The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Capstone 2019-2020 & 2020-2021, an exhibition showcasing the artwork of both the 2019-2020 & 2020-2021 senior undergraduate art majors. Comprising of a variety of works across different disciplines, Capstone is the celebratory conclusion of students’ period here at CCSU that propels them into their lives as independent artists. On September 2nd, 2021, the gallery is open to all for an opening reception from 4 – 7pm. The CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world.

Participating Artists:

Gabriella DiMaio
Gerard Niemierowko
Karina Marquis
Michaela Salvo
Paige Markel
Sophia Firestone

All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at 860.832.2633.

The show will run from May 2 – May 9, 2019 with scheduled gallery hours from 1-4pm Monday through Friday.

Currently, the CCSU Art Gallery is open to the public upon successfully filling out the symptom survey before entering campus.

Rachel by Chase Westfall

March 21 – April 18, 2019

Curated by Layet Johnson

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Rachel by Chase Westfall curated by Layet Johnson. Featuring works by Chase Westfall, the exhibition will take a wide-ranging look at the subject of mourning by investigating various expressions of loss and trauma through fictional and factional narratives. Named for the archetype of the mourning mother (the biblical Rachel), Westfall’s exhibition aims to create a space for considering loss without directly experiencing it. “Rachel” include includes recent painting, sculpture, print, photographic, and performance work. A video of the CCSU Dance department’s performance at the opening of Rachel is available for your viewing here.

Chase Westfall lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. His recent exhibitions include Control, at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and Resist Evil, at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. Westfall is a recent recipient of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. For more information on the artist and his work, please visit his website http://www.charlesawestfall.com/.

Rachel features a series of inspired dance performances in collaboration with the CCSU Dance department:

Thursday 3/28, 3pm: Beloved choreographed and performed by Erica Nelson.

Thursday 4/4, 3pm: Niobe performed by Ruby Cabbell and choreographed by José Limón. Niobe is a solo performance excerpt from Dances for Isadora, a piece choreographed based on the life of dance, Isadora Duncan.

Thursday 4/11, 3pm: Listen Carefully choreographed by Erica Nelson.

Thursday 4/18, 3pm: Thanatos choreographed by Erica Nelson.

To learn more about the CCSU Art Gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery directly at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run March 21– April 18, 2019 with gallery visitation from 1 – 4pm, Monday through Friday.

Rachel in the news:

The Recorder | April 3, 2019
The Recorder | March 19, 2019

Fix Flux

January 31 – February 28, 2019

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present, Fix Flux. Fix Flux highlights the newly formed collaboration and international friendship between Partium Christian University (https://www.partium.ro/en ) of Romania and Central Connecticut State University’s Department of Art.

Included are digital images that record a moment from the 15-year long life-education-work-art cycle or flux of the Art Department at Partium Christian University. The selected works in this exhibition identify key aspects of this exemplary art program while showcasing the artistic accomplishments of their students.

The show will run January 31 through February 28, 2019, with gallery visitation from 1 to 4pm, Monday through Friday. Please visit the gallery website at http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

For more information on Fix Flux, please visit:

Partium Christian University’s Diploma Works 2018

Partium Christian University’s Diploma Works 2017

Fix Flux 2018 Exhibition, Oradea, Romania – Exhibition Statement

The Recorder

The Register Citizen

Faculty Exhibition 2018

September 6 – October 4, 2018

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present the Faculty Exhibition 2018, an exhibition of artwork by permanent and adjunct faculty from the Art Department. This exhibition reflects the innovative and diverse approach of the CCSU artist-faculty while simultaneously showcasing a variety of media used by our talented team.

The show will run September 6 through October 4, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

James Buxton
Melanie Carr
Thomas Edwards
Linda Edwards
Theodore Efremoff
Sherinatu Fafunwa-Ndibe
Theresa Feder
Sean Gallagher
Vicente Garcia
David Holzman
Eben Kling
Victoria Kniering
Layet Johnson 
Glenn LaVertu
Adam Niklewicz
Daniel Riccio
Rachel Siporin
Patricia Weise

Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty: Artworks and Publications by Independent Women’s Comic Artists from the 1960s Underground Movement to Today

October 16-November 15
Curated by Layet Johnson and Leela Corman

Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty in the News 
The Central Recorder

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty: Artworks and Publications by Independent Women’s Comic Artists from the 1960s Underground movement to Today, curated by Layet Johnson and Leela Corman.

Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty represents independent women’s comic book artists not merely as an underrepresented category of artists, but as artists who are and have been telling stories concerning their bodies and experiences in patriarchal society since the 1960's underground comics scene. As an extension of the
Feminist movement, currently epitomized by “Me Too,” women's comic book art becomes a protest in itself, making an exhibition of it a form of rally. Unlike historical
exhibition models that present subsequent events on a theme, ours is a critical mass. In organizing the exhibition, the curator's role is thus to facilitate and to record a conversation between women comic book artists, writers, editors, critics, and publishers who may weigh in on this moment we are in that is so personal to them.

The show will run October 16 through November 15, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.
Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at
directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:
Justine Andersen
Ivy Atoms
Ariel Bordeaux
Jessica Campbell
Lilli Carré
Flannery Cashill
Tyler Cohen
Leela Corman
Erin Curry
Anya Davidson
Emily Flake
Margot Ferrick
Jess Fink
Mary Fleener
Winnie T. Frick
Phoebe Gloeckner
Veronica Graham
Roberta Gregory
Rachel Mesplay Helm
Mari Naomi
Megan Kelso 
Lucy Knisley
Caroline McClain
Carta Monir
Molly Colleen O’Connell
Lark Pien
Kristen Radtke 
Keiler Jean Roberts
Jess Ruliffson
Beatrix Urkowitz
Mickey Zacchilli

Crypto$Crystals

February 1-March 1, 2018

Central Connecticut State University’s Art Gallery is proud to present Crypto$Crystal curated by Layet Johnson.

Crypto$Crystal presents new work by the Washington D.C. based creative collaborative Plakooke by Rachel Debuque and Justin Plakas. The exhibition will include an immersive two channel video projection combining live action video, 3-D animation, and sound design, with digital elements drawn from their practice in photography, sculpture, performance, and new media work. Crypto$Crystal will address the value and spirituality within the art object in a post-internet age. By comparing the current rapid growth in cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin and in digital technology trends such as app production) to the renewed Western interests in spirituality from Yoga to crystal meditation, Plakookee’s energetic videos will thus address the contradictory nature of digital art in the 21st century.

