Judy Sarup is a copywriting intern at our brand strategy and creative services firm Project X Media. She likes art. She likes to write. She gets to review.
The current "Art Between the Hours: Mixed Works by Modern Women" gallery exhibit at Project X: Art features an assortment of works ranging from decorative to themes of family and feminine empowerment, and issues facing women in particular. From the starting point of the exhibit's title, we know that the contributors squeezed time into their busy schedules to create their art works and have committed to share proceeds with Keep a Breast.
These works by women of the AX COLLECTIVE are decorative and filled with whimsy. The Collective's International Princess Project "advocates for women enslaved in prostitution, helping them restore their lives and empowering them to be free."
The decorative works by Louise Triands:
Toyroko Gorge [Image 3 of 33], of a gorge painted in watercolor, with rich green hues, is a seeming contradiction, all at once like a fantasy and a picture of a real place. It communicates peace and optimism ahead by directing the eye from the bottom up, to a sky layered with colors that could be fragments of a rainbow. A vertical beam of sunlight reaching down into the gorge could suggest a bit of heaven. This painting is an exhibit showstopper!
Triands copied and interpreted an already-existing oil painting in Untitled [Image 2 of 33]. This work also emphasizes color (including some green hues of Toyroko Gorge.) this time depicting the meeting of beach and ocean, and a cotton ball-cloudy sky. The horizon is not straight, adding interest and visual motion. A few birds fly overhead.
Triands used a photograph for her interpretation of Sandpipers [Image 1 of 33], in watercolor and sumi ink. Her green themes of nature appear in the high tide color burst.
Next are perspective study works in light blues and yellows, of sky and ground. Triands used acrylic, gouache and charcoal on canvas in Path Study [Image 4 of 33], and Path Study 2 [Image 5 of 33]. A triangular apex in each work magnetizes the eye.
A few works about family and feminine empowerment, by Heidi Farrow:
Favorite Things: Sienna Bani, Age 3 [Image 6 of 33], is a whimsical memory preservation chart of a 3-year old female child's. Pink is her favorite color, and a princess her superhero. Farrow created this for a friend and works with another artist in creating memory preservation charts, to capture children "at that specific time and place."
Favorite Things: Connor Newton, Age 11 [Image 7 of 33], is a parallel work depicting a boy's interests, with a masculine blue plaid background, and "myself" as Connor's obsession.
Works of whimsy, featuring animal silhouettes by Robin Smith:
Animals craving meat is a leading theme presented in a light, comical manner. Smith paints moustaches on silhouetted animals to reflect their "emotions." Her works are reminiscent of fine screen print illustrations appearing in children's books.
Horny Bunny Wants a Hot Dog [Image 8 of 33], features a mythical creature called a jack lope, against a green background with outlines of white circles. He cannot reach the hot dogs dangling overhead on strings.
In Winner Winner Drumstick Dinner [Image 9 of 33], with a sky blue background, three bats carry drumsticks from their claws. Only one has managed to acquire two drumsticks, however. A bat with one drumstick is happy (moustache is turned up at the ends), but the other with one has the sad, down-turned moustache.
Don't Tease Me, Beef [Image 10 of 33] is Smith's bull with a large, bright orange moustache—and steaks bouncing on orange coils bouncing before him. Outlines of white squares and rectangles lie on the blue background. As the bull gazes straight at us with white almond-shaped eyes (these are the areas on the silhouette not filled in with black), we realize his frustration; perhaps he appeals to the viewer for help!
Smith's exceptional skill and creativity in using profound shapes is evident here. The bull's head has a cushion-edged rectangle in the upper section; the body is an oval; the legs resemble furniture spindle legs.
In Wholly Flying Burger Saucer [Image 10 of 33], hamburgers on buns fly, seemingly in attack mode, toward a giraffe. The cohesive use of fuchsia in the moustache, plates and ground lends charm.
Works featuring decorative religious themes and fabric, and other influences, by Maria Moy:
Felt Crosses and Crowns [Image 12 of 33], is a mixed-media collection of hand-dyed wool, sterling beads, embroidery and embellished textures. The shape and fullness of each cross reminds me of the pope's figure cloaked in clerical garb, as he outstretches his arms before the public. And, the crowns fit right in with religious imagery. Too, there is a sense of Eastern Orthodox imagery in these Moy creations.
Moy's abstract, still-life scene of a telephone on a table [Image 13 of 33], is amazing. [So, too, is her farmhouse picture done mainly in bright acrylic colors, [Image 14 of 35]. Moy has created the telephone work entirely by cutting vellum pieces and applying charcoal to each one—and then using tools to employ a subtractive process on most of the pieces, lightening the charcoal into gray and off-white shades. We see only one number on the telephone, a seven.
An influence for Moy may have been a cubist work by Pablo Picasso--like Three Musicians (1921)--as she created her telephone scene. Picasso used monochromatic colors, and pasted cut paper fragments into compositions, or collages. Especially notable in Moy's work is her fragmentation of the telephone into planes, calling attention to surfaces in a Picasso-like manner.
Op art works of the 1960s may flash to mind when viewing Moy's Concentric Circles [Image 15 of 33], also painted in acrylic. The work implies motion—when you stare at the innermost circle in each set of three concentric ones, it "swells" like the pupil of an eye.
