Tian Bu
@hi_iamnana
Vessel(2023)
Metal wire, beads, colored yarn 26 x 6 x 24 inches
In my artistic exploration, I delve into the intricate tapestry of identity, weaving together threads of gender, ethnicity, and personal growth. I define myself as a woman, but I am equally an independent individual, potentially a sister, aunt, or mother each role contributing to the complex mosaic of my existence. In this work, a hand-sewn heart embedded inside the sculpture symbolizes the hopeful expectation of a child, and the heart’s blue hues signify the anticipation of a baby boy in Chinese culture. The uterus is made of woven metal wires, resembling both a protective and dazzling red cage. Through the interweaving of metallic threads, intricate stitches, and shimmering beads, the work mirrors the physical and emotional challenges that women face, juxtaposed with the societal pressures associated with the intense desire for a male child. I chose vibrant colors and diverse textures to create a glimpse into a woman’s inner turmoil. The deliberate choice to incorporate traditional womanly techniques, such as crochet and beading, pays homage to the enduring legacy of femininity. These methods, steeped in history and craftsmanship, symbolize the strength and resilience of the women who paved the way for me. The modern world’s excessive demands for perfection lead people to overly focus on their perceived flaws, getting trapped in unnecessary comparisons. My work emphasizes that each person is inherently unique and beautiful. I hope viewers can reach a state of acceptance of their bodies and build their own definitions of beauty, free from societal expectations and stereotypes.
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Melissa English Campbell
melissaenglishcampbell.com
@me_campbell
Thoughts(2023)
Fiber
46 x 48 inches
I combine painting techniques with fiber art processes to transform yarn, ink and paint into pictorial wall hangings. The heavily patterned, textured and color rich tapestries are about resilience, breaking through pattern, adaptability and the human capacity for wonder. Embedded in the pieces are my stories and experiences. To explore the formation and impacts of these stories I use a weave structure called double weave, and combine that structure with its opposite to make compositions of geometric patterning, figuration and abstraction. As a child I lived a nomadic, multicultural, multi-lingual existence. At a young age I had already lived in a commune in rural Tennessee, a tulip farm in Holland, a basecamp on the French Alps, and among other things, in a caravan of converted school buses. Reflected in my work is the socially isolating effect this had on childhood, the rhythmic pattern of constant motion, the human desire for constancy and stability and the equally strong desire to resist and disrupt those things. For a female child, a contradiction existed in that lifestyle, which celebrated living free and rejecting social constructs and also in the ever-restrictive controls of socially acceptable behaviors for a growing girl. This tension of contradictions is represented in my work through the dissolution of image and pattern as they form and dissolve, creating spaces in which both presence and absence exist in the same space.
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Donna R. Charging
donnacharging.com
@donnacharging
UnderAllistheLand(Series2)(2022)
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
I approach my oil paintings and works on paper with the understanding that I am generating individual visual representations of personal experiences from having lived on the Reservation. It is not important for me to communicate either one literal personal narrative or identifiable political message to my audience because Native people do not exist in the mainstream of American consciousness in an open, direct way. My life continues to reveal the residual effects of various traditions, concepts, and memories of the Reservation. I address these ideas by layering select images throughout my paintings, prints, and drawings and through ongoing research. “America” is a makeshift construct. I keep this notion at hand and allow it to guide me as I expose the depths of Native absence and presence. The spare, mysterious quality of my work magnifies the weight of implicit desire and cultural voyeurism. These are themes that I persist in returning to.
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Fabiana Comas Risquez
fabianacomas.com
@fabianaelena_
LaTacona(TheHeelOne)(2023)
Drawing, oil stick and graphite on paper
55 x 36 inches
Through drawings and strokes, my gaze goes to the essentials of objects, nature, and the human body. My marks, are gestures that respond to the physical impulse to draw, turn over, and evoke what is recycled in my memory to represent or transform experiences. I experiments with the shape of the human body to explore femininity, queerness, and the power structures that act on bodies. Likewise, I’m interested in the contemplation of lines, studies of nature, and the abstractions of popular culture. I’m applying with the LasGuarichasSerie .
