar to my life philosophy of being prudent and precise. The clear, open sky compliments and contrasts the busy action of the crane. My compositions are greatly inspired by Chinese painting and calligraphy, in which negative (background) space is considered an integral part of the composition, rather than merely empty.

Ellen Lowenstein

“Fear of Known Things”

Bronze, pigment, paint 4 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches

2006 Gallery

A figure of indeterminate sex sits, fetal-like, in a boat. It stares, transfixed and frozen, at the holes in the vessel. The title Fear of Known Things elucidates its predicament. It sees what is inevitable but cannot respond and perhaps indeed there is no response. This is a symbolic representation of the psychological state of anxiety, produced from attempting to deal with the known thing, death. Albeit humorous as well, the homunculus is nevertheless immobilized by fear.

So Yoon Lym

Ronay-jah / Adrift in Suburbia 5

Acrylic on Paper / Ink on Paper

14 x 17 inches / 5.5 x 7.5 inches

2009 / 2003

Gallery

I am interested in the arrangement of the these 2 different series of works, with the larger urban female hairstyle paintings from Paterson, NJ looking down over the smaller-sized drawings of the mansions of Franklin Lakes, NJ. The curiosity of the pairing of images is that there isn't an obvious connection except in the hidden fact that the 2 towns are only separated by one town. But between these two towns are a myriad of ideas and notions of the other and those people. Hidden cities exist in our perceptions, illusions and stereotypes.

So Yoon Lym

Deneen / Adrift in Suburbia 3

Acrylic on Paper / Ink on Paper 14 x 17 inches / 5.5 x 7.5 inches

2009 / 2003

Gallery

So Yoon Lym

Tasha / Adrift in Suburbia 12

Acrylic on Paper / Ink on Paper 14 x 17 inches / 5.5 x 7.5 inches

2009 / 2003

Gallery

Linda McCune

13th Level of the 60th Pit

Assembled wood, metal, concrete, rocks, paint

3 x 6 feet

2010 Gallery

For me the hectic life of 'having it all' results in being overwhelmed. I decend into a hidden city where my art allows me to see the potential of how far inward I can search and at the same time it lifts me by personal commitment to be one decerning voice of many speaking about the consciousness of women beginning a new millennium.

Roots

Roots are the underpinning of all growth. In Nature a tree takes hold firmly in the earth, twisting and turning, propelling itself through the smallest crack in the asphalt. With an inherent will, growing day by day, steadily, with stamina and strength. Our roots give us a refuge from and durability to surpass whatever obstacles we may encounter throughout the duration of our lives.

Colleen ODonnell

Terra-cotta

2 x 22 x 3 inches

2010 Catalog

Beth Olds

I Heard a Fly Buzz

An animated film shot in Second Life. 6 minute video on continuous loop. 2010 Gallery

This is my interpretation of Emily Dickinson's poem entitled 'Dying'. I am always struck by the humor within the opening line 'I heard a fly buzz when I died... to hear a fly buzz, which can be said to represented decay, at your last moment is profound to me. I used some fields of poppies to represent immortality (the drug of life) and the symbol of the egg to represent the cosmos we find ourselves in. It opens with a machine that I built to represent the making of the cosmos and the heaves of storm we endure. She enters it

Priscilla Otani

City of Shoes

Waxed paper, vellum printed with digital photos 16 x 15 x 7 inches

2010 Gallery

I come from the City of Shoes. The inhabitants look like everyone else, but they work in shoe-making and tanning leather. They butcher our meat, dispose of the dead. They are lowly street musicians, ringing bells and pounding drums, walking advertisements for telephone sex. They live among us, but are invisible, because what they do disgust us. This pile of shoes are all we want to see: clean, shining, undefiled.

Margaret Parker

Self Storage

2 Deconstructed T-shirts, wire, filament 4ft-10 x 16 x 10 inches

2010 Gallery

Younger selves stored inside me are a constant life source to be relived, protected, decoded. Cutting up cotton T-shirts has given me a way to explore the human torso and to deconstruct what it means to be a human being today. I need all of my younger selves, I'm constantly solving their problems, achieving their goals, overcoming their fears, fulfilling their dreams. As I age, this is a hidden city I've found inside myself.