The show will run February 1 – March 1, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Art Educators 2017

November 30 - December 7, 2017

 

This year's Art Educators Show is a chance for the 2017 graduating Art Education students to show off their skills and talents. The show will run November 20 through December 7, 2017 with gallery visitation hours 1 – 4pm, Monday through Friday.

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website: http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Participating artists:
Hillary Biernacki
Cathleen Brown
Angela Cipriano
Rachel Clark
Susan Dane
Ashley Domack
Carly Donath
Melissa Figueroa
Brittany Hube
Carolyn Luddy 
Aurora Matraku
Willie Maxen
Sara McLaughlin
Rachel Nachmani
Haley Nelson
Katelyn Paradis
Amanda Strom
Mike Tino

Capstone 2016

Locker Room Culture (Strategy, Play and Commentary in Sports and Art)

September 10 - October 15, 2015

The aim of this exhibition is threefold:

• To make comparisons between the strategic practice found in both sports and art.
• To describe how art uses sport as subject in a manner that is not traditional illustration, in order to confront and comment on other areas of our culture.
• To make the argument that the aesthetics of strategy and play, rather than obvious physical grace (or lack thereof) can legitimize the notion that sports are another art form.

Participating Artists

David Barnes

Paul Brainard

Erik Benson

David Cole

Michael Conti

Marina Claire

Hanne Darboven

Jon Dostou

Donna Fleischer

Elissa Goldstone

Nancy Holt

Todd Lambrix

Jon Laustsen

Sol LeWitt

Adrian Mangel

Daniel McManus

Frank J Miles

Brendan Mulcahy

Elias Necol Melad

Frank Raczkowski

Matthew Richards

Lee Walton

Kinga Wlodarska

May Yao

Spring 2015

Natural Forms

Through the Eyes of Richard Welling

October 23 – November 20, 2014

Central Connecticut State University is proud to present Through the Eyes of Richard Welling, curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. Connecticut artist Richard Welling (1926-2009) documented the changing times between the 1960s and the 1990s, from early American historic homes to urban cityscapes in Hartford and New York – drawings for which he is best known. However, many of his most accomplished works have never been shown. This exhibition showcases works from the Connecticut Historical Society’s (CHS) newly acquired Richard Welling Collection, including paintings, linoleum prints, and mixed media drawings which highlight Welling’s talents as an illustrator and fine artist.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Connecticut Historical Society, CSU-AAUP Research Grant, and the CCSU Foundation, Inc. Dorothy Hayes Fund.

To find out more about the artist and this exhibition, please visit:

• http://www.richardwelling.com/
• The Connecticut Historical Society https://chs.org/?s=richard+welling
• http://www.csuconnects.org/2014/10/23/richard-welling/

The show will run October 23 through November 20, 2014 at the CCSU Art Gallery. Gallery visitation hours from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website: http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Brooklyn Salon

Paintings by American Illustrators

Lois Dodd: Paintings

Philip Pearlstein: Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors

October 20th-November 18th, 2011

Philip Pearlstein. Model with Swan Decoy on Ladder, 2002 (Oil on Canvas, 50 x 34 inches) © Philip Pearlstein

Known for his frank and unromantic visions of the human figure Pearlstein has revolutionized figure painting in the realistic mode. Using figures as mere props that are equal in status to the antique statuary surrounding them, Pearlstein has chosen to eliminate narrative from his paintings. As the critic Robert Hughes stated in a review of his work, "Realism, we learn once more, is neither a simple nor an easy matter.”

His work is known throughout the world and has been exhibited in most major arts institutions in America and Europe. Philip Pearlstein is represented in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art and many other prestigious art institutions around the world. In total, Pearlstein’s paintings are in the collections of 63 museums.

Philip Pearlstein is represented in New York by the Betty Cuningham Gallery 
We thank them for their generous loan of this exhibition.

East / West

East / West: A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking

September 14-October 14, 2011

Gary Day, Neruogardens: Fortress (photogravure)

This exhibition is a survey of work by printmakers who teach in universities across the country both EAST and WEST. The show is a veritable compendium of printmaking techniques that include monotype, lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodblock engraving as well as photo techniques. There will be more than 100 prints in this exhibition filling The University Galleries at Central Connecticut State University.

 Picturing the Civil War

March 30 – April 22, 2011

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Picturing the Civil War: Kellogg Lithographs and Civil War Envelope Covers, curated by Cassandra Broadus- Garcia.

The Kellogg Brother were Hartford's most important 19th-century print-publishing firm. They produced thousands of brightly colored popular prints for use in homes and businesses throughout the United States. In commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, this exhibition will include select works depicting Civil War scenes and patriotism along with a collection of Civil War Envelope Covers.

Exhibition funded in part by:

Blick Art Materials, Plainville

The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world.

The show will run March 30 through April 22, 2011 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ , or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Beyond Katrina

Beyond Katrina: An Exhibition of Works by Rolland Golden & Donald Boudreaux

February 3rd- March 10th, 2011

Hurricane Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005, etched memories in the minds, hearts, and souls of individuals throughout the United States. The ensuing events and aftermath inspired artists, including New Orleaneans Rolland Golden and Donald Boudreaux, to share personal stories that are powerful and telling -- stories of loss and life and stories of hope, as well.

Donald Boudreaux, Bayou in the Nude (mixed media)

Rolland Golden, Lake Vista Plea, 2006 (watercolor)

In the Inner Gallery

Friends from Afar

A collection of photographs, journals, and memorabilia from Connecticut residents who have been involved in the Hurricane Katrina disaster recovery efforts, including a special exhibit of works by photographer Paul Kulikowski.

Who is Izzy? Is Izzy us? Is Izzy in trouble?

October 21- November 19, 2010

One of CCSU's geography education majors, Kelly Murphy, joined Professor Patricia Houser in working with 9th graders from New Britain High School as part of an interdisciplinary project designed to bolster students' appreciation of the local water issues. In conjunction with this project, Prof. Houser created a tutorial for the first session, which they followed up with worksheets.

Izzy the Frog Facts in Lumina Land

In 1990 scientists noted an alarming fact from California, Colorado, and Wyoming to Brazil, Switzerland, and Japan, frogs were disappearing. Recognizing that frogs are a living barometer of earths environmental health, a number of biologists set out to find out why. Is this human folly or a quirk of nature doing amphibians in?

Leaving the water and moving into trees and on land allowed the descendants of the early amphibians to colonize a wide range of new habitats. Some species spent their entire lives in the topmost levels of the trees.