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Bria Corranda
briacorranda.com
@briacorranda
SomethingAboutFriendship, SomethingAboutBetrayal(2023)
Hand-dyed paper, acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 x 1.5 inches
Through figurative painting and self-portraiture, my work addresses the intimacy of understanding oneself and how that affects my relationships with others. I want to build imagery of identity, not just myself but women of color. Capturing the joys, the vulnerability, even anger or sadness. My process combines hand dyed-paper with drawn and painted figures. I wanted to show the contrast between the paper being more abstract and the painting being more detailed or thought out.
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Katie Croft
katiecroftart.com
@katiecroftart
CeramicWallSketchConfiguration#1(2023)
Ceramic
20 x 12 x 3 inches
I am a multidisciplinary artist, art therapist, and educator. My work is heavily inspired by my practice in art therapy, in which I focus on mental health, equality, and the body autonomy of women. Mythology, historical tropes, hidden images, and religion are woven into my sculptures and drawings, which function to create a multidimensional critique of cultural expectations and suppression of women’s bodies, ideas, and emotions. This series of ceramic wall sketches was created in clay as a record of somatic expressions of emotions held in the body when the voice is no longer adequate.
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Zarina N. Docken
zarinawatercolor.com
@zarinawatercolor
Adia,theSongbird(2023)
Watercolor on paper
28.75 x 21.5 inches
Driven by intellectual curiosity, I use art to investigate the grand, surprising, and often perplexing ways our world works. Through vibrant layered washes, I study the science behind human connection and creativity, seek to voice the language of mathematics, and puzzle over the oddities of worlds beyond sensory perception. My art plays in the spaces between logic and flow to celebrate the beauty of discovery, and it invites viewers to join the bewitching quest for understanding.
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AJ Dunkin
ajdillustrates.squarespace.com
@ajd.illustrates
GettingReady(2023)
Digital illustration
11.7 x 16.5 inches
This work reflects the value and camaraderie in conversations between women. These conversations weave intimate narratives of women having discussions about everything and anything, from the beauty in the monotony of our everyday lives, to the taboo topics which we need to discuss openly more often. They nod to the importance of community and the bonds that women form through conversation. GettingReady(2023), encapsulates the chaos and excitement that bounces around in a room filled with women preparing for an event together the sacred rituals of swapping shoes, doing one another’s eye make-up and shouts of encouragement about how gorgeous everyone looks.
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Elaine Emmons
ilovefiberart.com
@ilovefiberart
HomemadeDresses(2022)
Fiber-vinyl
15 x 18 x 18 inches
I love working in alternative materials and overcoming the sculptural and construction challenges faced in creating my work.
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Ana Maria Farina
anamafarina.com
@anamafarina
HystericalBodies,Weapon(2022)
Upcycled fibers on linen, wire, and textile scraps
28 x 10 x 10 inches
In the ’90s, Elaine Showalter revisited the concept of hysteria and called it a protolanguage, communicating through the body messages that could not be verbalized. In my work I explore this language that comes before any language: what are the silenced symbols and archetypes we carry within us and what do they look like? I attempt to uncover what lies underneath through an intuitive, exploratory process that is chaotic and cathartic: I paint with a gun a tufting gun along with needles, hooks, and knots. Repurposing a phallic signifier of violence, I conjure vibrant objects of comfort that inhabit a mystical pictorial space between abstraction and representation. I am interested in the unconscious mind: what lives under the surface. I am attracted by the creaturelike, mythological parts of being human. The resulting imagery represents hysteria as a manifestation of the unconscious ferociously unbound.
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Rachel Feinstein
rachelfeinsteinphoto.com
@_rachelfeinstein
AsIWait(2020)
Digital photographic print
16 x 20 inches
Growing up, I fell in love with old cinematic masterpieces of the 40s and 50s which tended to contradict my own views of what a woman should and can do. This contradiction led to my work centering around the space that women hold in our society and how that is continually evolving by stepping back in time to take a critical look at cinematic stills. By taking inspiration from the cinematic masterpieces of the 50s and adding a sense of tension in an otherwise dreamy perfect world I am commenting on how we romanticize this time and give light to cracks that ran deep even back then. I work to transform seemingly insignificant moments in women’s lives into images that ask you to think of what is unknown that surrounds each woman. I use my photographs as a way to understand my own place in the world and to channel how I feel even in our evolved society. I hope each image I create connects with a certain feeling that every woman has felt at one point in their life as they try to make their path in our modernized world. It is important in life and in my images to look beneath the surface to see that this is not a perfect scene but instead reality caught in a moment.