Margaret Parker

Princess of the Stair Tower (made in USA)

Fencing, wire, deconstructed t-shirt

36.5in.ht x 12in.w x 12in.d

2010 Gallery

As a little kid I grew up in Chicago and those city memories made an indelible impression. My mother had attended the Chicago Art Institute to study landscape painting where she painted in the city streets. Many of our trips into the city ended up at the Institute. Remembered art treasures, the city, my mother's passion and courage form the bedrock of what makes me an artist. In the last eight years I've been cutting up T-shirts to deconstruct what they have to say about our contemporary human torso. This piece uses the limitation of one child's T-shirt to tell the tale of rich childhood memories.

Katherine Perryman

Elated (tolerable size)

House paint, foam mounted on wood

32 x 24 x 12 inches

2010 Gallery

My current works are physical manifestations of the everyday. I manipulate cast-off synthetic and decorative materials to quietly articulate notions of self-certainty and self-doubt.

Give Me a Sign

Oil on Canvas

40x30x1.5 inches

2009 Catalog

In the painting “Give Me a Sign,” the hidden city is the one we pass through, briefly, on our way to another place. Signs call to us, advertising: quick food, cheap gasoline, and a comfortable place to stay. The letters make us curious about this place, about the lives of the people who live there, but we keep moving on our way. The signs recede into the distance, small bits of color on the horizon our only reminder of where we were. The colors of the signs linger in our mind, but the city remains a mystery.

Melisa Phillips

Liberty

Digital video 11:49 minutes

2007 Gallery

Shot in the artist's studio, and on New York City's West Side and employing a blue tarp as a metaphorical dividing line between self and other LIBERTY is a narrative of the integration of the body and an individual's psychological states with the city.

Elizabeth Riley

Theresa Rock

Point of Conception

30 x 24 inches

2010 Catalog

The framework of the individual is composed of unseen chambers buried deep within the flesh. Line, form, and color unearth these dwellings, exposing intimate experiences. Rhythmic lines merge and pulsate, reverberating with lyrical pleasures. The union of these forces echo with energy, releasing an unknown potential.

Acrylic on canvas

Launa D. Romoff

#421 On the cover

Assorted papers and paint 12 x 12 inches

2010 Catalog

The place in my mind where I go to explore & make art. For me it's a place of joy, passion & bliss. It's my special place that has no judgment & allows me to see what lessons I have to learn on my journey through life.

Launa D. Romoff

#401 R is for....... refuge

Assorted papers and paint

12 x 12 inches

2010 Catalog

The place in my mind where I go to explore & make art. For me it's a place of joy, passion & bliss. It's my special place that has no judgment & allows me to see what lessons I have to learn on my journey through life.

I Am Superman

Ink, wine, coffee, whiskey, balsamic vinegar, berry juice, varnish

24 x 18 inches

2010 Gallery

My Hidden City is where we all become one. We have all been the same since the beginning of time - Human. To have that knowledge and to use it with positivity seems like acquiring a secret hidden knowledge where its used in a hidden city where everyone lives in a peaceful existence. This is my hidden city where I hope one day it is found and everyone can enjoy it.

Claudia Sbrissa

2010 Catalog

I am engaged with issues of identity, culture and materiality. These concerns reflect my feminist artistic identity and convey my preoccupation with the connection between image, material and space. My imagery refers to landscapes man-made and natural, real and imagined. I am interested in the architecture, infrastructure and history of environments. My work explores these histories in the form of cityscapes, neighborhoods, urban and natural sites. I am engaged with ideas of regeneration and renewal: what is lost and what is found.

Trunk

Black velvet flocking, pen, ink on paper

44 x 30 inches

Linda Stillman

Glove, Yellow / Franklin Avenue Subway Station, Brooklyn

Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper with china marker

19 x 24 inches

2009-10 Gallery

In this series I photograph lost objects I come upon while walking around New York, recording my personal everyday journey and the nearly hidden images underfoot. I include my feet in each image to inject the idea of my experience and perspective. To emphasize the documentary nature of this project, I write a brief description of the lost item with the date and location on the print. I am attracted to the abject nature of lost objects and the feelings of sadness they evoke as they mix with the trash and detritus of the city.

