International Exhibition in Town Hall Galleries, Röcklturm, Rochuskapelle, LITVAI Gallery for Photography & Gallery 561

Opening reception: 2018-07-26 Town Hall

July 5 – August 16, 2018

Houston Community College Southwest, HCC

5601 West Loop South, Houston, TX 77081

(713) 718-7766

“The annual PrintMatters Houston members’ exhibition, Impressions 2018, showcases a myriad of printmaking techniques and styles from traditional woodcuts and etchings to hybrid prints and complex monotypes by PrintMatters’ premier printmakers.”

Artists:

Andis Applewhite
Janet Best Badger
Gaby Berglund Cárdenas
Lucinda Cobley
Luisa Duarte
Orna Feinstein
Katherine Rhodes Fields
Chris Fitzgerald
Mary Lee Gray
Leamon Green
Carol Hayman
Vivian Hordes
Cynthia Hoyt
Ann Johnson
Amber Kaiser
Melanie Wade Leslie
Marie Leterme
Suzann M. Manns
Eileen McClellan
Grace Phillips
Joelle Verstraeten

“Stop trying to fit in that old corset”, Gaby Berglund Cardenas, detail of corset installation, 2013

“Our culture’s objectification of the female body disempowers women and limits our economic, political and professional influence. Gendered embodiment has always been fluid and plastic. Since the emergence of digital technology in the 1990s, there has been a constant rise in body anxiety among girls and women. When bombarded by the media with messages for us to feel defective unless we fix ourselves, we internalize it and become vulnerable, risking turning our bodies and minds into civil war zones. We modify, reshape, cover, and uncover, as fits the media ideal, through fashion corsets, diets, exercise and cosmetic surgery. We adorn ourselves with piercings and tattoos, bind, confine, and refine our contours; and learn to move in an out of step with societal expectations. Women’s bodies are scrutinized not only in the arts, advertising and pornography but also within politics. Bodies are coerced, bought and sold through prostitution, or reduced to property, objects of value. Women’s right to control their bodies becomes tangible in the movement for reproductive rights and in women’s health issues. It should give us a glimmer of hope that more women are rising to positions of power in the media. More women should also be engaged in politics. As real, authentic women have the power to make decisions, they also have the power to portray themselves and other women as real people in all shapes and sizes, accepting their ” imperfections” and taking control over their own bodies.”  (extract from the catalog, about “Stop trying to fit in that old corset”)

Objectified 2018

CICA Museum, South Korea
January 26  – February 11 , 2017

Featured Artists 참여작가:

Sungmin Ahn/안성민, M.J. Alexander, Naama Attias, Manss Aval, Abigail Barefoot, Bartosz Beda, Caroline Byrne, CALEMBOUR, Gaby Berglund Cárdenas, Gary Duehr, Zac Endter,Janice Howard, Masha Ivanova, Zachary Jesse, Jeongeun Jo/ 조정은, Julian M Johnson, KELLEY, Kaisu Koski, Jinwoo Lee/이진우, Alves Ludovico, Alejandro Macias, Ella McCartney, Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, Naween Noppakun, Joanna Palmer, PWMD, Andre Rubin, Jen Vaughn, Richard Westerhuis, Lisa Willgress, Melissa Vogley Woods.

Click to open the catalog

“Women have traditionally been discouraged from expressing anger for fear of being perceived as unladylike or worse — as dangerous or destabilizing. This exhibit demonstrates that anger can be used as a positive outlet.”

“Today, many women are angry,” says Judy Langston, exhibit curator. “Recent pushbacks in hard fought political and legal gains made by women, and ongoing assaults on the health and safety of women and other marginalized groups, as well as on the environment, would suggest that the time is right for some well-placed, righteous indignation. Most striking was the deeply felt anger and sadness women expressed about their own conditions. This is a great opportunity for the community to examine the talents and vulnerabilities of exceptional artists.”

Feeling proud to be part of this new exhibition: “Women and Anger: Resistance, Power and Inspiration” and to be exhibiting for the third time at Koehnline Museum of Chicago, Illinois, from Sep.28 until Oct. 20th.

“She’s beautiful when she’s angry”, woodcut on textile/mm, 90 x 100 cm, 2016

Read more about this exhibition in The Daily Herald and The Chicago Tribune.

