Feminist Art Project - Access: A Feminist Perspective

 

By 28 Contemporary Artists: Aphrodite Desiree Navab, Tasja Keetman, Doree Albritton, Francine LeClercq, Jada Schumacher, Carlos Masis, Angela Ellsworth, Jacqueline Jrolf, Mare Vaccaro, Nanette Wylde, Cynthia Eardleyn, Susan Antonez-Edens, Betzer Pharis, Maya Freelon, Amelia M. Falk, Karen Maru , Susan C. Dessel, Andrea Zemel, Michi Colacicco, Allison Artis, Monique Ford, Daniela Samovolska-Ovtcharov, Yoon Soo Lee, Donna Pattee-Ballard, Ana Maria Delgado, Elise Vazelakis, Janis Purcell, Cristina Biaggi.

 

© Aphrodite Desiree Navab
Super East-West Woman, 21x25
Courtesy Rhonda Schaller Studio, NYC

 

The Rhonda Schaller Studio presents Access: A Feminist Perspective curated by Rhonda Schaller and Dave Jaquish. On display in word and image are contemporary artists who pay homage to and take inspiration from women past, present and future. Access: A Feminist Perspective will try to add to the dialogue recognizing women as the great cultural influence they are. This exhibition is part of TheFeministArtProject, a US national initiative, coordinated by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

This exhibition explores feminist critique, beginning with work by artists inspired by women or feminist analysis as pertains to the word "access" and extending to its impact on subject matter as in the use of territory and place; role models and identity; body parts and self image; and spiritual commentary and re-gendering.

Using non traditional entries into our sense of place and home, artist Tasja Keetman’s “shutters+blinds” is an old window shutter, with a second skin of handmade paper and flowers covering and revealing the writings of Emma Goldman and other feminists, emblematizing a love letter, while quite literally blocking or opening the view to the inside and outside.

Aphrodite Desiree Navab uses humor in her photographs Super East-West Woman, and Take Off using her Chador (Farsi for Islamic covering) and turning it into a cape of freedom, poking fun at herself and her two cultures, and the ludicrous situations in which her life between East and West has placed her.

Doree Albritton’s biomorphic and transcendental painting “Vision” created in mixed media on linen, offers us a powerful utopian view of an evolutionary thread, giving birth to a cosmic passage into a possible future that provides unlimited access for everyone.

Francine LeClercq tells us access to a public restroom is definitely a feminist issue, and takes the question “is access a feminist issue” to the “potty parity” debate with her inclusion of a common brown plastic “Women Restroom Sign”, the first appearance of which, in a male dominated work place, brings a sign of access and accomplishment. Appreciating landmark women in design such as Anni Albers and Charlotte Perriand, artist + designer Jada Schumacher also sites Emily Post and Julia Morgan, Helen Frankenthaler and Hella Jongerius as role models for the avenues of access they have forged. Her design hybrid “Orange and Dart Molding” in resin with oranges, challenges normal roles of décor and utility of objects found in a typical interior.

Carlos Masis uses the female form as a role model of power, depicting actual scenes of his life, his lost loves, romances, and weakness for a love he never conquered as a source of inspiration. In “Ferocious Beast at Rest” oil on canvas he wrestles with strong desire and love lost, and the power and importance women have over him. Angela Ellsworth, an interdisciplinary artist with work intersecting drawing, installation and performance, presents us with Stitch Portraits from a series “I came here because I love you”. Her delicate and fragile black thread on napkins, often made while on airplanes or road trips, are a tribute to and a memory of someone missed. Jacqueline Jrolf looks at access to role models in her series of works inspired by Hildegard von Bingen. “Reliquary to H von. Bingen” is terra cotta, reclaimed mink-lined interior, and glass vial. Made in a stream of consciousness technique that allows the images to be created without conscious editing, she finds strength in the enigmatic figure sequestered in the beauty and limits of the cloistered life she chose.

Mare Vaccaro’s elegant “Viper Locket” looks at identity and societal standards of femininity, what is real or not and the use of adornment. Her striking photographs are captivating and enigmatic. The object and subject merge as she explores persona creation, masking techniques and their use by women to garner recognition and empower their voices. Nanette Wylde uses freedom from the constraints of identity as the backdrop for her electronic flipbook “About So Many Things”. White letters on a black background feature random displays of activities titled “He and She” without bias to gender. The activities are drawn from the same pool of possibilities, creating a minimalist soap opera, challenging the mindset the viewer brings to the text.

Cynthia Eardley celebrates the beauty of the ordinary with her hand modeled wall mounted portrait of a middle aged woman “Untitled”. An intimate archetype of a contemporary woman, the sculpture is beautiful and pensive, obliquely observing the viewer with a strength of character and a gentle sadness. Susan Antonez-Edens’ oil on canvas portrait “The Woman of the Moors”, shows a woman who walks alone in a stark world, confident and unafraid, prepared to go it alone and build a new life. Cindy Betzer Pharis’ portrait of a young teen, comments on social subtleties inherent in our societal structures. “Redefining Beauty: Savanna, A Mathematical Teen”, created in oil pastel and ink, links gifted and genius to a redefinition of beauty for teenage girls. Maya Freelon embraces the transient passage of time while grappling with identity and authenticity in her abstract wall sculpture in tissue paper and tape: “Historical Significance”.

