Old Enough to Know Better Catalog

November 4–28, 2015 Crane Arts Gallery 105 1400 North American St. Philadelphia PA 19122 An exhibition of work by mid-career and emerging women artists, 35 and older, sponsored by the Philadelphia chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art Juried by Diane Burko and Eileen Neff

It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.

– Louise Bourgeois

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Old Enough to Know Better Group Exhibition Crane Arts Gallery 105 November 4 – November 28th, 2015 Opening Reception: November 12, 2015 6:00 – 9:00PM Philadelphia, PA – The Women’s Caucus for Art, Philadelphia Chapter, is pleased to present Old Enough to Know Better, a group exhibition of work by women artists over the age of 35 at the Crane Arts Gallery105, November 4 to November 28, 2015 with an opening reception Thursday, November 12th from 6 – 9PM. Juried by prominent Philadelphia based artists Eileen Neff and Diane Burko, 67 pieces were selected from over 2,000 works entered. This group of work reflects the need and desire of women to make art in light of a wide range of feedback or support, and the ongoing underrepresentation of women's work in galleries and museums. The ensuing resiliency, born of stubbornness and persistence in pursuing an artistic vocation, is evident in the diverse works on view, which include paintings, sculpture, photography and video. Among these pieces is one by Sarah R. Bloom recently named one of Instagram’s “28 Badass Women You Should Be Following”* and Philadelphia magazine’s Best Visual Artist of 2015.

About the Women’s Caucus for Art: Founded in 1972 the WCA mission is to create community through art, education, and social activism. A founding member of the Feminist Art Project, WCA is part of a collaborative national initiative celebrating the Feminist Art Movement and the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of women on the visual arts, art history, and art practice, past and present.

For more information, please contact: The Women’s Caucus for Art, Philadelphia Chapter, wcaphiladelphia@gmail.com Kristin Osgood Lamelas, 856-371-9133 or Jude Lang, 484-557-9492 Crane Arts Gallery 105 1400 N American Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122-3803 Hours: Wed-Sat, Noon – 6:00PM Please check our blog http://phila-wca.blogspot.com/ for exact hours. *http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/28-badass-women-you-should-be-following-oninstagram_562a7c36e4b0aac0b8fcdcca?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

1. Linda Lee Alter Cloudy Skies 2013 Acrylic on wood fiber panel, 12 x 9 inches $1,400 From early childhood, I loved to make art. My artwork has always expressed appreciation of the natural world and the belief that we are all one family. The sky paintings are from a series of paintings, one for each day of July, 2013. During more than 50 years as a professional artist, I have created series of artworks about nature’s abundance, women’s accomplishments, health concerns, Bible stories and Buddhist philosophy. Currently my paintings are about inclusiveness and personal bravery.

2. Karen Aumann The Sacred Datura 2015 Ceramic, oak, iron, glass, rubber, bamboo rice, 14W x 28H x 14D inches $900 I am a process and materials person – everything about the fabrication and selection of materials needed to work out my ideas interests me. At this stage of my life my studio has become my Art Cave, where I go for inspiration, sustenance, solitude, discovery and even play. What is called “work” I do for myself; the act of making, realizing my ideas, is my impetus.

3. Hetty Baiz Not Knowing 2015 Paper, ink, paint, canvas, 72 x 60 inches $6,800 I mine the body, peel back layers to discover fragments of information, stories, images, dreams. The body as archaeological site, as a vehicle for expression. What does it mean to be human? We are all passing thru, transitory, impermanent. Yet we embody bits and pieces of our culture’s history. Our genetic code ties us to ancient times. Data and information are embedded within us. What does it say? What are these unsung stories? Our bodies – both sacred and profane. Machines to process food; made from the stuff of stars.

4. Sarah Bloom The Wind in My Heart 2015 Digital photographic print, 11 x 14 inches $250 The exploration of identity as a woman entering middle age has emerged as a persistent theme in my work, most expressively with my self-portraits in abandoned places. I seek to adapt to my changing body, mindset and circumstances. I see myself as an extension of these spaces, echoing the strain of identity as we age. I explore my own emotional and often painful reactions to this process. I work towards reclaiming my place in the world and defining my mid-life as one of transformation rather than crisis.

5. Cynthia Brantley What the Night Gave Me 2014 Color pencil, 16 x 20 inches $1,500 Since the theme of the exhibition is longevity in the arts, I tried to choose pieces from almost every decade of my career. The subjects have changed throughout the years, but the artist’s intent has remained the same.