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Brianna Freitag
@ladybugceramics
Limbo(2023)
Ceramic stoneware
48 x 48 inches
Ceramics are not often thought of in terms of movement or flow, but a chain is always in motion. The combination of these concepts pushes the boundaries of the medium and creates a uniquely playful result one that elicits surprise and curiosity from the viewer. As people walk by the chain it slightly sways from the movements in the air, adding another fun element to the experience.
The process itself is fairly repetitive: each link starts out as a coil and is cut and formed into shape and attached to the next link. This is a slow process that requires patience and well thought out timing. The artist is almost driven mad by the experience, but once each link is assembled into a long chain the end result makes up for it. A delicate hand is needed to load the fragile chain into the kiln to be fired up to 2200° Fahrenheit. Once fired, the chain is durable and able to support its own weight. The chain is hung on a wall in a draped fashion that further conveys the feeling of movement. The ends of the chain are attached to sculptural objects in this case a mask and a sun. This piece is titled Limbo due to being stuck between two states of being.
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Chen Gao
chengao.me
@chengaoart
GrowthandResides(2023)
Marker and pencil on paper
20 x 16 inches
I am a multidisciplinary artist. My work has taken many shapes, including film photography, experimental graphic design, free drawing, sound, poetic writing, installation, and performance. I explore the connections between self and the outside world through spaces and times in different scales. Each material has its personalities. I enjoy feeling the materials/mediums, trying to listen to them, and then constructing relationships. Each work is a collaboration with them. Even though I am not performing, the work is still performed themselves. This is all about my emotional life of being. I am always wondering about the reason each thing happened. I like to work with my intuition first and then discover the hidden traces behind it. Instincts never hide what they think or do, which is more sincere than mine. I am not creating a form but finding a sense of belonging in the voids to connect the self to the outside world. Making work is a way of finding myself. My work explores the fantasy of ideal freedom that is extracted from the real world. Everybody possesses personal emotions that are connected to society. Standing up for who I am is empowering others. When the audience is ready, they’ll join at the time. Is it black, white, void, or what else?
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Karen M. Gutfreund
karengutfreund.com
@karengutfreundart
SideEffects#1
(FromthePharmaceuticalSeries)(2023)
Mixed media on board, resin, acrylic, and printed paper
21 x 21 inches
SideEffects#1(FromthePharmaceuticalSeries)is from an ongoing series of works examining our drug dependent culture and challenges the notion, in a cheeky manner, that a pill will make everything better. With this established pill-popping norm I seek to shine a light on the truth in advertising, emphasizing the importance of perspective and to challenge conceptual and material boundaries, pushing the limits of what is traditionally accepted as being good for you. Many times the cure is worse than the disease. Humorously, a potential side effect of one of my medications is “excessive happiness with a side of reckless behavior.” We are bombarded with “ask your doctor about so-andso” without even knowing what the drug is intended for, but the ad shows someone smiling in a sunny meadow and all is perfect. This is in sharp contrast to the current opioid addiction and overdose crisis, with Big Pharma pushing drugs and making huge profits, while families go bankrupt in an effort to afford the basic healthcare.
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Chloe Harthan
chloeharthanart.com
@chlohwee
CowboyBreakfast2011(2023)
Acrylic paint, iridescent powder, rhinestones, puff paint, glitter glue, leather, denim, cotton, burlap, thread 59.5 x 37 inches
Harthan is devoted to surface manipulation and objecthood through painting, quilting, and a combination of the two. In her paintings, she makes intuitive materials unfamiliar, while invoking quiet spaces and menial tasks. In quilting, she uses thread not only for material binding, but also as a drawing and painting tool. Fabric is transformed from a readymade surface into an underpainting, and by painting her quilts, separated mediums become further unified. She repurpose her clothes into her work, which creates a material mirror. The quilts are a personal and historical archive, as she utilizes photographs from childhood to reclaim a disconnected sense of girlhood and reconfigure them through the lens of uneasy womanhood. She sees her sewing machine as a partner instead of a tool, and through a tactile connection in making, she becomes part of a wider history of women’s domestic work.
