Saturday, March 5, 2011

"Ladies First", Custom House Museum, Clarksville, TN, March 3-May 1, 2011

Each March, Terri Jordan, curator at the Clarksville, Tennessee Custom House Museum, examines the work female artists are producing in the state of Tennessee. This is the second year I have been honored to have been included in it. Last year's "Modern Girls" was a massive installation in the huge, three story high Crouch Gallery.

This year's exhibit, "Ladies First", was a more intimate exhibit in the museum's Orgain Gallery.
Panoramic view of one wall, with Alison Oakes. The big yellow painting behind her is a Camille Engel

Alcove view. The museum has an extensive costume collection that was integrated with the art for a very cool effect.

Work, left to right: Jennifer Otto, Tammy Dohner, Edie Maney, Melinda Peavy



Each artist was asked to communicate where they were at this point as an artist and woman. The responses ranged from historically based feminist observations to deeply personal musing.


Alison Oakes works it with the mannequins. Her triptych from her "Repulsively Beautiful" series, is to her right. All are oil on porcelain.


My installation, "Domination Extinction" (charcoal and pencil on plywood), is a deconstruction and feminist updating of Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass", which I expounded on in an earlier blog.


A detail from Sher Fick's installation "You Made Your Bed". Fick takes her own empty perscription bottles and uses fabric and found objects to create comfort scenes from her childhood spent sleeping in the same room as her sister. Her adult perscriptions for anxiety and depression successfully make her live and thrive as an artist, mother , and wife.


A detail of Miranda Herrick's post-consumer recycled food container piece. Lots of Tostinos and Cherrios! Herrick directs Mir Gallery in Nashville's dowtown Arcade Building.


Terri Jordan's self-portrait with son and dog involves lots of symbolic objects used in portraiture since the Middle Ages. White tulips I believe are for purity, dogs symbolize loyalty. To the right is a Sandra Paynter Washburn, and a Claudia Balthrop.


Some people can't handle the wine at receptions.

Hats. Amazing hats. Mid twentieth century, I believe.

The old ladies at church used to wear these when I was a kid and creep me out. Who even came up with this? Truely one of the most bizarre fashion trends in recorded history.

Alison Oakes, Sher Fick, Terri Jordan, and photographer and playwright Mitzi Cross.
Other artists in the exhibit, which can be seen 'though May 1st, are Linda Kerlin, Diane Shaw, and Cyndi McGrail.

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