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6. Emily Brown Thicket 15 2015 Sumi ink on watercolor paper, 72 x 52 inches $6,800 Looking and drawing began early, a natural connection to my world. I’ve served the lives of others in many ways, thus slowed and distracted. Yet my marks still resonate, curiosity grows, images keep emerging. Their meanings shift, multiply, fade or recharge as contexts change; some morph, supporting active new subjects. My work continues to deepen my experience, transcend the factual, and embrace the moment. Some of the images I’m sharing with you have grown from the simple to the complex.

7. Paula Cahill Pink Sharks II 2015 Oil on linen, 14 x 12 inches $450 Are you looking for an artist with a cohesive body of work? Do you want artists with a consistent, established style? Are you looking for artists with a strong brand? If you answered yes to any of the above, stop. Do not proceed. While I admire artists who fit the above criteria and it’s okay with me, I work in my own personal manner, creating each painting on a case by case basis or working in very short series.

8. Elena Caravela Persistence of Vision 2015 Oil on linen, 12 x 15 inches $700 The need to persist is a force behind all of my work. It is the one overriding presence in everything I make. Themes and techniques may differ as I move forward artistically and as I grow older, but the core, the drive, that rebellious get out of my way energy, drives my intentions every day. The excitement of what I see in my mind’s eye and the striving to capture some part of it, is the one gift that will not diminish as I age. It is in fact, the only one I can absolutely count on.

9. Lisa Cooperman Zippers 2015 Mixed media, 13 x 37 x 4 inches $420 I’m old enough to know better that making artwork concerned with enterprises from migrant farm work to gender inequality to aging consigns my voice to the weeds. But I keep doing it anyway. It is a fertile place to be.

10. Rocio De Alba Uncomfortable Silence 2014 Hammermuhle Paper dry mounted; custom white acid free frame; anti glare/uv glass; signed, editioned, 24 x 20 inches $2,500 Experts say by age three hippocampus, a part of the brain, begins to record our profound experiences. Coincidentally, that’s when I learned about death.

This provoked panic and anxiety attacks that continued through adulthood. At fourteen I discovered alcohol and self medicated for years before understanding my psychological malady: my fear of dying. This series of self-portraits deconstruct the agony I endure by placing myself in absurd realms digitally recreated from the hallucinations that ensue with each outbreak. page 2 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

11. Kristine DeNinno Skopelos view 2015 Japanese paper, 10 x 14 inches $150 This series of multilayered monotypes invites the viewer into an abstract space immersed in varying layers of texture, color and form. The prints are large in scale and leave much room for the observer’s own narrative and interpretation. I am fascinated with the manipulation of a two-dimensional surface to create a dialogue with three-dimensional space. The qualities of form, depth, and materiality of painting, design, and drawing inform each of my prints.

12. Sarah Dineen Certain Dark Things #23 2014 Acrylic on canvas on wood, 41 x 36 inches $3,200 Certain Dark Things is an ongoing series of paintings born form Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII. I have used this piece of writing as a place to begin and a place to pull imagery from its themes of secrecy, love, and darkness. As the series has evolved the forms have simplified, the velocity of mark making has slowed, and the idea of presence and monumentality have come to the forefront.

13. Carla Falb Ghost Rider: Please Remain Seated 2015 Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches $6,360 I explore the complexities and energies of human nature through paintings of roller coasters and nightclubs. My investigation involves our society’s seemingly insatiable quest for euphoric experiences. Roller coasters and nightclubs are a cyborgian mix of human and machine designed primarily for sensory overload, launching riders and revelers into altered states of consciousness. The work elicits disparate responses utilizing pulsating rhythms, instability, fleeting images, and multiple perspectives.

14. Uta Fellechner Self-Portrait as Eye Witness 2014 Digital archival pigment print on rag paper, 20 x 20 inches $295 Experimental series titled MY MOTHER AT 99 (Dementia Series)

15. Martha Ferguson Dreaming of Milkweed 2015 Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches $3,000 Living and working close to nature has given me a heightened sensitivity of environmental issues challenging the health and well-being of our planet. I approach art making as an opportunity to explore my connection to the natural world and investigate how I perceive our fragile, ever changing environment. I choose to work with images from nature; mountains, water, turbulent storms and the ubiquitous Milkweed plant with its ability to absorb environmental toxins. These paintings reflect my environmental concerns. page 3 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

16. Sheila Ferri Alchemy 2013 Wire, 7 x 12 x 5 inches $800 My family, my dreams, my memories, my yearnings, their conflict, adventures real and imagined, are entwined in my sculpture. The wire, starting as a straight line, twists, weaves, evolves into objects domestic, objects imagined and objects that represent reality and whimsy. With my hands I record the elements of my life.