Special collections & archives of the Univ. of Kent writing about a our current show “Prescriptions”: books on illness, grieving, surgery, birth, recovery, mental health, aging, treatments and wellbeing, running until Nov.17th, 2017 at the Templeman Library at University of Kent in Canterbury, UK.

My books “Don’t retouch anything!” and “Wedding series 1819-1998” are on show. Paper from 1800’s Swedish Royal Announcements, ink, contact prints and a zirconia ring are some of the materials used.

Pages from “Wedding series 1819-1998”, mixed media, 2017

Pages from “Wedding series” 1819-1998, mixed media, 2017

Pages from “Don’t retouch anything”, mixed media, 2017

Pages from “Don’t retouch anything”, mixed media, 2017

Bound and Unbound IV is an international juried altered book exhibition at University Libraries, at the University of South Dakota:

“As artists, I believe, one of our roles in society is to protect and foster culture. Altered books seemingly exist as a contradiction to this; destroying the old to foster in the new, by using a cultural icon, the book, as a delivery system for new information outside the bounds of its original intent. I would hope that all the artists in this show hold a certain amount of reverence for the object they are destroying or obfuscating. I believe it is selfish to claim our personal expression is more valid than the information expressed in the book. But, as the book slowly declines as our society become more and more digital, can this mode still be relevant in today’s constant barrage of information? I believe these artworks act as a surrogate for these books, creating monuments and symbols that try to capture the logic of a book in the aesthetic of art.

We are asked as viewers to contemplate these works in consideration of the objects they were born of. The title of this show is Bound and Unbound, a reference to how books are assembled and made. It is a reference to the object itself without considering the information within its pages. It is looking at the object of a book as its physical form: pages, registers, binding and cover. In the works that were selected for this show, I am curating what I believe to be a transformation from object to icon. These works are ruminations and ideations of what the book as an object has a chance to become once divorced from its original intent. Art in itself is a language outside of the letters and words. These works are examples of when a book goes beyond its contents and becomes more than a possession. Your favorite book is something beyond a written tome of increasingly important thoughts. It is something that you use to construct yourself: to become wiser, excited, smarter, faster, better informed, inspired and more empathetic. I see these themes in the works themselves. We look at the weaving that recreates a map on top of the book. The topography of the thread creating an alternate universe that we can only imagine travelling. This transformation is what this show is about to me. The object is reborn/transmuted/challenged. The reader is now asked to read a form. Bound and Unbound IV is the sum of its parts, an exhibition of books undone and put back together. ” – Eli Show, juror.

Artists from Australia, Denmark, England, Puerto Rico, Romania, and the United States are represented in this exhibition running from Aug. 21, 2017 until Jan.3, 2018. 

Their digital library is in the process of publishing photos here

More videos and photos will follow on Instagram

NO MIND II, ink on Nepalese paper, 2.4 x 1.77 x 56 inches

After six months living in Houston I didn’t know what a huge honor it was to be selected for The Big Show, with juror Toby Kamps, former Curator of The Menil Collection and soon-to-be Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum. As usual, I didn’t enter for the competition but because the theme was interesting and it gave me a chance to exhibit one of my scrolls locally.

The scrolls were made in S. Korea and they were initially 3. Today they are over 20 pieces. They are by far the most humble works I have made yet the most important, meaningful and fun. They are part of my own meditation practice by handwriting with ink the words “no mind” repeatedly. This practice remind us of the Japanese Zen monks who in ancient times drew Enso circles of enlightenment with ink as part of their own meditation. The circles, like the handwriting, do not need to be perfect as they reflect the state of mind of the writer at the moment of performance. The dream is to show them together, as the last series of 15 pieces explores the use of mindfulness in the healing process of the mental illness.

Of the 3 initial scrolls mounted on antique wood spools one became part of the permanent collection of Kent University Special Collections and Archives in UK after “Prescriptions” exhibition at The Beany Museum in Canterburry. The other piece is currently in Venice after a recent exhibition at The Scuola Internazionale Di grafica Venezia and will stay there as part of a travelling exhibition of “Scrolls” in Italy.

This year’s organizing Theme
It is a truism that life moves fast and that change is a constant. In the 21st century, rates of change in our ecological, economic, and political lives are accelerating and increasing at breakneck speed. Even consciousness itself is under constant pressure as new technologies transfer images, messages, and memes from the screen to the mind at the speed of light.