The word amphibian comes from the Greek anphi and bios meaning double life. They can live or function both on land and in water.

Some frogs and toads carry their eggs or tadpoles on their backs or in a skin pocket, others store their eggs inside the body, in vocal -sacks or even into the stomach. Two species of toads give birth to live young that are tiny versions of their adult selves.

Frog calls are inherited, unique and species specific and are primarily used for recognition and reproductive efforts

Their ability to leap is amazing with the worlds distance record for frog jumping at 33.5 feet in three consecutive jumps or an average of 17.5 feet per jump.

Frogs and toads have shared the world of humans as far back as our species memory extends. With their huge eyes, their quadruped bodies, their love of and need for water and their eerie voices, frogs and toads are both distantly alien to humans and uncannily like us.

Izzy in Trouble?

There are 10 species of frogs in Connecticut.

Because of their dual life on land and in water, frogs are a great barometer of the health of an ecosystem. The skin of frogs is thin, permeable, and often wet or coated in mucus. These traits allow the frog to effectively breathe and drink through their skin! These traits also make frogs very susceptible to foreign pollutants. It is not a good idea to handle an amphibian if there are any chemicals (bug spray, lotion, etc.) on your hands because it can be absorbed through the frogs skin and potentially kill it. When waters become polluted with fertilizer, pesticide, oil, and other chemicals, the frog may passively absorb the pollutant and become sick or die. The pollutant could also have an effect of the hormones of tadpoles as they develop which can lead to sterile adults.

The dual life of frogs also makes them very susceptible to another form of human impact: habitat modification and destruction. By building roads and developments the natural habitat is split up into separate fragments. Travel between these fragments is often a perilous journey in the open for a frog. If they don't dry out on the road, they may be picked off by a predator or have an unfortunate encounter with a car. Development also reduces the overall amount of habitat which forces frogs into denser populations allowing for rapid transmission of diseases such as Ranavirus or the deadly fungal infection Chytridiomycosis. Some wetlands are only wet for a small time during the spring, but these vernal pools and ephemeral wetlands are extremely important for the reproduction of spotted salamanders, wood frogs, and other species. The loss of these wetlands has had a drastic effect on these species.

Some of the most degraded freshwater ecosystems in Connecticut are ones whose drainage basins have a high percentage of impervious surfaces, deforestation, septic systems, and pesticide use.

Impervious surfaces, such as parking lots, highways and roadways, collect heavy metals and chemicals from car exhaust and other sources, which is then carried off by rainwater or snow melt and deposited into local waterways. The stormwater runoff from highways typically includes highly carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), PCBs, pesticides, lead, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel, chloride, sulfates and cyanide. PAHs alone have been implicated as a significant source of mortality for the invertebrates that serve as food for frogs.

See publications by the Environmental Protection Agency

The Park River Watershed

The type of watery home that Izzy relies upon for survival is actually a combination of clean water, healthy plants, and animals, called a freshwater ecosystem. The quality of any freshwater ecosystem is shaped by activities on the surrounding land. Wherever we work, play or sleep, we are part of a territory which drains into a stream, pond or river. That is, we carry out our daily activities in one or more drainage basins—or watersheds—and a significant portion of the water (from rain or snow) that falls on our homes or playing fields or streets makes its way downhill into a river or stream that is supporting the likes of Izzy.

Every water body in Connecticut—even a backyard brook—has its own watershed. And there are watersheds within watersheds; the Park River Watershed, which consists of 77.2 square miles just south of Hartford (pictured below), is nested in the larger the Connecticut River Basin, which in turn comprises part of the watershed for Long Island Sound.

According to Thomas Schueler, the Executive Director for the Center for Watershed Protection, At 10% imperviousness in its watershed, a stream is considered at risk. Between 11% and 25% the stream is considered impacted, unable to sustain its full range of natural biodiversity. At 25% or higher, the stream is unable to support any level of biodiversity. Upwards of 50%, and the stream is unable to support any life form. (http://www.waterlaws.com/commentary/interviews/schueler_interview.html).

Trees play a major role in a watershed in intercepting rainfall and encouraging its infiltration into the soil. Thus, reducing tree cover leads to increased stormwater runoff, incidence of flooding, water pollution and degradation of freshwater ecosystems.

Chemicals--including cleansers and personal hygiene products--and pharmaceuticals that exit our homes through bathroom and kitchen drains are part of the newly studied emerging contaminants that threaten freshwater resources in the United States. The U.S. Geological Survey has concluded that household products plus caffeine and prescription drugs are frequently present in streams and lakes across the country. Some of these substances can act as endocrine disruptors, and a 2008 Yale University study on frog deformities in the Connecticut Valley suggests they may be partly to blame for the prevalence of intersex traits in frogs of suburban Connecticut. The study, led by Dr. David Skelly, found that suburban frogs in fact had a higher incidence of intersex traits (21% of those collected) than frogs found in either urban (18%) or farming (7%) areas. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08frog.html

Izzy at your School

Where is the nearest stream or pond or vernal pool to your school?

What man made modifications of the natural environment are near your school?

Which frogs live near your school?

Have abnormalities been found in frogs in the Connecticut River Valley?

Where do detergents go that are used when you wash your car?

Where does your drinking water come from?

Adopt a stream in the watershed and monitor the water quality and habitat along its banks.

Text written by Elizabeth Langhorne, Pat Houser, Tony Nowacki, Joy Wulke, September 2010

CCSU Art Faculty Exhibition

Faculty Exhibition 2010

September 9th-October 14th, 2010

Featuring works by professors:

• Mike Alewitz
• Jerry Butler
• James Buxton
• Kevin Chamberland
• Thomas Edwards
• Terry Donsen Feder
• Craig Frederick
• Sean Gallagher
• Vicente Garcia
• David Holzman
• Victoria Kniering
• Marsha Lewis
• Cora Marshall
• Adam Niklewicz
• Daniel Riccio
• Rachel Siporin
• Cary Smith
• Mark Strathy
• Ronald Todd
• Patricia Weise
• Mary Wolff

Faculty Artist Statements

James Buxton

I made a decision to integrate more discarded & used items into my vocabulary of material that I utilize to make my sculptures. With these new & repurposed traditional & non-traditional materials, my approach on how I go about the process of making art changed as well as the look of the sculptures. I have now, more than ever, gone about my art making like a jazz musician or dancer, improvising my way through the process without pre-thinking through each decision. I trust my intuitive instincts in guiding my creative flow, without holding on to old ideals of the way I went about making sculptures. I have loosened the chains of my academic training in order to feel the spirit of the piece flowing through me. I no longer fight with the materials; I just let the material tell me how it should collectively flow in relationship to the overall composition. Each day presents new and exciting challenges with each new work of art! With these challenges I now take more risk taking in my art making process! No matter how I try to let the piece flow I continue to communicate some kind of experience or storyline in the work!