17. Pamela Flynn Crossed Wires 2015 Oil on canvas/seed beads, 34 x30 inches $2,000 This work focuses on social issues that reflect power struggles. My work does not preach or give answers-it asks one to consider. Oil on canvas is used with a luscious background of seed beads. The painted image area visually and actually falls back and the expanse of sky moves forward. Contemplation is about an expanse of time/ space to think-the beaded area is that space-the space for thoughts to wander. The seed beads are all placed individually-this is a contemplative process-a time when I have time/space to think.

18. Terri Fridkin Here Comes The Sun 2014 Acrylic and marker, 36 x 28 inches $750 Structure, pattern, line, and color are the underpinnings of my hand-pulled prints.

They are simple and complex, bold and subtle, yet resist a specific meaning. These outcomes provide discipline and a comforting sense of order to counteract the uncertainty and chaos that exists in our world today. Years of precise and meticulous renderings have impacted this vision.

19. Helen Geglio A History of Toil: Homespun 2015 Cotton, linen, embroidered and handstitched, 37 x 35 inches $1,000 My art work explores the intersection of traditional and contemporary quilting in the context of reusing and reclaiming the fabrics of everyday life. I am a saver and keeper of cloth and I enjoy working with materials that have passed through other’s hands. The connection between women, work and textiles is a recurring theme in my quilts. My artworks reflect a changing schema of work, and the work done by women.

20. Kathleen Greco Absence 2015 Photograph, 20 x 16 inches $500 I am an emerging artist whose current study encompasses the female body. I do not consider my work just photography, but I consider myself an artist that uses photography as a medium and a method for my process. I photograph, choreograph and document relationships and conditions of material and form in space.

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21. Ann Haaland She Waits 2015 Mixed media acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches $2,800 This body of work is about the changes in the body, the strength of conviction, of tenacity, of focus and resolution. I think of the potential that evolves as we better define ourselves, our values and our desires. The making of this work is my process towards authenticity.

22. Mia Halton Muddling Through 2011 Chalk on board, 16 x 16 inches $500 Using humor and metaphor I visually describe the vagaries and challenges of being human. I work quickly and with a sense of urgency. When I draw onto paper or scratch into a clay surface I’m trying to make sense of the world, one figure at a time. The line work is gestural and resembles graffiti, cartoons, or a child’s rendering.

I don’t use a horizon line, specific light source or other indication of time or place.

The figures peer out at the viewer periodically but they inhabit their own worlds and live by their own rules.

23. Colleen Hammond Mark 2012 Oil on panel, 5 x 5 inches $275 Old family photos have been a source of inspiration for some recent work. In using these photos as a jumping point for my paintings, I am able to emanate a very personal spirit and mood.

24. Betsey Hansell Condemned-Woods 2015 Archival pigment print, 13 x 19 inches $200 From the ongoing series, Condemned: Requiem for Sticks and Brambles.

Photographs – some painted – of a small untended patch of plants, trees, and wildlife on a commercial street in Bucks County, PA before and after being razed by developers for luxury townhouses. I am trying to express my sadness and rage over this blind, wanton, unnecessary destruction of precious habitat, which is being repeated daily by developers across the country.

25. Kathleen Herlihy-Paoli First Star 2015 Oil on canvas with button, 20 x 20 inches $1,200 The series title of my most recent paintings is Curtain #1. All of the paintings in this series will involve a curtain and a subject. The curtain represent life’s possibilities, its balance and its uncertainty. Health issues and subsequent legal issues have been the impetus behind this new work.

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26. Nancy Herman THE DREAM: FEET 2013 Oil on canvas board $500 These paintings were created for a video. They are the remembrance of a dream that concerns the span of years.