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Ellen Holtzblatt
ellenholtzblatt.com
@ellenholtzblatt
UntiltheDayBreathe(2021)
Ink on Japanese paper
39 x 25 inches
I think about my mother, who is 100 years-old, and how she experiences time at this stage of her life. She cannot identify my sister and me in photos of us as children. She only knows us as we appear now, as though we emerged from her womb as fully formed adults with gray hair. She cannot remember what she had for lunch immediately after finishing her meal. She remembers the faces of people that she sees regularly, but has forgotten her nieces and nephews who visit her sporadically. I brace myself for a day when she may forget my name. My mother lived with me periodically during the pandemic. Through her, I witnessed the effects of emotional and physical loneliness. The needs of the body both the basics of bodily functions, and spiritual and emotional yearnings are satisfied largely through physical proximity to others, touch, and intimacy. The titles for many portraits of my mother come from the biblical text, Song of Songs. This poetry is both explicitly sensual and metaphorically spiritual, describing the intensity of the relationship between lovers. Although there is a societal disconnect between the language of sexual longing and the physicality of an elderly woman, I choose to title works about my mother from this text to convey the truth that love and desire, as well as the need for human contact and touch are universal and not limited by age.
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Peggy Blei Hracho
peggybleihracho.com
@peggybleihracho
PowerPose(2019)
Fibers
48 x 48 inches
I work with cloth and stitch by employing the sewing machine as both a construction tool and a drawing tool. Images of women are central to my practice. Themes of memory, current happenings, and portraiture are all present in my narrative.
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Janet Jaffke
jaffkestudio.com
@janetjaffke
Excavation(2022)
Burlap, gauze
36 x 36 inches
My work is inspired by memory, experiences, my understanding of the human condition and my Buddhist practice. I work primarily in burlap, a natural material that speaks to my love of nature and texture. It’s strong, durable and I associate it with my life growing up in a hard-working blue collar family. It’s a material rich with manipulative properties.
I use reclaimed coffee bags that originate from all over the world each with distinct physical characteristics. Their diverse colors and weaves are unique to their origin and represent the beauty of diversity in the world. I use the inherent qualities and associations of burlap to explore the resilience of the human spirit. No matter how torn or unraveled life becomes, there are ways to patch the pieces back together.
In spite of our diverse humanity, we all share moments of struggle, but through these challenges one can see beauty in the torn and imperfect. It’s an opportunity to patch and repair, and to demonstrate our true strength.
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Olivia Jobbe
oliviajobbe.com
@ojwiththepulp
IAmNotABaker(MadeWithLove)(2023)
MIG welded steel
48 x 27 x 27 inches
My work reflects my own views toward a personal multiplicity of womanhoods: embracing, rejecting, and satirizing preconceived notions of femininity. This is done with an emphasis on fine craftsmanship as well as the use of masculine materials and modes of making based on the sculpture of the early avant-garde rejecting their narrow view on female capability and false guise of evolved thinking. In this sense, labor and skill are a means by which to emasculate patriarchal notions of competency and excellence. This comes together in an autobiographical body of works through a lens that is fixated on humor and a fascination with the absurd. All of these visual comedies situate themselves on a spectrum of dry humor which ranges between the understated and that which is sincerely slapstick. Sometimes I holster my tongue in my cheek, other times I shove it out at you. Topics such as religion, desire, home, language, labor, identity, and the art historical are treated with the kind of care that occurs at the intersection of the cavalier and the tender and the points in between. The crux of the work is radical vulnerability bred through compulsive honesty. Using a combination of mold-making and casting, metalworking, woodworking, writing, and various fibers techniques, I create sculptural self portraiture in the form of anthropomorphized objects and narrative structures.