Photographer Amelia M. Falk challenges us to accept the aging process and define access as permission to communicate beauty without the influence of the media’s youthful male gaze. She invites us to playfully and soberly revel in the naked body of a middle aged woman who celebrates life in her joyful nude portrait “I’m told the older I get, I should wear a bra”. Fiber artist Karen Maru also raises the issue of who has access to the sight of a woman’s naked body in her “Body Parts”, where the nude woman is drawn over and over again on the same fabric and then cut up and sewed back together in a quilt format. Though her choice to work in the quilt format comes out of sheer orneriness and a jolt of feminist rage, she successfully raises the issues of what is real art combined with the politics of the gaze.

Installation sculptor Susan C. Dessel states that working with ones hands often provides access to the American way of life, enabling subsequent generations to pursue education and achieve dreams. In her conceptual piece “Untitled (Honor)” she speaks of the value and dignity of handwork, pays homage to the invisible immigrant, the house-based work of women, backbreaking labor of the uneducated, and women’s handwork disdained as craft. The piece housed in a case, is reminiscent of valuable museum exhibits combining ruggedness of cement with gauzy femininity of cheesecloth. Andrea Zemel’s beautiful hand colored etching “In The Game” is part of a series of works about the character Herculina, who Zemel created to rise up from the dust of personal history as a chronicle of woman’s struggle. With a sense of poise and equanimity, Andrea Zemel transforms mundane existence to an Olympian arena; a staging platform for the transformation of soul.

Michi Colacicco builds her work on intuition and completes it with conscious specific imagery of what her experiences in the world as a woman have taught her. Her “Untitled”, created with horsehair, pigment, book pages, and mounted on paper, is a poetic and enigmatic portrait of a young woman in the world. In “Freedom Fighter”  Allison Artis takes us on a journey through the subconscious into inspiration from her life experiences, using permanent marker, pigment and various oils to create an almost 3-dimensinal quality to her canvas. Monique Ford’s images are deeply rooted in her own feminine identity, but asks shouldn’t the paintings stand alone as images? Her painting “Jessica” is an oil on canvas, a chromatic portrait of intersecting shapes, beautifully composed on the rectangle.

Daniela Samovolska-Ovtcharov uses her independent spirit to create and live in her own world. Based on an original oil painting, her fantasy world “Tower of Life” is a limited edition of 30 prints on canvas, where she creates something beautiful and valuable for us to ponder. Yoon Soo Lee creates paintings that are in spirit like the Buddhist Mandalas dedicated to meditation. She finds the middle ground between stillness and movement in her mixed media “practice love #12 ‘ghosts”.

Donna Pattee-Ballard states that the imagery of the church is deeply embedded in her psyche. She looks at faith, religion, and cultural myths in her “Shame #2”. A powerful and moving four panel photo landscape that looks at spirituality and devotion in a woman’s search for access to her spiritual power. In her body of work, photographer Ana Maria Delgado uses the imagery of Catholicism in “Untitled, Sagrada Biblia”, to comment on an environment in which guilt and unattainable standards of purity combined with devotion and ritualistic customs, create a psychosexual attachment to the objects normally used in worship. Elise Vazelakis uses the imagery of crucifixion to represent many of the labels used to describe women in today’s culture and explores their effects on self-image in her mixed media painting “Crucified”.

Janis Purcell finds her references in Marisol’s “Self Portrait Looking at the Last Supper”. She uses clay and mixed media to sculpt her tribal stick “Goddess-Inaccessible” and states her personal iconography was greatly influenced by the great women artists she studied, such as Sylvia Stone, Lee Bontecou, and Anne Arnold. “Aidan - Son of the Goddess” a bronze sculpture by Cristina Biaggi was inspired from her studies in women’s spirituality, of the Great Goddess and the interconnection of all living beings. Cristina Biaggi is the author of three books, her latest “The Rule of Mars: Readings on The Origins, History and Impact of Patriarchy”.

 

Feminist Art Project
Access: A Feminist Perspective
Group Exhibition

Rhonda Schaller Studio
January 18 – February 10, 2007

Rhonda Schaller Studio - 547 West 27th Street, Suite 529, between 10th and 11th Avenues in Chelsea, New York City - Tuesday - Saturday, 12pm - 5pm.

Sagem Communications - AgfaPhoto

Sagem Communications a reçu en 2006 la licence exclusive de la marque AgfaPhoto pour ses imprimantes photo personnelles et ses cadres numériques.

James Koskinas & Julie Schumer, Farrell Fischoff Gallery, Santa Fe - Without Hesitation

James Koskinas & Julie Schumer: Without Hesitation

Farrell Fischoff Gallery, Santa Fe

June 23 - July 24 2006

Farrell Fischoff Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by New Mexico artists James Koskinas and Julie Schumer. 