27. Kathryn Jill Johnson Tower and Spire 2015 Graphite and oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches $650 What gives weight to experience? How does that weight shape us? Is it place in time, proximity to the body, or the possibility of intervention? It’s impossible to know and silly to try. There’s no universal field theory of suffering or joy. There’s not even an approximation that works most of the time. There I am in my studio pondering the eternal rule of the same or the hypoxic water in the gulf and I hit my thumb with a hammer: Bang! I’m in the moment, the best Buddhist in the monastery.

28. Anne Kantor Kellett Mine Eyes 2007 B/W Print, 16 x 19 inches $500 As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, the underlying themes of duality, vulnerability and surviving recur in my art. The Rwandan genocide also impacted my work and moved me to lead missions to Rwanda, to help women survivors.

Anne’s current body of work, entitled Surviving is concerned with the burden of all survivors, bearing unbearable memories and at times transcending them.

29. Jan Kather Karissa 2015 Inkjet on canvas, 12 x 12 inches $400 Though some may think it is breaking a rule to playfully make photographs look like paintings by using image-editing software and printing on canvas, Mary Cassatt would surely have appreciated the expression of domesticity captured in these boudoir moments of the texting generation. Photographs like these suggest the cyclical nature of art criticism: who could forget that Photorealist paintings were once panned for blatantly looking like photographs? Or that Degas’ painting trumped Cassatt’s?

30. Ludmila Ketslakh Uncertainty of Being 2010 Digital print, 20 x 16 inches $250 My purpose of showing the project Uncertainty of Being to a big audience is to begin the discussion that challenged the stereotypes of the aging; to talk about it as normal, natural and unavoidable course of human lifespan. Perhaps growing old wouldn’t inspire so much fear and avoidance in this culture if we knew that we would be acknowledged, accepted, and treated favorably no matter how advanced our age. This project was photographed in US, Mexico, Japan, Russia and Germany. page 6 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

31. Axelle Kieffer Atalante 2015 Paper, 12 x 15 inches $330 My artwork focuses on the human figure. I use painting as a living matter. The flesh is a good vehicle for what’s happening inside, how we feel in our body and how we live with it. I also use collage to break our vision of a known body. The handcut papers are pasted directly on the photos to show what is inside outside. The scalpel cut pieces cover the image and thus reveal a new meaning at the manner of a palimpsest.

32. Diedra Krieger This is Not Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square 2015 Galaxy 5, Adobe Premier, 24 seconds On April 29th, 2015 I became a first time mom to a human baby, 23 days before my 43rd birthday. This collection was produced during the 37 weeks 2 days of pregnancy and first 3 months of life. I was reading Moyra Davey’s MotherReader and committed myself to documenting my journey into motherhood. Meanwhile, my art project Plastic Fantastic, a nomadic, immersive environment for play made of 6000 water bottles had 2 trips: The Young Women’s Leadership School of Queens in 2014 and in Toledo, OH in 2015.

33. Andrea Krupp Mountainside 2014 Woodcut, 16 x 16 inches $450 I am exploring themes of place, and self in my visual art. As I move away from directresponse landscape painting, I am creating artwork that is synthesized, interior and personal, but anchored in nature. These works demonstrate the twists and turns of my creative process as I work with persistence, refining my vision and going deeper.

34. Beth Lakamp Insanely Happy 2015 watercolor on panel, 16 x 20 inches $1,300 Finding joy in everyday living no matter what your age

35. Jude Lang Putto 4 2015 Ink, watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 5.5 inches $500 Why are children’s bodies so coded?

Their images trapped, incapable of carrying meaning beyond sentiment and cultural memes? Why are their physical beings prohibited from signifying content beyond the cliché? I was gobsmacked by two paintings by Poussin in which infants, cavorted, drunken, lecherous, joyous. These antic putti reflect the paradoxical ways we imagine children. I’ve played with the images, intergrating them into sacred and profane stories, angels and imps.

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36. Deborah Leavy Blown Away #1 2009 Digital photo on archival paper, 16 x 20 inches $450 My journey has been from left brain to right brain—from lawyer to artist, leaving the law mid-career to follow my lifelong passion—making art. After almost 20 years as a painter, my journey continues, expanding to photography and assemblage.

Influences: Georgia O’Keefe, Jennifer Bartlett, Marcel Duchamp; Judy Chicago.

Themes: women’s sexuality; finding beauty in decay and detritus, things tossed away or forgotten, enduring adversity, clinging to life and dreams, refusing to die.