Linda Stillman

Glove, Red / 9th Avenue, NYC

Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper with china marker

19 x 24 inches

2009-10 Gallery

In this series I photograph lost objects I come upon while walking around New York, recording my personal everyday journey and the nearly hidden images underfoot. I include my feet in each image to inject the idea of my experience and perspective. To emphasize the documentary nature of this project, I write a brief description of the lost item with the date and location on the print. I am attracted to the abject nature of lost objects and the feelings of sadness they evoke as they mix with the trash and detritus of the city.

Vadis Turner

Best In Show (Derby Blanket)

Vintage quilts, clothing and nightgowns, cow bells, ribbon, mixed media

12 x 3 x 3 feet, 2010 Gallery

Over time ancestral forms of crafts appreciate in value, maturing into heirlooms that function as cultural currency and which later, as artifacts, serve as a documentation of the artist and her origins. My work engages this progression in a current cultural context. I am developing a collection of contemporary heirlooms that will comprise my Dowry. The heirlooms re-imagine conventional handicrafts, rites of passage, and ceremonial adornments used to honor the fleeting apex of beauty, fertility or physical potential. Traditionally exchanged for societal advancement through marriage, my Dowry will be sold or traded for professional gain.

Gwen Wock

All of us have been affected in some way by cancer. Other than the results of surgery or chemotherapy it goes undetected, a “Hidden City”. The piece “Empowerment” is about an internal process of balancing and valuing all the voices experienced upon receiving a cancer diagnosis. It questions the prevalent treatments and attitudes of western medicine and mainstream society. It exemplifies an ultimate posture of self-empowerment and the fragile facets of gaining ones wholeness through nurturance of the mind, body and soul.

Whitney Lorene Wood

Untitled

Wooden spool, glue, print, concrete, wood 3 ftx 2 ft x Variable height, 2010 Catalog

My work has consistently been inspired by both Minimalism and Situationist philosophies. I aim to create a “Situationist” object and a venue for interaction through the exploration of physical and psychological space. I utilize material tensions and cohesive form to create balance and equanimity through contradiction. This reciprocal system extends to the viewer upon interaction, establishing Gestalt, thus creating the whole. My ad hoc working method and use of quotidian materials with a history of function creates a point of relation in an attempt to combat the esoteric notion of art. This piece in particular offers a “Hidden City” and a new paradigm where interaction is free from the injustices experienced in daily life. In turn, it is my hope that viewers will question the current state of our society.

Vera Ximenes

IV

PORTAL is the way into my Hidden City: a place where I can take refuge when the world does not make sense and I feel vulnerable. I found great solace making this dark circle. The painting made me whole and focused. It gave me a sense of order, completeness and worth. It brought me back to my nature and awakened my consciousness. My intention is for PORTAL to be a catalyst for viewers’ imaginations, a gate to the unknown and profound, their Hidden Cities.

Portal

Oil on Canvas

58

Nancy Youdelman

Bound

Cast bronze, edition of 9 5 x 9.5 x 4.5 inches

2008 Catalog

A dress that is not a dress, a shoe that is no longer wearable, a person who has died and is gone but their possessions remain. These things are proof that we indeed have lived, they can be kept and remembered by others for a time, then eventually forgotten. All that a person once was becomes hidden. I work intuitively; I transform clothing with cast off things: anonymous photos, vintage letters, buttons, pins and dried flowers. It is my desire to suggest the fleeting, beautiful yet bittersweet nature of our existence.