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WatchMe(2023)
Mixed media with embroidery, beading 16 x 12 inches
I create embroidered collages using carefully selected, recycled materials that reference the theme of the piece. I am drawn towards themes that celebrate women: the inherent relationship between women and nature, the qualities in women I admire, and the liberation of women within modern feminism. I use cross-stitch in my work as a reclamation; I turn a form historically perceived as “trivial women’s work” into a medium of empowerment. Needlework becomes an act of rebellion in itself. Craft becomes art, and art becomes subversion and growth. This piece explores themes of exploitation of women in society, ageism toward women as they lose qualities that are exploitable, and ultimately the resilience of women in the face of these challenges. I use wildflowers in tandem with women in this piece because they, too, have shown resilience in the face of exploitation of the natural world. I carefully chose the book pages that appear in this work, too; the pages discuss how crucial wildflowers are to their ecosystems. When mankind tries to tear down meadows and mountainsides, wildflowers still grow through the cracks. Although some may condemn wildflowers as unimportant because they do not provide resources we can monetize, wildflowers do not concern themselves with these opinions. They push against their boundaries and grow anyway. Women are the same. As women grow and age, society condemns them as invisible and incapable of producing anything worthy. However, we subvert society’s expectations of beauty and grow anyway, pushing against the boundaries created for us.
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Shannon Knowlton shannonknowlton.com @shannonknowltonartist
Natasha Kravchenko natashakravchenko.com
@nata5ha.art
Untitled(2023)
Photography
16 x 12 inches
How close are our inner and outer worlds? How whole are we? Do we all have harmony inside? Who or what is locked inside our souls? Where is the line between the internals and externals? Under my exploration, I try to answer these questions and many other questions for myself and express these ideas in my work.
The human personality is a very complex mechanism, and its study makes it possible to better understand ourselves and our problems.
Each of us has our own inner side or our soul, and it knows everything about us. My idea is about how different or similar the external and internal worlds are, and how all of this is combined in us. I want to show how they interact and what it would look like if we could see it. In an attempt to combine psychology and art in my research, I want to demonstrate the inner struggles, feelings, emotions, despair, hope, conflicts, differences, and reconciliation inside us.
I work in collage style, both real and created using Photoshop. These methods help me to most accurately express what I want to show. Different lights, shadows, and long exposure enable me to create an unclear effect of blurring and ambiguity. Also, I often use different symbols such as mirrors, ropes, mirror fragments, and so on. All these symbolic dramatic allegorical matrices give me the opportunity to work with ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty in my research.
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Maddy Lee
newmoon.myportfolio.com
@youinvadedme
Dionysus(2023)
3D animation
Maddy Lee (Newmoon) uses 3D programs such as Maya, ZBrush, Adobe Substance Painter, and Mari to create 3D artwork. Her experiences with exhibitions drove her interest in creating immersive art. The main medium of her works is imagination, and she constructs this dreamy world into a 3D model and adds imaginative elements such as geometric objects and futuristic colors. This transforms a landscape into an ideal fantastical world. Her inspiration comes from games, S/F films, Greek mythology, and her dream journal which she started writing in 2015. Her goal is to invite the audience to her dream world. She creates models such as a temple, wings, sculptures, and other objects to construct the space. Her 3D scenes mostly consist of reflective materials such as chrome, glass, mirror, and diamond. Gold, silver, and low-saturated colors are primarily used in the artworks. Newmoon also creates 3D animations adding camera works in her 3D scenes.
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Anna Lentz
springbird.land
@springbird_hope
FinalDeathGripes(2019)
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 inches
I make artwork as a means of processing my life. I rely heavily on bright, saturated color that pierces the viewer that shouts out and demands to be looked at. It’s my hope that the colors and their shapes both unsettle and resettle into a new kind of sense a new reorder that ultimately feels reassuring. In the end, each piece feels like a new home in which I can reside. I hope the viewer will join me there.
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Angela A. McElwain
writeplanet.net
DarkeningHalftheSky(2019)
Acrylic and paper on canvas board
36 x 24 inches
My work evokes irony, transcendence through the use of iconographic symbolism, dynamic design and color. When I create a piece, my intention is to captivate the viewer, inviting them into an experience of exploration. DarkeningHalftheSky speaks to the ongoing oppression of womxn specifically with reference to erasing identity, individuality, creativity, etc. through oversexualization and physical abuse. This speaks to the hypocrisy of the assertions that some cultures make claiming to value womxn when in fact they are oppressed, victimized and under continual threat.