Jerry Butler

My art addresses the human capacity to engineer self-reflective change. This ability to change our beliefs, our habits, and ourselves is, however, among the most difficult things we can do. My art brings to bear some of the issues that challenge our basic survival and that erode our ability to engineer personal change.

I use objects that illuminate the residue of our thinking as part of our being human. In these objects, I also speak to the issues of landscape change, personal choice, and sociological norms. My art make use of discarded objects that speak to the physics of our condition in a fast-paced, ever-changing, and global stage. I create, find, and alter objects and images for the purpose of aesthetic communication. In my art, it is my goal to offer opportunities for reflective change.

My art is issue-and process-based. Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Horace Pippin have influenced me, as have of course the major master painters, sculptors, and landscape artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson and others. Each work has strengthened my ability to experiment with materials, process, and content.

Tom Edwards

Large Fence and Tree
I tried to draw this space at full scale in order to form a habitable place. Not a place to look at, but rather to enter and occupy. It is a dream, but not a drawing of a dream. It should appear as energized components up close but become clearer and calmer as you move away. It is a narrative: the Tree and the Fence are the antagonists.

Terry Donsen Feder

I make watercolors for my children and now for my son-in-law for their birthday presents. Artists usually think of their main work, which for me is usually in oil, as more important than the more peripheral work, but as the years – and paintings -add up, you see that there are several strains in your work that you never anticipated as having a life of their own. This is what has happened to the watercolors for me, and they seem even more lively because they are about love and loved ones.

“The Reach” is oil on aluminum. It depicts the westernmost edge of St. Croix. I started working on metal because I like to paint on hard surfaces and because I once noticed that another artist was working on metal, but the metal was completely covered, and I thought ‘why not let the metal show?’. I have worked on lead, zinc, steel, and aluminum, all of which are very beautiful. Still life paintings are always from life; landscapes are from photographs and sketches, depending upon how much time I have when I’m at the place I want to paint. I’m always interested in light. I have tried making larger, more expressive paintings, but I always revert to my tight work. As John Cage wrote, “Do not try to create and analyze at the same time, they are two different processes.” So I do what I want to do and worry about it later.

Craig Matthew Frederick

Sculptor

As the work of art continues to move through necessary and innovative arenas of thought and consequence, the object (finding its place somewhere between total abstraction and

representation) has remained for me a powerful vehicle for reflecting on what has been and the contemplation of what may be. The substance of my meditation is the experience of life: spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical. If I have indeed found any wisdom, it is certainly embodied in my sculptures.

Sculpture is the means by which I am able to combine what is real with that which is imagined. In a world where order is merely an illusion, the work of my art becomes the ability to negotiate the churning of many tides. Ultimately, I emerge with a better sense of self, manifested in a work of art. The ability to establish a critical and equal balance of the hands, eyes, and mind in the development of my sculpture is, for me, of great value. Critical, in the sense, that no one element of the three can be relied upon more than another. A result of achieving such a balance in the pursuit of one’s work is the lack of tolerance for random ideas. No one piece of sculpture is completely separate from another. Instead, they are ‘works of art,’ connected by a common thread; they are part of a larger picture, my art.

This notion of what I do is not a novel one. I have arrived at it, though, by my own set of circumstances. I have always been drawn to beauty and fascinated with the forms, textures, movements, and visual relationships that surround us every day. I think of my work as a ceremonial dance in honor of this grandeur and as a continual study of this powerful phenomenon called beauty.

In each piece, I strive to achieve a form that is free of arbitrary elements or decisions. Choice and use of materials are important factors in this deliberation. Although the imagery of my work is often figurative, this is not readily apparent to the viewer. The sculptures are abstract and do not mimic the figure or any other form. They are, however, quite referential. I enjoy the freedom to combine elements of different forms in nature that affect me emotionally, intellectually and/or spiritually into well orchestrated pieces of sculpture. I invite you to investigate and enjoy the suggestions of their form, material and origin.

Sean Patrick Gallagher

"The First People" and "Adam’s Options" are inspired, in large part, by the following passage from Eduardo Galeano’s recent book, Mirrors: A Feast on Foot

Adam and Eve were black?

The human adventure in the world began in Africa. From there, our ancestors set out to conquer the planet. Many paths led them to many destinies, and the sun took care of handing out colors from the palette.

Now the rainbow of the earth is more colorful than the rainbow of the sky. But we are all emigrants from Africa. Even the whitest of whites comes from Africa.

Maybe we refuse to acknowledge our common origins because racism causes amnesia, or because we find it unbelievable that I those days long past the entire world was our kingdom, an immense map without borders, and our legs were the only passport we needed.

Vicente Garcia

While growing up in south Texas, I was introduced to machine forms used in industrial applications. That long-term exposure to mechanical forms had a significant influence on my creative direction. I am attracted to the precision of man and machine made steel objects and the manner in which clay can be manipulated to simulate such forms. The essence of my art has dealt with the integration of clay and steel to create sculptural forms and vessels. The simulation of such forms with clay, the experimentation of various finishes, and steel and clay combinations are factors that I investigate. I have been creating with clay and steel for the past thirty years. The inherent qualities of both media fascinate me. In clay, it's the plastic quality that allows it to be modeled into a wide range of forms. I take advantage of its plasticity and its ability to be transformed into whatever form I want. I model some pieces to simulate steel while I manipulate others to show its' fragility. In steel, it's the strength, the immediacy, and the process that captivates me.
My most recent series involves the fabrication of steel to create vessels that have been inspired by 26 years of throwing on the potter’s wheel. I approach the steel with the same affinity that I approach the clay. It is my goal to arrive at the classical beauty that has long been sought out by potters all over the world.

David Holzman

The piece "American Splendor" is a relief carving/ construction based on the form of a guitar. This kind of image has appeared in my work many times in the past. Music has always been a big inspiration and I’ve been interested in how some artists, like Kandinsky and Klee, have approached the idea of the synchronicity of music and art. The guitar has been a special image for me ever since my youth in NYC worshiping Picasso’s sheet metal guitar sculpture at MOMA. Also recurrent in my work is automatic drawing which involves the chance impulse. Many parts of the piece were the result of trying to surprise myself. The exact form of any element depends more on spontaneity than anything else. Finally, the title refers to Harvey Pekar who passed away a couple of months ago. His achievement gives all of us hope.