37. Virginia Maksymowicz She Talks Too Much 2013 Hydrostone, cast from life POR My artwork over the past decade has investigated architecture and its figurative elements: caryatids, columns, canephorae, baskets of produce, Corinthian capitals, acanthus, bodies, bones, bread and water. I see caryatids and canephorae, in particular, as the visual summation of human life and women’s fundamental role in supporting it. Most of the work I am submitting follows this complex visual trail. The one exception is “She Talks Too Much,” a self-portrait cast from life into Hydrostone.

38. Miriam Marshall Marshall Stance 2014 Acrylic on Rives, 15 x 22.25 inches $550 Art is life – whether one is simply seeing the natural beauty of the earth, creating art, sharing art or traveling great distances for the chance to see more. Art simply drives life. It’s impossible to imagine a life without art – or a life without painting and printmaking. Thank you for the opportunity to share my work with you.

39. Tamryn McDermott Urban Fragments 1 & 2 2015 Brick fragments and waxed linen, looped, 6 x 6 inches and 3 x 3 inches POR This book is an altered ballistics vest which explores vulnerability, accumulation and transformation. It was deconstructed, and the original layers of ballistics fabric were transformed into book pages. The fabric is difficult to cut and each page was manipulated by stitching, painting, printing, and/or folding. Additional materials of paper, cardboard, fabric and plastic were inserted into the vest. The materials were originally cut into the shape of the vest and then transformed through folding, cutting and re-assembly.

40. Christine Medley Girl Flannel 2015 Letterpress and digital print on cotton paper, 10 x 10 inches $200 The work submitted is all based on printmaking techniques whose boundaries I’ve been pushing for 30 years. The subject matter explores time, surface as history, and the myth and symbolism surrounding crows. The work may result in a print, a collage, a book or some other form. My latest grid series uses the backs of wood type used in letterpress...the part you aren’t supposed to print. And a second series is painting with paste paper, which traditionally is used for the end papers in the book arts, but becomes a monotype. page 8 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

41. Rebecca Michaels from the book LOOK ME IN THE EYE 2010 Inkjet print, 20 x 24 inches $600 The narrative created by sequencing in the book format gives me a new way to speak about the language of desire and the photographic image. The sensuality of the printed image and the physicality of the book object give me a different way to investigate these relationships.

42. Cristin Millett The Domestic Science Collection 2004 Stainless steel cabinet, glass, acetate, instruments fabricated out of mixed metals and found objects, 60 x 30 x 16 inches $3,000 Growing up in a medical household, discussions focused on the body: its diseases, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatments. In my family of scientists, those conversations continue to this day, and the exposure has had a profound effect. In an effort to overcome ignorance of my own body, I study medical instruments, anatomical models, historical texts and anatomical theaters. My work represents an intersection of scientific ideas and aesthetic observations, which provide insight into societal attitudes surrounding the female body.

43. Sarah Nguyen Tongue Cut Sparrow and Maple Tree 2015 Cut Tyvek and wooden rod, 144 x 41 inches $1,000 I use a balance of abstract and representational forms in order to sever the connection between shape and meaning, connecting the viewer instead to the cut of the knife, so that s/he becomes complicit in the art.

44. Maureen O’Keefe Oral Exam #2 2012 Pastel on paper, 9.5 x 12.5 inches $350 I struggle to find balance between my own artistic expression and the mundane duties of everyday life. And yet.. I am NOT old enough to know better. I keep drawing. I keep painting. I work on a fairly small and intimate scale because it fits into my life. Small fits between doctor’s appointments and Girl Scout meetings; it fits between dinner and the lawn, between a moment with my husband on the porch and reading the news on internet before bed. People are the important things in life; they are my subject matter.

45. Bridget O’Rourke Rosie 2012 Oil, graphite on Canvas, 18 x 30 inches $500 The artists whom I admire most, Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, all have played a significant role in my development as an artist. Painting was their redemption against hardship—they were stubborn in their work. Philip Guston once said, “When you’re in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you – your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you’re really painting, they walk out. And if you’re really painting YOU walk out”. page 9 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

46. Kristin Osgood Lamelas Stefano 2009 Digital photography/Photoshop, 36 x 27 inches $500 My work engages the dichotomies of figure and landscape. Often I will layer microscopic images of cells from my body on top of aerial view maps of specific locations to capture a moment in time. However, my work is also affected by current events and environmental issues.