ARTIST DIRECTORY

RUBYSPAM , Pacifica, CA www.RUBYSPAMart.com

Caroline Bagenal, Newburyport, MA cbagenal@yahoo.com

Beth Barron, Minneapolis, MN www.bethbarronart.com

Sarah Bielski, Evansville, IN sabielski@usi.edu

Jackie Branson, New Hartford, CT www.jsbranson.com

Liubov Brizhatiuk, Brooklyn, NY www.LBrizhatiuk-Art.com

Kia Mercedes Carscallen, Hillsborough, NC www.kiamercedes.com

Marie Cenkner, Los Angeles, CA Lam22hardt@ca.rr.com

Katy Chmura, Oakland, CA www.katychmura.com

Jessica Riva Cooper, Providence, RI www.jessrivacooper.com

Sherri Cornett, Billings, MT www.sherricornett.com

Anne Dushanko Dobek, New Providence, NJ http://web.mac.com/dushankodobek

Sally Edelstein, South Huntington, NY www.sallyedelsteincollage.com

M. Chava Evans, Baltimore, MD mchavaevans@gmail.com

Tracy Walter Ferry, Meriden, CT www.tracywalterferry.com

Christine Giancola, Florissant, MO www.christinegiancolaphotography.com

Grace Gray-Adams, Solana Beach, CA www.gracegrayadams.com

Karen Gutfreund, San Jose, CA www.karengutfreund.com

Rachel Kowalik, Lowell, MA www.rachelkowalik.com

Carol LaFayette, Bryan, TX www.clafayette.com

Beth Lakamp, Fenton, MO www.bettsvando.com

Sally Grizzell Larson, Philadelphia, PA www.rhizome.org/profile.php?1042836

Crystal Yachin Lee, Santa Ana, CA www.csupomona.edu/~yachinlee

Ellen Lowenstein, Woodside, CA www.artslant.com [go to Ellen Lowenstein]

So Yoon Lym, North Haledon, NJ www.soyoonlym.com

Linda McCune, Greer, SC www.southernartistry.org

Colleen O'Donnell, Philadelphia, PA colodonnell@netzero.com

Beth Olds, Marshfield, WI www.penumbrasgreymatter.blogspot.com

Priscilla Otani, San Francisco, CA www.mrpotani.com

Margaret Parker, Ann Arbor, MI www.margaretparkerstudio.com

Katherine Perryman, Kansas City, MO www.katherineperryman.com

Melisa Phillips, San Francisco, CA www.thickpaint.com

Elizabeth Riley, NY, NY www.ElizabethRileyProjects.com

Theresa Rock, Pelham, MA www.art2rock.com

Launa D. Romoff, Los Angeles, CA www.launadromoff.com

Claudia Sbrissa, Kew Gardens, NY www.claudiasbrissa.com

Linda Stillman, New York, NY www.lindastillman.com

Vadis Turner, Brooklyn, NY www.vadisturner.com

Gwen Wock, Porterville, CA www.artworkswithin.com

Whitney Lorene Wood, Kansas City, MO www.whitneylorenewood.com

Vera Ximenes, Sacramento, CA www.veraximenes.com

Nancy Youdelman, Clovis, CA www.nancyyoudelman.com

ABOUT NEW CENTURY ARTISTS GALLERY:

New Century Artists, Inc. is a not-for-profit arts organization founded in 1996. New Century Artists, Inc. is located at 530 West 25th Street, Suite 406 (between 10th and 11th Avenues) in the heart of Chelsea. The space is comprised of two art galleries having a total of 1,300 square feet.

Six times a year the gallery curates members' exhibitions. The rest of the shows are organized by guest curators. NCAG exhibit work in all styles and media and artists participate in both group and solo exhibitions. The mission of New Century Artists, Inc. is to encourage, support and exhibit the work of minority artists from underrepresented communities such as gay and lesbian, various ethnic groups, people of color, differently abled, women, and artists of all ages including seniors and children.

EXHIBITION COMMITTEE

Karen Gutfreund – WCA Exhibition Director

Sandra Mueller

Avinger Nelson

Priscilla Otani

Brenda Oelbaum

Cherie M. Redlinger

WCA 2010-12 Board

Executive Committee

President –Janice Nesser-Chu, Professor, Dir. of the Galleries & Perm. Collection, Florissant Valley College, St. Louis, MO

President-Elect -Priscilla Otani, Artist, Partner - Arc Studios & Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Treasurer/Secretary- Margaret Lutze, Adjunct

Faculty, Northwestern, DePaul, and Loyola Universities, Chicago, IL

Second VP- Susan Kraft, Principle, Kraft Consulting, Palo Alto, CA

VP for Chapter Relations - Ulla Barr, Artist, San Clemente, CA

VP for Organizational Outreach - Sandra Mueller, Founder, Zest Collaborations; Community Artist, A Window Between Worlds, Venice, CA

VP Special Events - Holly Dodge, Contracts/Grants

Manager, Academy for Educational Development, Washington, DC

Past President - Marilyn J. Hayes, Painter & Printmaker, Ret.

Sr. Prog. Analyst, US EEOC, Arlington, VA

Advisor - Barbara Wolanin, Curator for the Architect of the Capitol, Bethesda

Staff Director of Operations - Karin Luner, Artist, Gallery

Director, Dietzspace, NYC