Victoria Jutras Kniering

I am just an observer of what is already there, and often, what I see are things that others ignore. In essence, I attempt to bring the viewer of my art into another place, another time. My imagery evolves from a love of myth, magic, alchemy, mathematical ideas, and the natural world.

In both the sculpture, prints and encaustic my choice of form, material, and their juxtaposition reflect a variety of pre-modern creation myth, the themes of death and rebirth, and the notion of a nurturing presence that permeates all life. In a visceral and often deeply emotional sense, I summon forth a world of possibilities occupying a place between imagination and reality, and the viewer becomes an active participant in the act of creation. In my prints, drawings, books, and encaustic painting series, I strive to keep a two dimensional history of the physical activity and the feeling of the sculptures not necessarily a representation of the thing itself but the essence of the thing.

The manipulation of light is central to my work. I am interested in creating an ‘’architecture of light’’ which exists within and around the forms to both emulate their dream-like origins and imbue the structures with life.

At a time when we perceive ourselves as separate from "the natural", it is my ambition to probe, articulate, and reclaim that sense of intimacy and wonder that must have been within our grasp in the pre-modern era.

Marsha Lewis

My recent work has focused on the state of Pennsylvania. It is the location of my childhood, the place I left and that I find myself returning to, both in my memories and in actual trips taken. I’ve always been drawn to the rolling hills, repetition of line, never ending green, and the companionship of man’s work in nature. Recent visits to the open spaces of my past have allowed me the opportunity of a fresh experience with an artist’s perspective and a healthy dose of self-reflection.

Lonesome Valley Farm is an actual working farm that I encountered during a recent exploration through the roadways of Western Pennsylvania. I found the name of the farm, and the title of the resulting painting, to be interesting, in that my own experience of being there was not lonesome at all. The sensation of being alone and quiet in these areas of color, curves and air, for me, is at once both peaceful and exhilarating.

Marsha Lewis was a teacher of Art in the public schools of Pennsylvania and Connecticut for 32 years. She is currently teaching and supervising student teachers at CCSU, and has shown her work (drawing, painting, commercial design, and public art projects) throughout the Northeast. She lives in West Hartford.

Cora Marshall

Dark Matter Painting Series

Centered in spirituality, I create work that seeks out the connections to and lessons from my past. By mixing symbols and meaning, by affirming the potency of the past, by honoring the holy, I extend an invitation to contemplate the significance and depth of the power within. Currently, I am working in and across the medium of painting, collage, and mixed media to find those intersections and crossroads where the spirits dwell. In so doing, I hope to further understand and establish a relationship with that has gone before me.

The Dark Matter painting series is inspired by imagery from Benin, Karo, and Bamileke, and other World cultures. In these works, I am exploring symbolism, icons, affects and effects that resonate within. By doing so, I seek a bond with those cultures as I try to demystify my past. The title of the series is taken from the term scientists use to describe one of the most mysterious things in the universe—dark matter. Most of our universe is missing, that is, we cannot see or touch it. This missing mass is referred to as dark matter. Its existence is only implied by the effect it has on the stars around it. Like dark matter, though the particulars of my past cannot be seen or touch in the usually way, through my paintings, I know it is there by the effect it has on who I am and will become.

Adam Niklewicz

My work comes from my ongoing emigrant experience. It draws on the visual vocabulary of my Polish childhood and on my subsequent exposure to the American commercial and pop-cultural iconography. The resulting blend testifies to the paradoxes of an emigrant artist’s mindset.

Daniel Riccio

I painted Shaman with the unseen in mind.

It is about the rectification of the spiritual with the physical.

The "Karma" which we all feel and a Shaman can see clearly.

Rachel Siporin

I share the philosophy of the Action Painters of the NY School, who believed that, in the process of art making, the artist’s intention is revealed. I work spontaneously, as I combine and juxtapose images. Newspaper photographs provide a departure point – images of floods, fires, movie stills, dance, operatic and theatrical productions, bombings, and street violence. Drawing and painting from these images freehand, I combine, and construct an invented space, creating a narrative through an amalgam of images from disparate photographs. My paintings are comprised of multiple panels which are added as I construct the composition, resulting in a mural format, natural for narrative. I utilize photography in much the same way 19th century painters such as Degas, Manet and Courbet, have done, inspired by the photograph’s dramatic moment, casual and unexpected cropping, condensed space and intense tonal contrasts. These images - explosions, man made and natural catastrophes- seem to be a product of invention- appearing less real than what might be experienced visually, first hand. 　Frequently, I embark on large works on paper to navigate my way into a new series- providing the foundation for the oil paintings that follow. However, my works on paper are not drawings for paintings, but rather, stand on their own as independent work.

The works in the Faculty exhibition are part of an ongoing series titled 　"Fool’s Paradise. The phrase comes from a Sam Cooke song in which he describes himself as "living in a fool’s paradise." It is a phrase that stuck with me, that said something profound concerning the human condition. I like to create images and narratives that are psychologically based, describing personal experience, that can resonate in a more universal way. Several of the images in the series depict women in peril, submerged in water, far from shore, or suspended upside down from a curtain of ropes. Figures are shown mid air, leaping up or on their way down. A seated woman presses her hands against the picture plane, as if reviewing her reflection in the viewer’s space, and in another drawing a woman lies motionless on a wooden chair while a puppeteer manipulates the strings of a marionette in the foreground. In the series Fool’s Paradise, I have chosen to depict the moment of self-awareness when one begins to question action, the moment of self-doubt. Frequently, the female figures in my work are a fragmentation of the self, as I identify with the characters in the narrative. They appear as protagonist, act as muse, or bear witness to an event. 　It is my intention to represent images that tap into our shared experience - the childhood game of musical chairs, the bloody hands of Lady Macbeth, or a flood’s rising waters. If I am successful in creating compelling imagery, the viewer becomes engaged in a dialogue that investigates personal and existential questions of guilt, complicity and the self.

Cary Smith

I try to squeeze everything that I possibly can into something so seemingly simple.

I don’t try to think of something to say with my art, I follow the work, and ask it to lead me to its most intense place.