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Dee Mostofi
@dee_mostofi
LadyinBlue(2023)
Mixed media with an emphasis on repurposing found materials
18 x 18 inches
My artistic philosophy revolves around a commitment to environmental sustainability. Ladyin Blueexemplifies this ethos as it encapsulates a deliberate effort to divert waste from landfills. The foundation is crafted from hand-torn strips of a discarded calendar, utilizing its thick, glossy texture to etch patterns with a cement trowel. Marks were added with an oil stick, while newspaper ads and dried coffee grounds contribute color and texture. A final layer of leveling gel seals the work, sealing the coffee grounds and enhancing the textured surface. Each piece, including LadyinBlue , serves as a testament to my exploration of sustainable art practices, blending artistic expression with environmental responsibility. Through these creations, I aim to transform our perception of waste and foster a deeper appreciation for beauty in its diverse forms.
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Nelson
nelsoncontemporaryart.com
@_nelson_leaks
InMyMother’sDimple(2023)
Short filmed performance
3 minutes 8 seconds
InMyMother’sDimpleis a short, filmed performance that explores the potential for separate metaphorical archives held within the bodies of a mother and child, recording something of the other and reflected in their face, mind and actions. It examines what such an archive could contain and how each might use it as both a holding place of, and a site of exploration for, their individual identities. As part of the auto-theoretical tradition, this film considers the theories of Jerome Bruner on the formation of the self, of Roszika Parker on maternal ambivalence, Lucy Jones on Matrescence and Astrida Neimainis on hydrofeminism. How are these theories lived through the bodies of a mother and child and what might they tell us about how we understand ourselves through the gaze of those we love? This film is positioned at the intersection of academic theory, filmmaking, visual contemporary art, memoir, and the body as material.
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Colleen O'Rourke
corourke.com
@colleen_orourke_art
Roisin(2023)
Seed bead weaving
12 x 12 inches
I started weaving with beads in order to celebrate the beads themselves. Each weaving is an exploration of color, texture, and pattern often in non-representational form. Through this intricate and deliberate process, I aim to evoke emotions and sensations in the viewer, allowing them to connect with the art on a purely visceral level. These weavings are a celebration of the beauty that can be found in simplicity and repetition, inviting viewers to lose themselves in the intricate details and immerse themselves in the colors and forms. In a world filled with noise and complexity, my work serves as a reminder of the power of simplicity and the beauty that can be found in the smallest of details.
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Mimm Patterson
practicallytwisted.me @practically.twisted
HeHeldHerwithTenderness butHeWasNotaTenderMan(2023)
Encaustic collage 4 x 4 inches
My work HeHeldHerwithTenderness…is an image of my father holding me as a newborn in 1959. My biological father was an abusive man who did not understand boundaries. This photo from a family scrapbook fascinates me because I have no memory of my father. What was he thinking as he held me? What was my mother thinking as she held her Brownie Reflex camera? Did she think their love was forever or could she see it in his eyes that it would all be over in a year?
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Schetauna Powell
artivismcommunityart.com
@artivismcommunityart
KnotPuzzle(2022)
Poplar hardwood, acrylic glass 12 x 12 x 2.5 inches
I practice object design within a socially engaged practice. I study historic preservation and the built environment and create material objects that teach Black culture. My focus is to translate the symbolic, logical, mathematical knowledge of Black culture into interactive material objects. This project began with the Afrofuture Education conference in 2019. The conference focused on how to utilize Afrofuturism in educational practices. Participants from the conference required that we create with the following criteria: Interactive communication tools that allows the community to explore relationships, inherited practices, and experiences. These tools center first and foremost the role of relationships; the power of connection and care to empower the target audience to take ownership of the approaches to social issues. In our research we came across the history of collaborative quilt making and its role in movement building in the United States. Quilting circles held in churches and community centers built the basis for larger movements aiding labor, suffrage, and civil rights movements in the United States. Within African American culture, the quilt is a communication tool that shares a way of seeing the space. This project connects the ways earlier generations of African American women designed quilts based on their interpretation of space to methods of organizing information and building architecture that passes on information that is accessible to all participants.