Works of whimsy and women's issues, by Sarah Beckman:
Time Flies [Image 16 of 33], is a mixed media work of acrylic paints and collage. She has included picture clips from old magazines, cookbooks, encyclopedias and atlases.
Here, a woman in elegant mid-century dress replete with a pearl necklace, smiling as if she has everything under control, stands with her daughter before a candle-laden cake for her husband's birthday. But a collage cloud of thought, larger than her own figure, looms above her head—containing a "Super Suds" laundry soap box, a calendar page with a date circled in red, a clock, a note reading "Important: Parents needed," etc. Clocks (including a cuckoo one) abound in the picture, and we surmise quickly that the female subject finds herself in a constant battle to find personal time for meeting her own needs, and others' expectations.
The trunk of the lollipop-type tree to the right of the woman is a yellow ruler, symbolically marking the growth of children at various times in their development.
Beckman's luscious use of shape and color infuses excitement and cheer into her work. She has shaped the garden foliage into limes and lemons, purple flowers into gumdrops, the clouds in the sky into blueberries, and colored the sky in lipstick-pink shades—the objects are like charms floating across the picture.
The whimsical Where's Your Head At? [Image 17 of 33] follows, with a lady put together physically but not mentally. Her head is missing, and a feathered, jeweled hat flies above (with a mind of its own!)—with her body clad in a dress with a gumdrop-shaped skirt--and the classic woman's favorite, a pair of red pumps. Beckman takes us back to the mid-20th century in her portrayal of women and their daily concerns, perhaps to lend sentiment and a sense that that was the past—and to remind us that women must still address most of the same issues now in their lives, as they did back then!
Nightsong [Image 18 of 33], a mixed media work, is another statement about women—their roles and the ones they would choose for themselves, with time and opportunity. A woman sees herself as a glamorously dressed singer—but she's a tiny figure in the picture compared with a factory-type building to her right. A light switch plate approximately her size is at the base of the building; obviously, her day job comes first!
Our Town and Breadwinner are in a quad of small works that follow [Images 19-22 of 33]. The woman subject has found her place in the community; she mows the lawn and has a place on the informal map to her right. She embraces vegetable garden growing for women, and vegetables dance out of an Andy Warhol-like Campbell's vegetable soup can. She works during the day outside the home, and as a homemaker at night—and tells us, "I can bring home the bacon." [Note the house made up of sheet music, and recipes "spilling" out onto the sides of the canvas!] In the last of the quad works, she fries the bacon up in a pan for her family members (complete with a pet dog), and a red heart floats above them.
The decorative photography works by Melissa W. Nelson:
Red Yucca and Chinese Golden Rain Tree [Images 23 and 24 of 33], are prints on watercolor paper with 3 views each that provide the viewer with a sense of motion when glancing at the views from left to right. Nelson's placement and display of natural objects is extraordinary; for example, she uses a piece of tan bark as a display stand for a leaf.
Shopping at a farmer's market and observing seasonal produce inspired Nelson to make a luster print of Baby Romanescu [Image 25 of 33]. She uses natural lighting only, not enhanced. Nelson has artistically placed the baby cabbages in a bowl with a leaf, in such a manner that we think we see an animal form, perhaps a giant snail—and the individual romanescu components are tiny snails! Indeed, a showstopper!
Baby Cauliflower [Image 26 of 33] comes next, also a luster print. A black rain jacket provides the backdrop. Leaves look like supports holding up the vegetable.
The black rain jacket background provides color contrast again for Purple Cabbage [Image 27 of 33], a cross-section view of the vegetable. An exterior leaf is shaped like a chicken's head, and we might fantasize that the vegetable is, in fact, a purple chicken!
The themes of empowerment by Karina Bania:
Silent Hours [Image 28 of 33] is in two parts, with Mahatma Gandhi and symbolic objects on the left side, like a ladder and a cocktail—and a wallpaper-type design on the right, resembling moons on a tan background. Bania had lived in Asia for a while, and memories of her stay there have inspired her to create her works.
A Sense of Place [Image 29 of 33] is a nine-part cluster work a Buddha in one part, and symbolic/abstract designs in the others. Asian influence abounds.
Harmonious Procession [Image 30 of 33] is a charmer, to be "read" vertically--with an elephant walking on the top (and a few objects used by humans placed nearby, like a red purse); the ground in the middle section; and the ocean (even with roots from the ground layer reaching down into it) at the bottom. So, we interpret the animal life and the sky, earth and ocean as the harmonious procession.
More works by Sarah Beckman, with empowerment/whimsy themes:
Bring It On, Lucky, Lucky, and 100% Love [Images 31-33, of 33], are each upbeat and using a single intense color with white. They embody pop culture in message and graphics. The horseshoe-designed letter "u" in "Lucky" particularly captivated me; so, too, did the zeros in "100% Love (made to look like eyes), and the depiction of the "v" in "Love" as a heart.
The last work, by Jen Martino,
Spec'd, of painted paper and vinyl, is a composite work of sample texture pieces taken from print swatch books. Martino is a graphic designer with a background in commercial art. She added varnish, screws and acrylic paint to the pieces but did not add any additional textures. The red dot in the tree indicates "sold."
The work's long, rectangular shape and dark shades are captivating. The overall effect is that of industrial art. We might think of a dark factory with its many walled rooms, and the screws suggest cold machinery and mechanization of man--even though we use and enjoy the beautiful finished products created.