I’m interested in:

• Courage
• Loyalty
• Generosity
• Compassion
• Fear
• Anxiety
• Pain
• Weakness
• Love
• Kindness
• Humanity

• Awareness

Is it possible today, to make abstraction that is relevant?

Patricia Weise

My work is an exploration of the intersection of the perceived world and my own consciousness. I use the art-making process to investigate things that preoccupy me, such as: collaging and layering images, representations of objects and artifacts, the tension between the chaos of nature and the control of domesticity, memory and the passage of time.

patty@pattyweise.com

Mary Wolff

Creativity has always been a part of life. I watched my mother sew beautiful clothing while I played with scraps of exotic textiles, fascinated with how color, texture, and pattern became part of the cloth. This was the beginning of my personal journey with surface design and with defining my own visual language. My work has evolved from simply designing textile surfaces to exploring other surfaces on which to paint or create elements which stir a deep seated response in the viewer.

Translating texture, form, and color into art is my primary artistic concern. My passion for beauty and elegance of nature provides me with subjects to explore these elements. My choice of silk provides a luminous canvas for application of the media.

I begin with a white piece of stretched silk, silk dyes, and a visual concept of a finished painting-whether it be an abstracted landscape or a flower form. I find working directly on silk energizes me and provides me with a journey of discovery and surprise.

Revealed: The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art

March 18-April 22, 2010

DON HERRON. Mapplethorpe - Tub Shot, 1976 (Detail, Photography)
Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, New York. © Don Herron

Robert Mapplethorpe’s frank depiction of gay male sexuality both fascinated and shocked viewers when his retrospective exhibition, The Perfect Moment, opened around the U.S. from 1989 to 1990. In the past twenty years since that time, Mapplethorpe’s renown has grown, but taboos surrounding the exhibition of his work remain. However, such taboos may suggest a lack of context, for even Mapplethorpe’s most notorious photography belongs to the same homoerotic tradition as the artwork of Michelangelo, one of the most revered masters of Western Art.

This exhibition, Revealed: The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art, not only shows the similarities between Michelangelo and Mapplethorpe; it also asserts a homosexual presence in Western art from the Renaissance to the present day by showing unambiguous images of male same-sex desire. While such "homoerotic" imagery (defying time-restrictive labels such as "gay art" or "queer art") evolved over time from something secretive, suppressed, and suggested into something public, accessible, and explicit, its continuous presence affirms the importance of intentionally expressing homosexual desire in art.

Since the Renaissance, when sodomy was a crime for which artists could be accused (as Botticelli, Da Vinci, and others were), recognition of the homosexual presence in art has been obfuscated by suppression, shame, and censorship. Michelangelo, who suffered all of these, nonetheless produced some of the most passionate love poetry by a man to a man and some of the most beautiful images of male sensuality. As with Mapplethorpe, four hundred fifty years later, the controversial nature of Michelangelo’s work provoked censorship: his homoerotic poetry was quickly edited in favor of an opposite-sex love interest, while the nudity of the magnificent David and many of the luxuriant Sistine Chapel figures was immediately covered. Centuries of suppression followed, as critics perfunctorily denied his homoerotic intent. Knowing that Michelangelo defied the conventions of his time may now offer a wider range of homoerotic interpretations of his civic and religious art, but his drawing The Rape of Ganymede, included here as a reproduction, leaves no doubt as to its homoerotic intent.

For centuries after Michelangelo, the sensual male nude remained the best means of expressing homosexual desire in art. However, artists often set their ever-inventive expressions of that desire in some kind of conventional framework that resisted solely erotic interpretations.

The trend of making merely suggestive work began to change in the late 19th century when the coining of the term "homosexual" provided a concrete identity around which a community could slowly form. However, artists typically created their most overtly homoerotic imagery in secret. To protect their reputations, they made private works exclusively for friends in an underground homosexual community. Thus over a half-century of striking but obscured artistic output emerged. Fashion photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-55), whose exquisite and elegant photography is featured prominently in this exhibition, helped pioneer the representation of the male nude as explicitly erotic. The famous Precisionist Charles Demuth (1883-1935); the avant-garde writer Jean Cocteau (1889-1963); the Magic Realist artists and one-time lovers Jared French (1905-88) and Paul Cadmus (1904-99); and the Russian-American artists Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957) and Andrey Avinoff (1884-1949) all privately created some of the first known artistic images of men having sex. While illustrations portraying homosexual sex acts exist from most periods of history, few purely artistic depictions of homosexual sex exist before these 20th century examples.

Meanwhile, "beefcake" photography in physique magazines served, more popularly, the same emerging gay community. Soon dispensing with the guise of physical fitness, beefcake had a whole new life by the 1960s, when mailing images of full frontal male nudity became legal. Artists such as Tom of Finland (1920-91) exploited the new possibilities with highly sexualized, hypermasculine drawings, while others such as James Bidgood (b. 1933), Arthur Tress (b. 1940), and Duane Michals (b. 1932) used the medium of photography to express new gay themes in the era of sexual liberation and gay pride. Their work begins to record a whole gamut of gay experiences, ranging from the social and sexual to the emotional and contemplative.

However, repression still largely defined the mainstream artists of the 1960s Pop Art era. Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and his lover Jasper Johns avoided portraying immediately recognizable homosexual themes—or even acknowledging the nature of their relationship. Andy Warhol (1928-87) achieved fame as the leader of a new kind of art scene at the Factory. However, his fame was rarely associated with his homoerotic production. Critics and viewers spent decades trying to desexualize Warhol, but the Sex Parts of 1978, exhibited here, offer one of the best examples of his dynamic exploration of homo-sexual subject matter at the height of his career.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89), a brilliant photographer, created such explicit works that they unleashed a national controversy. His growing notoriety as an artist unabashedly exploring themes of gay sadomasochism and leather culture in the 1970s, culminated in 1989, when the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., canceled his retrospective show, The Perfect Moment. This proved the "perfect moment" for the mainstream public to look directly at gay sexuality. The flawless aestheticism of his black and white photographs demanded that critics and the public confront an openly gay artist and unequivocal homoerotic art for the first time.

The gay pride movement after 1969, the public face of AIDS in the 1980s, and Mapplethorpe’s exhibition all helped reverse the secrecy in which prominent homosexual artists had previously worked. On the heels of a newly liberated generation of fashion designers and photographers (note Bruce Weber’s billboard for Calvin Klein underwear in Times Square in 1982), the professional prominence of Herb Ritts (1952-2002) and David LaChapelle (b. 1969) helped occasion a crossover of homoerotic imagery into mainstream visual culture. Meanwhile, Rick Castro (b. 1958) brought the S&M sex that Mapplethorpe had spotlighted into his "fetish fashion," a genre that has become de rigueur with some editorial stylists. Finally, an underground form of sexuality, both gay and deviant, moved into public consciousness.