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Maya Rau-Murthy, Meena Chen & Mrinaalika Sivakumar
mayaraumurthy.com @mayaraumurthy
ThePuppeteer’sMetamorphosis(2024)
Konnakol (verbal percussion) Rap, Bharatanatyam in video
Maya Rau-Murthy: Concept, Direction, Music Composition & Production, Choreography, Dance Performance
Meena Chen: Choreography, Dance Performance
Mrinaalika Sivakumar: Animation, Choreography, Dance Performance
As a Bharatanatyam dancer, konnakol (verbal percussion) performer, and mridangam (twoheaded drum) percussionist, and rapper, I thrive in the intersection of communities. I enjoy merging these diverse disciplines to push the boundaries of traditional music and dance while addressing contemporary issues. (Maya Rau-Murthy)
ThePuppeteer’sMetamorphosisis a collaboration between Maya Rau-Murthy, Meena Chen and Mrinaalika Sivakumar. We uniquely fuse Bharatanatyam, konnakol, rap, and the sarangi, to paint the repercussions of the bystander effect on women surviving gender-based violence: They call us weak if we are quiet, attention seeking if we speak, and at fault due to our karma. Do they expect us to be their puppet, bearing blame for evil committed by the perpetrator and a society that silently watches while eating popcorn? In time, we too might emerge from this ordeal as transformed puppeteers.
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Sawyer Rose
carrying-stones.com
@ksawyerrose
HoldingitTogether:
MothersandCaretakers(2019)
Acrylic, silver and copper leaf on panel 36 x 24 inches
TheCarryingStonesProjectcombines art and data visualization to jump-start public conversation about women’s work inequity. My large-scale data sculptures and works on panel communicate the diverse and distressing truths about American women’s unpaid/underpaid and unseen labor.
Cooking, cleaning, childcare, eldercare, and community volunteerism statistically still default to women, which keeps them from advancing at work and in society.
These artworks document the physical, emotional, and practical effects of these imbalanced burdens. The artworks from TheCarryingStonesProject profile women-identifying people of different ages, races, sexual orientations, occupations, and socioeconomic statuses building a broad yet touchingly intimate picture of the labor that underpins the complex fabric of our society. It is critical that, as a society, we come to a deeper understanding of the pervasive effects of gendered labor inequity. A gender-balanced workforce is better for productivity, innovation, worker happiness, and the economy as a whole, while a gender balanced workload in the home leads to healthier partner and parent-child relationships.
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Anna Sahkul
annasahkul.com
TheGreenLady(2023)
Black and white 120 film printed on silver gelatin fiber paper
8 x 8 inches
AllThatMovesIsAliveis a collaborative effort between Magda Kubik and Anna Sahkul, delving into the intersections of oral storytelling, mythology, queerness, and image-making. We engage in intimate performances in response to prevailing cultural narratives of our time, as well as ancient myths and fairytales. Myths and fairytales are deeply embedded in our cultural DNA, shaping our understanding of morality, the world, and individual possibilities. Our artistic practice serves as a conduit for reimagining origin stories and embracing the inherent truths of community, intimacy, and play. Utilizing the medium format toy camera, the Holga, we access the spirit of play inherent in our artistic expression. Through a fluid exchange of roles alternating between performer and director, poseur and voyeur our contributions to the creation of an image become so intertwined that the hand pressing the shutter becomes irrelevant.
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Tanya Scott
tanyascottart.com
FamilyTies(2022)
Yarn and fragment of a baby blanket 36 x 48 x 12 inches
FamilyTiesconsists of the yarn and fragment of a baby blanket intended for a future grandchild. The blanket was crocheted and gifted by Scott’s mother in 2005 and unraveled by Scott (with her mother’s consent) in 2022. The work is accompanied by the documented blanket pattern (to be re-crocheted by Scott in the future).
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Rose Sellery
rosesellery.com
@rose_sellery
TheSecretLifeofHangers(2023)
Hangers
52 x 19 x 15 inches
I am a storyteller. The human condition inspires and influences the work I create. While exploring the fragility of the family, gender roles, social issues and the intricacies of our relationships to one another, I visually reinterpret our every day, giving a fresh view to the conventional and sometimes secret corners of our lives through sculpture, installation, photomontage and performance. This selection illustrates my continuing fascination with the lives of women; the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as the commonplace and the salvaged remnants of life’s perilous journey.