47. Laura Petrovich-Cheney Blocked Out 2015 Salvaged wood, 36 x 24.5 x 1 inches $800 Inspired by the geometry of American quilts whose simplicity belies their conceptual underpinnings, I piece together this salvaged wood into something meaningful and orderly. As both formal, abstract art objects and expressions of feminism, traditional American patchwork quilt designs are designs I find familiar and comforting. My wooden quilts recall a past heritage of craftsmanship and labor as well as the recalling the American ideal of a pioneer woman’s can-do spirit and instinct for survival.

48. Dolores Poacelli Blue Loops 2014 Oil pastel and oil sticks on paper $400 Color, texture and shape – a never ending quest for relationships.

49. Donna Quinn Maelstrom 2015 Mixed media on paper, 18 x 24 inches $1,200 These paintings are inspired by themes central to family, home and the stories produced by the fertile ground of youth. The empty places that inhabit the surface are recollections of interior spaces that suggest abandonment with an impreciseness that often accompanies faded memories.

50. Brenda Raynard Konstruktion No. 02 2014 Cross Stitch on 22-Count Hardanger Fabric, 5.5 x 4 inches $500 21 KONSTRUKTIONS: a Language of Thought in Cross-Stitch are the characters of an inner language interpreted in original handstitched works that bring the traditional craft of cross-stitch into the postmodern age. The strength of these pieces emanate from the feminine medium juxtaposed with the masculine sensibility of the content and palette. Deeply engaging and realistic, each stitch represents one of over 10,000 pixels in a deceptively vibrant range of nearly 50 colours. These works embody stubborn persistence. page 10 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

51. Nan Ring Subterra 7 2014 Pencil on paper, 12 x 19 inches $750 In the heart of Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, where hydraulic fracturing wells are prevalent, I became interested in the tension created by the natural verdant landscape of farmland and the people who endure there, set against a backdrop of man-made, geometric “fracking” wells. Intended as questions about risk and responsibility, the drawings are isolated in fields of empty space that speak of deep country quiet, as well as the disappearing landscape threatened by environmental instability and uncertainty.

52. Nancy J.H. Roberts I want, I want...

2011 Stoneware clay, glaze, acrylic paint, 10 x 11.5 x 6 inches $250 These works present two states of artistic compulsion. “I want, I want...” shows a state of inchoate longing. ‘I want, I want...’ is a beginner’s child-like phrase. This creature is inactive because she has yet to define her needs and wants. She’s battle-scarred, but receptive at several spots. She arches with longing, huffing and puffing, building a head of steam. Appetite is more focused and self-directed. She’s voracious. She’s got her tools, her tough hide, her sharp teeth to take a bite out of life. Look out!

53. Rachel Romano Birdboy 2014 Sanguine Conte and Rabbit Skin Glue on Paper, 39 x 50 inches $1,475 I have always considered myself an artist and have dabbled here and there since my year at Pratt, and then my year at the Lyme Academy. My life took many turns and painting wasn’t a part of it until I found my voice a year and half ago. Since then it defines me, my soul, and I have to paint every day!

54. Lauren Sandler Re-collections (hairdryer) 2014 Earthenware with glaze $600 Domestic objects, interior landmarks, wear intimate histories and time’s residue; a dimensional felt sense, as overlooked spaces build home. Drawn to still life, I invoke parallels to ceramics through mutual themes of everyday representation and marginalized reception. Both genres evoke impermanence in prosaic form and mundane setting. Touched and self-conscious, artifacts emerge. Traced imperfections unveil ancestral stories and entwine with the present through memory’s alchemy.

55. Lynn Skordal Dear Mary 2015 Vintage class photos, embroidery thread, beads, fabric, 1931 college yearbook, 5.25 x 3.75 x 2 inches closed (extends 36 inches) $900 After retiring from the practice of law eight years ago, I began making artist’s books and small works on paper. Old-style cut and paste collage has been and remains a favorite medium, and I frequently incorporate sewing techniques, thread, fabric, metal, wood and other materials into my pieces. The goal is always to tell a story that might startle, amuse or provoke. My work has appeared in book arts and collage exhibitions across the country. page 11 OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

55. Holly Smith The Four Winds 2001 Paper-mache , mixed media, 69 x 70 x 26 inches $7,500 Humor is the vehicle I use most often while searching for some version of artistic truth or clarity. My attraction to Surrealism is matched by a gleeful delight in the absurd wherever it can be found. But underlying the initial jocularity I attempt to straddle the divide between comedy and tragedy; seesawing between the two is where I find the most meaning. I’ve found the metaphorical use of animal imagery a good fit to represent an emotion, an experience, or a daily irritation.