Mikel Màrton, an emerging young artist, represents a new freedom of direction for the 21st century. Combining elements of the traditional male nude with elements of self-assertive queer art and the rarely explored sexual allure of stereotypically "feminine" men, his art represents an affirmation of eroticism and gay pride and masterfully pulls from a variety of iconic sources to achieve something fresh, colorful, and vivacious.

This exhibition demonstrates the privilege that gay art and artists have earned to be "revealed". Revealed in their tantalizing sensuality and naked beauty. Revealed as having sexual desire and showing a commitment to using their creative and artistic powers to express their desire. Revealed as having a long-standing artistic history and as contributing to visual culture. Revealed as having suffered suppression and censorship. Revealed as mattering.

The tentative recognition of homoerotic intent in both traditional and contemporary artwork reflects a mainstream rejection of homo sexuality, or the part of the homosexual identity that is intrinsically sexual. This is the same insidious homophobia that manifests itself in violence, bigotry, and civil-rights discrimination. As relatively recent studies documenting the history, development, and cross-fertilization of homoerotic art continue, this emerging area of scholarship will increasingly serve as a positive counterbalance to the more traditional approach to gender and sexuality in art history and art appreciation among our diverse society.

If this exhibition reveals more parts of the male anatomy than are usually seen in public exhibitions, it also reveals a need for recognition of and freedom of expression for homosexual artists. I hope the celebratory nature of this exhibition offers much to savor and reflect on long after leaving the exhibition space.

Robert Diamond

Curator

A Sense of Place

Aviary: Michael Pestel

February 5th - March 5th

AVIARY is a multimedia art installation and hands-on performance space for the contemplation of birds we can no longer hear and a celebration of those that we can. The exhibition juxtaposes a variety of music ensemble set-ups, architectural structures, video projections and audio installations aimed at evoking and problematizing the aviary experience in the context of bird extinction. In addition, a “study area” features documentation from related performances and installations along with general information about birds and bird sound. Collaborative workshops will be offered during the course of the exhibition, culminating in a performance work, Ornithoptera, on March 4, 2009 at 4:00.

Humans take a natural delight in aviary exhibits – the diverse species, the exotic plumage, the carefully simulated environments and painted dioramas, the open flyways, and the entrancing musicality of birds. Yet the very presence of diverse species inside the great glass and steel enclosures betrays their increasing absence on the outside. The vast reduction of song birds in North America, the growing numbers of species on the endangered list worldwide, and the scores of species extinctions during the past six centuries all point to common themes: habitat destruction, predator imbalances, and more recently, global warming.

Significantly, the history of aviaries and zoos since the Enlightenment parallels the development of such related institutions as natural history museums and the European prison system. Indeed, the development of scientific taxonomy classification and the confinement of birds in cages go hand in hand. Ironic though it may be, it is fair to say that the best aviaries, zoos, and wildlife centers today are doing what they can to loosen their systemic link to the processes of repression and erasure. Through extensive breeding programs, public education, and fundraising efforts, these institutions represent a modicum of hope for our ability to reverse the rush towards increased species extinction.

In an effort to elucidate the linkages between naming, writing, control and suppression, AVIARY revisits the Latin names of the extinct birds as a vehicle for sonic resuscitation and remembrance. AVIARY asks what species-extinction means to us and what the process of remembering, of marking absence, might look and sound like. It wonders aloud how we might celebrate the beauty of extant species – including our own – from within the very systems of power that unwittingly seek to destroy them. The visitor to the exhibition is invited to contemplate the meaning of absence, to lament our insistent superiority and to imagine being a bird among birds – to fly, to sing, to shriek, to dive, to honk, to wail, to peep, to jive and to explore an avian sense of place.

Collaborative workshops with students will be offered during the course of the exhibition and culminate in performances at a closing event on March 4, 2009 at 4 o'clock.

The Art of the Picture Book

October 23-November 20, 2008

Maurice Sendak. Mother Goose

An Illustration Exhibition featuring works by Kate Greenaway, Maurice Sandak, Tomie DePaola, and work from the S.Low Illustration Collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Showing with, in the Inner Gallery:

Pulp Art: Paintings from the Robert Lesser Collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art

an(Other) Show

(an)OTHER Show

Selected works by Artists of Color from Connecticut State University Faculty
September 11-October 9, 2008

Featuring Works by:

• Imna Arroyo
• Lula Mae Blocton
• James L. Buxton, Jr.
• Abe Echevarria
• Sheri Fafunwa-Ndibe
• Vincente Garcia
• Qimin Liu
• Cora Marshall
• Thuan Vu
• Jessie Whitehead
• Claudia Widdiss

The creative work by artists of color is as varied as the artists who create it. There are artists of color who employ recognizably African, Native American, Latino, or Asian icons and symbols in works that speak to our shared and individual histories. For other artists, process is the subject and driving concern in creating their work. These, frequently abstract or semi-abstract works, hint at imaged worlds of endless possibilities. For other artists of color, their ethnicity informs their work as subtle underlying principles just below the surface of explicit expression. Spiritual healing takes precedence, for some artists and they compose new narratives inspired by their ancestral pasts. As stated earlier, the creative work by artists of color is as varied as the artists who create it.

Even so, too often galleries and other exhibition spaces still limit (or save up) artists of color for a particular event or thematic month: February is for artists of African descent; November is Native American; May is Asian; September is Hispanic, and so forth. One result is that viewers are disappointed or surprised when they attend exhibitions by Other-American artists if the work does not conform to their expectations of “ethnic” art but looks instead like just “another” show.

This exhibition features select works of artists of color from the Connecticut State University System faculty whose breadth of work spans a variety of media, content, styles, and intentions. The underlying aim of the exhibition is to begin a dialogue about the diversity of approaches to creative processes.

Female Forms & Facets: Artwork by women from 1975-present

March 13-April 18, 2008

Featuring Judy Chicago

With:
Carolee Schneemann
Cindy Sherman
Penny Arcade
Janine Antoni
Lisa Yuskavage
Sara Risk
Judy Fox
Candice Raquel Lee

JUDY CHICAGO. The Birth Project: Earth Birth, 1985.