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Julianne Wallace Sterling
jsterlingart.com
@jwsterling
Rena&Nena(2023)
Oil and graphite on clay board 40 x 60 x 2 inches (two panels)
In the midst of the pandemic, I began portraits of my colleagues where I teach in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, CA. I have the profound good fortune to teach 400 elementary students visual art and work with an amazing group of educators. These portraits are of mothers I work with and their children, who I also have been lucky enough to teach. Until very recently, I worked with Rena Mixon when she was the Dean of Students, and she is one of the most gorgeous women I have ever met. I’m drawing from the rich history of portrait painting while playfully exploring patterns inspired by the subject’s favorite flower, daisies. Creating a likeness is essential to me but also seeing the beauty in these women and the extraordinary beauty of paint made flesh. I’ve explored oils on clayboard in these portrait works, with attention to draftsmanship, exquisitely colored and rich with emotion.
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Annmarie Suglio
annmariesuglio.com
@annmarie.suglio
Beginnings(2023)
Woven by hand on a TC2 loom with varied yarns
42 x 60 inches
My artistic research is rooted in my lineage of fiber craftswomen, generational traditions, and my Italian heritage. I come from a line of fiber craftswomen on both sides of my family. I have learned that for Italian immigrants and their descendants, textiles represent a marker of identity. Italian women traditionally create a dowry of textiles made to be passed down through generations, called a corredo . In the past, embroidered textiles were seen mainly as sources of primary education and investments for women’s futures. My grandmother sold most of her corredo to support her and her family’s immigration to the United States. The first woven piece titled, Beginningsrepresents an exciting and daunting ten-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean.
As a weaver for over a decade, I add my woven history to the lineage using new technology. In my newest series, HeirloomFragments , the weavings marry my grandmother’s embroidery with my own artistic lens. After examining and photographing her textiles, I reconsidered how her designs would look through woven cloth. I weave the newly edited image by hand on a TC2 loom. This tool offers a weaver full control of every thread in their designs. The once small embroidery detail is now a large and brightly colored tapestry. I connect to my ancestors through a woven language practice.
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Karina Walter
karinawalter.wixsite.com/artist
@ka_walter
ReducedtoHerOwnGenerality(2023)
Assemblage (porcelain cups and saucers, pantyhose, empty bottle of Cuccina y Amore balsamic vinegar, embroidery hoop, underwear plastic hanger)
58.66 x 20.47 x 5.9 inches
In 2011, I ended my professional career in Marketing. I packed my belongings and joined my husband in his international career. I had decided to study Photography in Spainches. When I signed up at the local city hall of our new city, I was classified as ‘housewife.’ Had I become a housewife? (I realized that the system made its own assumptions.) This is a convenient term housewife. To deny women any public space, they “allocated” us to the house and to the family. Some years ago, I started looking for answers to the origin of this domestic situation that sticks women in a secondary social role.
I’m interested in the unfolding of patriarchal discourse: the naturalization of gender roles, how it curtails women’s lives, and the historical layers as a consequence of it, which accumulate in our bodies. And we (women) don’t know our bodies beyond this discourse. The house symbolizes the woman’s resignation to her domestic role, and to avoid feeling like its hostage, I explore my relationships (as body and as woman) to my house, or what house could mean, during my practice. I work with ordinary non-artistic materials related to body and house maintenance routines as well as other objects identified as feminine. The house environment has become my laboratory where I find basis to create new bodies and give form and space to all of these restless questions.
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Cat Washington
catwashington.com
@catty_washington
Glasses2(2023)
Tapestry crochet
22 x 24 inches
This work is part of my collection MeditationsOn Self . In my portraits I explored my own self-image using the approach of tapestry crochet. The collection was born from the disconnect I felt with my body and my subsequent desire to connect with my facial features with the specific highlights, contours, shadows and lines. Tapestry crochet, as a medium, provided a rhythmic way of crafting myself. Through hundreds of rows, and thousands of stitches, I slowly found myself in the work. These tapestries provide viewers with different experiences depending on the distance from which they view the work. From far away, it’s easy to see a cohesive image. However, when up close, the overall image is overshadowed by the complexity of the stitching. While the crafting of my portraits reflects my own understanding of myself, exhibiting the portraits mirrors my relationship to others. MeditationsOnSelfis an invitation to see me at different vantage points.
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