My latest work will be in a group show at Eric Firestone Gallery this Saturday May 23rd.
Womanhouse | May 23 – June 14, 2015
Opening Reception: May 23rd, 6 – 9 PM
Artist Include: Nina Chanel Abney, Joa Baldinger, Sarah Braman, Julia Chiang, Judy Chicago, Evie Falci, Orly Genger, Maya Hayuk, Misaki Kawai, Maia Ruth Lee, Keiko Narahashi, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miriam Shapiro, Shinique Smith, Agathe Snow, Jen Stark, Jessica Stockholder, Despina Stokou, Vadis Turner, Wendy White, and Chloe Wise.
The original 1972 Womanhouse project was organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who founded the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program. Womanhouse was conceived by a member of Chicago and Schapiro’s program staff, art historian Paula Harper, who The New York Times celebrated as “the first [of] art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture.” By taking over and remodeling a deserted Hollywood mansion, the artists behind the original Womanhouse aimed to confront social issues through physical labor, while they learned how to renovate their dilapidated home. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to step outside of constructed gender roles and challenge their identities as artists.
The work collected in Womanhouse (2015) is inspired in part by Chicago and Schapiro’s commitment to dignifying material and labor within an art practice. Such as in Sarah Braman’s work, where medium gives rise to form as plexi and steel are combined with mundane objects to make new constructions that feel counterintuitive, yet remain translucent and light. Similarly, Agathe Snow uses industrial materials such as fiberglass, pegboard and steel resulting in refined works that speak of environmental and moral decay, giving new life to the factory-made materials she uses in her assemblages.