57. Dobee Snowber Rm w/a Vw 2014-15 Acrylic, oil, paper, pastel, watercolor, 12 x 12 inches $300 I am intrigued by the notion of ‘old enough to know better’. Who says so?

Technically, I am old enough to know better but despite this I keep repeating the same mistakes, for the good and the bad of it. What I have learned (because I am old enough) is that the key is not about the mistakes but how I deal with them. This pertains to life in general and is also specific to my work. In some ways my pieces are a culmination of rectified errors – 3 steps forward – 2 back then 3 forward again; learning something new with each step.

58. Simone Spicer Street Person I 2001 Corrugated cardboard, acrylic paint, 14 x 51 x 27 inches $1,000 I am interested in the notion of cycles. Recycling. I think about development, decline, and subsequent regeneration into new physical form. I have ‘repurposed’ and worked with the notion of sustainability since the 80s, creating new life from waste as nature does. I believe deeply in personal transformation and consider my work a metaphor for that. I tease out order from chaotic collections of trash, reflecting my personal experiences of turning wreckage into rebirth, I turn trash into art.

59. Karen Stabenow Arctic Ice #3 2015 Oil on wood panel, 12 x 12 inches $500 My current work focuses on Arctic and Antarctic landscapes, nature, and the extraction of fossil fuels. Resources include internet, arctic blogs, maps, exhibitions and scientific reports. It is my nature to stubbornly pursue these subjects. I am becoming acquainted with the Arctic and the Antarctic and I intend to continue work on these subjects with great dedication and persistence. Inspired by nature, my challenge is to communicate the essence of the landscape and its momentum. This is my obligation as an artist.

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60. Karen Stone Jay 2010 Human hair on paper, 9 x 12 inches NFS This work personifies the tangible residue of ephemeral moments, embodying a visual accounting of personal recollections. Human hair is the subject matter and raw material for these portraits. It is the carrier of our essence, the DNA that comprises our unique genetic blueprint. It personifies an individuals’ sense of self. The snippets of hair used for these drawings were collected during many visits to the salon with the assistance of the stylist who packaged and labeled the clippings according to the clients identity.

61. Lucretia Torva Fin Win 2014 Oil on canvas, 24 x 48 inches $3,800 The subject of cars taps into people’s emotions, sentiment and psyche. Cars represent some of the best in humans, their creativity and ingenuity. Automobiles are beautiful. I want my art to be beautiful, attractive and entertaining. Cars elicit a lot of emotion from people: first car, first date, cross country trip, Route 66, a wedding, a drag race, and on and on. A car is an iconic American experience.

62. Georgette L. Veeder Slated 2013 Cast handmade rag paper, 99 x 36 x 5 inches $5,300 My work represents a personal journey of 30 years of research and development using plant and animal fibers as a sculptural medium. I build, layer and transform fibers into positive shapes and sculptural forms. For this show, my work consists of large cast handmade rag paper wall sculptures. I create staged landscapes defined by human presence. With textures, scale, space and forced perspective I challenge the viewer to enter my world. Illusions and fantasy play with the mind. How do we relate to nature? How do we fit in?

63. Gail Watkins Comics and Chromosomes fresco 2013 Comics, canvas, acrylic, dry pigment, 12 x 19 inches $1,500

64. Ruth Wolf no one screamed 2007 Charcoal, graphite, acrylic on unprimed canvas, 24 x 42 inches $2,500

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65. Vivian Wolovitz Blue Light 2014 Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches $5,000 These works are large and small scale paintings from the last 5 years. They represent the range of themes I have been involved with for many years. Some of the work is abstract and some is more figurative, but all of it is derived from landscape and natural phenomenon. I am also deeply interested in process and materials.

66. Dganit Zauberman Terrain 2014 Oil on canvas, 28 x 34 inches $3,000 A journey begins with paint. Paint inspires a process. I create the space and the place: actual and imagined, physically present and fantasy. I search from a reservoir of life experiences, everyday life, memories, and imagination for what is felt, for what is tangible and intangible. A realm is created that aims to present an idea composed of multiple layers, focusing not only on the physicality of land, but land as a source of emotional and psychological mood.

