Curated by Lesley Wright
@ A.I.R. Gallery I, II, III, January 10, 2007 - February 3, 2007
Contemporary American women artists have seemingly limitless life and art options. It is possible that a woman today can do or be anything. In her artwork, a woman artist in a post-post-modern art arena adds an extremely broad range of artistic media and sources to her smorgasbord of choices. Such freedom is, at its best, personally and creatively liberating.
Made Out of the Ordinary amply demonstrates that the 20 national members of A.I.R. Gallery range far and wide in their search for personal expression within their various life journeys. Taken as a whole, their work is diverse in subject, in materials, and in inspiration. What many of these women share is a tendency to look at the everyday as their starting point, and to create a disparate vocabulary of expression out of what is readily at hand. These 20 artists look to what they know in order to cope with the vast sea of potential before them. From these humble starting places, they make new, extraordinary works of art.
Common acts, common materials, common practices appear again and again in this exhibition. Crit Streed�fs Speak to Me documents the simple act of repetitively hand writing all the vowels. Marcia Neblett�fs drawings capture the infinite variety of riders on the subway. The uncommonness of ordinary folks radiate from Judy Cooper�fs color photographs celebrating women�fs lives together, or from Joan Ryan�fs pastel portraits of commonly unconventional characters. A number of the artists reach for ordinary things ready to hand to fabricate their work. Meg Walker�fs barns incorporate cardboard along with steel and paint. Lisa Cooperman�fs assemblage derives its texture from the colorful mesh used to bag vegetables. Cynthia Winika starts with actual mushroom caps in her abstract Spore Prints. The view out the window, the objects on the counter, and the people they know are nearby and easily appropriated. The ordinary is everywhere in this exhibition.
Though not common, exhilarating and horrific experiences can be reduced to the mundane when repeated too often or examined too closely. Sex is a fantasy kept out of reach in Leigh Craven�fs gritty, cropped drawings; racism is a chronic background threat as Taryn Wells reminds us in A Modern Day Lynching; the joy of procreation turns into numbness in the glare of the clinic as Jeanette May makes us all too aware in her series Fertility in the Age of A.R.T. These things too are ordinary, if unacceptable.
When focusing on the usual stuff of daily life, these artists may run up against the invisible barriers that challenge the proposition that all things are possible for women. In the story of Goldilocks, a girl�fs curiosity gets her in trouble; in Nancy Morrow�fs version of Three Bears, it gets worse and the young lass may become one of the bears�f tasty treats. We are taught that dangers await when we take risks and stay out long past bedtime, as Claire Owens shows in her unsettling painting. We can be judged on our appearance and found lacking, no matter what our gifts, which Taryn Wells captures in her drawing 78 Degrees. Following our dreams can lead to fragmentation (Patricia Barefoot), to outbursts (Carol Boram-Hays), to nightmares and anger (Marie Sivak). These pieces remind us that we learn the boundaries and limits of twenty-first century gender roles, externally and internally imposed, from the time we are born, and pass them along in our stories, our mythology, and our neuroses. As contemporary women we combat the more insidious restraints that are deeply ingrained, and challenge or succumb to the myths that externally frame our ideas of self and possibility.
As the 20 artists in this exhibition battle their boundaries, they create work that is thoughtful, joyous, challenging, strange, and lovely. It is anything but humdrum. Rather, it is fertile and it is intense. Sexy lady spiders are set to seduce on Leslie Kniesel�fs embroidered pillows. Girls prepare to step out of their skin into a world of magic, as drawn by Claire Owen. The view from the window, seemingly unfocused, suddenly snaps into clarity in Mimi Oritsky�fs remarkable little landscapes. In the hands of Katsura Okada, the energy of drawing transcends a few simple lines and becomes a beautiful object in and of itself.
Even the uncommon, the once-in-a-lifetime events that happen to us all are at once remarkable and mundane. Ann Ginsburgh Hofkin�fs intense photographs of a moment of startling light, and air, and place remind us that we must always pay attention and that we can be amazed anywhere and at any time. Barbara Grinell, in paintings for her mother, recently deceased, grapples with death and loss, that most ordinary of extraordinary events.
Perhaps when everything is possible, that which is readily available, always there, often overlooked, takes on a power through familiarity and intimacy. The reality of life for these artists is not �gout there,�h but �gin here.�h Searching to find a place with meaning within so many choices, they stay close to home, or close to self, and by looking closely, uncover more than we could anticipate with a glance. Never underestimate the ordinary lives of women. In the hands of an artist, they reveal unexpected, uneasy, and remarkable joys.
Lesley Wright
Grinnell, Iowa