Female Forms and Facets: A Celebration of Women in Art

In the allegedly enlightened aftermath of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s, the following question haunts us. Do women retain their traditional role as sex symbol in today's visual culture?

Female Forms and Facets: Artwork by Women from 1975 to the Present explores the choices women artists are making about their own representation. At the conception of this exhibition was a desire to revisit Judy Chicago’s fascinating core imagery, as well as the work of other Feminist artists from the 1970s. In stark contrast to more widespread images of women in our visual culture, this early Feminist Art is still fresh and highly relevant to many visitors.

Feminist Art here refers to that art which emerged in the context of a Woman’s Movement and a Feminist Art Movement, although we don’t dismiss the feminist themes and attitudes of Artemesia Gentileschi, Rosa Bonheur, Georgia O’Keefe, and Tamara de Lempicka, just to name a few. In any case, the definition of “Feminist Art” is not the subject of debate in this exhibition. Suffice it to say that we embrace the broadest definition of Feminist Art but have limited our appellation of "feminist" to those artists who have identified themselves as such.

Feminist Art has always been concerned with the presence of women in the annals of art history, the representation of women in artwork, the visibility of women artists in the world’s great museums, and the participation of women in the contemporary art scene. Female Forms and Facets is primarily concerned with giving women the opportunity to talk about themselves for a change.

While it is clear that WOMEN are the protagonists of this exhibition, Female Forms and Facets nonetheless remains an exhibition of questions. How do women choose to portray themselves? What are women artists saying about women? What women’s issues do women choose to address? Is there a feminine sensitivity that distinguishes work by women from work by men? Is “Feminist Art” today different from the Feminist Art of the ‘60s and ‘70s? Which contemporary artists are making feminist statements today?

The diverse range of artists in this exhibition, with artwork from the 1970s to the present, challenges the stereotypical ways in which women are seen. And after all, that’s what this exhibition is about: not just looking at women but truly seeing women – women in all their forms and facets, women in all their brilliance and beauty, women in all their strength and intelligence, women as the givers and promoters of life, women as fertile earth deities and as erotic goddesses.

Will viewers see all these facets of women? Or will their eyes merely narrow in on lips, shoulders, hips, navel, breast, buttocks, vulva, nipples, clitoris? Do these images provoke shame, horror, delight, arousal? Is woman more than the sum total of her forms?

Judy Chicago is here represented by a quarter century of work that traces her development of a female-centered erotica. She offered a startlingly new vision of female representation in her “Dinner Party” (1979). From its dialogue about the women who made an impact on our human history to the celebration of female forms and female imagery on dinner plates that literally offer the substance of life, it is the quintessence of everything feminist and everything feminine in art and in history. From the collaboration that went into this work to its mainstream exclusion, this work represents the triumphs and struggles of women artists. Judy’s works on paper hold similar messages about female empowerment and, according to her statement for this exhibition, reveal “my dedication to both process and meaning in art.”

Carolee Schneemann’s two works, “Interior Scroll” (1975) and “Vulva’s Morphia” (1995), are the perfect offering for our exhibition from such a prolific artist. Spanning twenty years in conception, both works demonstrate Schneemann’s permutations of the female body with a refreshingly earthy interest in that body, rather than the antiseptic sex appeal her male predecessors had offered in pure white marble and nacreous Academic canvases. Challenging taboos and exploring a dreamlike world, Schneemann exposes a more hidden side of women.

Cindy Sherman, probably best known for her series of “Film Stills” in the late 70s but also undertaking a broad range of themes in photography, is here represented by works that, with her typical subtlety, raise questions about gender stereotypes.

Penny Arcade (aka Susana Ventura) occupies a rare position in the American avant-garde and counter culture. A teenage superstar in Andy Warhol's Factory, she began creating her own shows in the mid-80s. Among Penny's many powerful and daring performances, the mainstream hit Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! created the performance burlesque movement as it toured internationally in the 1990s. This performance and others, which draw on her immigrant, Italian working class background growing up in New Britain, will be screened for the duration of our exhibition. In addition, Penny is creating a short live performance for the exhibition's opening.

Janine Antoni came to prominence around 1992, when she used her teeth as a carving tool in an installation entitled Gnaw and her hair as a mop in her Loving Care performance. Her complex, thought-provoking artwork combines process, concept, installation, performance, and more traditional art making process. Her contributions to this exhibition explore the relationships between women, specifically the relationship between mother and daughter.

Lisa Yuskavage also came to prominence in the 1990s and not without controversy. The blonde, buxom women of her canvases, evoking the exaggeratedly curved fantasy forms in men’s magazines, offer the perfect counterpoint to the early Feminists’ depictions of female forms. Lisa’s warm colored paintings are at once sensual and satirical.

Sara Risk, who died in 1998 at the age of 33, created artwork that traces her personal struggle with body image and eating disorders. Soft-spoken, gentle, and petite, Sara realized works of breath-taking delicacy and poignancy that both move and impress the viewer.

Judy Fox is represented by two works. “Venus” (2004) is a celebration of femininity that brilliantly captures the essence of this exhibition. Her reference to the Earth Goddess, retaining the voluptuous amplitude and awkward pose of the Venus of Willendorf but now in warm flesh tones, has both an irony and a beauty that reestablish the place of the Goddess in 21st century iconography. In “Vanity” (2007), part of a series entitled “Snow White and the Seven Sins” (currently on display elsewhere), we see a metamorphosis of Judy Chicago’s core imagery into a new surreal vision that both challenges and delights.

Candice Raquel Lee is an emerging young sculptor who reinterprets mythological subjects with a 21st century female eye. “My treatment of myth invites viewers to reassess initial impressions grounded in a conventional ‘male’ eye that perceives female bodies as passively and necessarily sexual.” Her subjects, in bronze, include Pythia, Lilith, Rosy-Fingered Dawn, and Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow.

We hope Female Forms and Facets elicits questions about female representation and, hopefully, offers some new perspectives as well. Perhaps most importantly, we hope the viewer joins in our celebration of women, in all their forms and facets!

Robert Diamond
Curator

CANDICE RAQUEL LEE. Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, 2006. (bronze) (c) Candice Raquel Lee, 2008

CCSU Art Faculty Exhibition

Painting with Fire: Agitprop Art from around the World

Redux Deux

Mixed Messages

Skeins and Veins: H

Ten-Mile Radius

The Art of Faith Ringgold: A Retrospective

Drawings by American Illustrators

Williamsburg Salon

A Romanian Gaze: Photographs by Gigi Nicolau