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Broad Street Review Old Enough to Know Better at Crane Arts

Subversive wisdom Samantha Maldonado

November 20, 2015 in Art & Architecture

Local artists Eileen Neff and Diane Burko have stuffed a gallery in the Crane Arts Center with the artwork of 67 artists, chosen from a pool of about 2,000 entries. Considering that female artists are widely underrepresented in gallery spaces, it’s a radical move to feature art only by female-identified people (who also happen to be age 35 or older). The result is Old Enough to Know Better, an energizing, maximalist show that includes art of all kinds: paintings, drawings, prints, photography, sculpture, and video installation, employing every sort of form, scale, topic, and subject, all reflecting the stubbornness and resilience essential to female artists pursuing their vocation.

Along with the thread of persistence that ties the work together, the exhibition’s

title validates the wisdom and respect that comes with age. The title can also be read as subversive, if assumed to be a

scolding: If one knows that art is a silly pursuit, and goes for it anyway, is that

foolish? Or perhaps the title is more of a

badge of honor and pride: Does the artist know better for having made art (and

know better than whomever designates

art making as foolish)? In any case, to be

persistent is to have gumption, strength,

and conviction, and the exhibition oozes

with admiration for the artists and the

work shown — the viewers can’t help but be swept into the liveliness of the space.

Virginia Maksymowicz, "She Talks Too Much"

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http://www.broadstreetreview.com/art-architecture/old-enough-to-know-b...

Each of the individual works engages the viewer in its own created world. Virginia Maksymowicz’s

sculpture She Talks Too Much is unsettling: a white head mounted flush to the wall shows lines of tension while coughing out random, perfect little white letters. A “screw you” to those who say she talks too much, or a kiss-off to those who themselves talk too much? A video on a 24-second loop by Diedra

Krieger called This is not walking in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a square (a nod to

René Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images, which states “This is not a pipe”) is literally

grounded in realism: a woman pushes a stroller around in a circle, and she’s shot from the ground up. Hetty

Baiz’s Not Knowing features a figure’s body, just slightly smaller than life, as it seems to emerge from the canvas, radiating with layers of paper and colored ink.

Overlaps and divergence As a group, the works are in dialogue with one another. Themes and motifs overlap in content and diverge in

approach: Artists investigate age and youth, the body, nature, and everyday objects in many ways. The viewer

takes on extreme perspectives in Maureen O’Keefe’s pastel drawing, Oral Exam #2, in which we peer as a dentist would into a person’s mouth, and in Carla Falb’s painting, Ghost Rider: Please Remain Seated, wherein the viewer finds herself thrown off-kilter and shooting down a roller coaster track. Emily Brown’s sumi work,

Thicket 15, depicts a tree-filled forest using brushstrokes of black ink on white paper, and, although it’s across the room, it echoes the understated chaos of Sarah Nguyen’s white papercut, Tongue Cut Sparrow and Maple Tree, which unfurls from the ceiling to the floor.

Placed side by side, Bridget O’Rourke’s Rosie and Gail Watkins’s Comics and Chromosomes explore the

processes of becoming and unbecoming, the old and the new: layers of paint, sketches, color, and, in Watkins’s case, comics, build up the surface and then are sanded away. The Four Winds, Holly Smith’s papier-mâché

sculpture of a woman walking four dogs, is in dialogue with Simone Spicer’s sleeping figure sculpture, Street

Person I, made of corrugated cardboard. The latter is placed directly behind the former, and together, the

sculptures recall city streets with people going about their business: Perhaps a lady walks her dogs right past a person sleeping on the sidewalk. The webs one can weave among the artworks are seemingly endless.

Giving birth to art Old Enough to Know Better creates enthusiasm for artwork and for women making art in Philly, whether or not their work was shown here. With a show by only women, one can’t help but think of artmaking as a generative ability akin to but different from biological reproduction, as the offspring in this case are purely original creations. And although femaleness is wrapped around everything in the gallery, it is also beside the point, taken for granted as gender is taken for granted — normally not even a thought in the mind — in gallery spaces dominated by male artists. The point is the work and the effect: You enter the gallery; you peruse; time passes; you age; you see good art — and it’s better than good. Now you’re old enough to know better, too. ♦

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CRANE ARTS GALLERY 105 1400 North American St Philadelphia PA 19122 RECEPTION Thursday, November 12 6pm to 9:00pm

November 4–28, 2015

Wednesdays – Saturdays 12pm-6pm

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