This is the second two-person show Farrell Fischoff has given James Koskinas and Julie Schumer, and their work has grown stronger and more compositionally sophisticated in the intervening two years.

James Koskinas describes himself as an Expressionist painter: "I do not own my talent. The paintings come from somewhere. All I have to do is hold on to the brush."

In his current series of paintings, Portraits of Women, James Koskinas explores his subconscious archetypes of woman and femininity with boldly colored studies of women's faces. These striking paintings portray a wide range of expression and emotion, demonstrating James Koskinas' skill with the brush, and his fascination with the human form.

Julie Schumer’s geometric abstractions are drawn from her acute observation and sensitivity to the world around her. They distill the southwestern landscape using color, light and form. Painted over time, layer by layer, each canvas or work on paper has developed a compelling depth and warmth.

Originally from Arizona and California, respectively, James Koskinas and Julie Schumer now reside in Lamy, New Mexico where they have lived and worked together for the past 6 years.

FARREL FISCHOFF GALLERY

1807 Second Street, #29, Santa Fe, NM 87505-3801

www.farrellfischoff.com

Océ introduces the Océ TDS700, a flexible wide format printer

The new Océ TDS700 is a robust, configurable printer designed to fit a wide range of business environments, from engineering workgroups to central repro departments. The system's flexibility allows it to integrate seamlessly with existing networks and its intuitive user interface saves time and reduces mistake. Best-in-class productivity means the Océ TDS700 meets the tightest deadlines highest quality documents. 

 Océ TDS700 wide format printer features:

- Modular design keeps pace as business evolves

- A choice of two scanners, a folder and different media sizes

- Up to six rolls for complete media flexibility

- A full range of software options, from entry level to a fully loaded configuration   

  

Océ TDS700

The printer Océ TDS700 offers 600 x 1200 dpi pico printing for high quality output and the optional scanner is ready for future capabilities like color scan to archive. The Océ service organization will keep the system running at peak efficiency for years, so company managers can count on a long product life span.

The Océ TDS700 keeps workgroups, CAD teams, engineering departments and central repro rooms productive. It has the fastest print out time from cold start in the industry, just 43 seconds. And with a print speed of 6 m per minute, the Océ TDS700 reaches a true productivity of 4.7 A0/minute. The intuitive user interface guides people through the system so they get their documents when they want them. Océ Image Logic® produces right-first-time copies and prints. The result is faster turnaround times, less wasted materials and more productive staff.  

The Océ TDS700 will not keep users waiting when time is short either. They can submit jobs without leaving their desks but if they do have go the printer, the Océ Power Logic Controller processes print, copy and scan jobs quickly and concurrently. As well as this, Océ Job Management allows operators to schedule and reorganize jobs as priorities change. With the Océ TDS700, companies can meet the tightest deadlines.  

With a full range of software available, the Océ TDS700 can be configured to the specific ways departments and companies work. The Océ Print Exec suite optimizes technical document workflow whilst Océ Repro Desk offers online print processing that boosts the profitability of central repro departments and commercial reprographers. To improve profits even further, Océ Account Center allocates document costs to departments, projects and customers, turning expenditure into chargeable income. Other software options can be added to the Océ TDS700 as and when they are needed.  

Océ website: www.oce.com

Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection

 

Source: Skirball Cultural Center - Left: Saul Bass in his studio, circa 1974; courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. - Right: Saul Bass–designed poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo; © Paramount Pictures.

 

Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection, an exhibition focusing on the graphic designer’s acclaimed work for the American film industry, was presented at the Skirball Cultural Center from January 4 through April 1, 2007. The exhibition included more than 20 movie posters and six soundtrack-album covers designed by Saul Bass for such films as Vertigo (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Exodus (1960) and In Harm’s Way (1965). It also featured, on continuous loop, a rare 22-minute montage —edited by Saul Bass and his wife, Elaine— of many of Bass’s motion-picture title sequences, from The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) to The Age of Innocence (1993). These are recognized as among the most innovative title sequences ever produced in Hollywood. Alternately screened with the montage were Why Man Creates (1968), the Oscar-winning short documentary Saul Bass produced and co-directed with Elaine Bass.

SAUL BASS (1920–1996) attended the Art Students League in Manhattan in his native New York. He then studied at Brooklyn College under the painter, designer and educator Gyorgy Kepes, a Hungarian émigré who had collaborated with Bauhaus artist and professor László Moholy-Nagy in 1930s Berlin. Gyorgy Kepes introduced his student to the Bauhaus movement and to Russian Constructivism, the styles of which influenced Saul Bass’s art.

Following his schooling, Saul Bass began working as a commercial artist in New York, but he felt constrained by the creative limitations of the city’s advertising agencies. Saul Bass moved to Los Angeles in 1946 and opened his own studio, Saul Bass & Associates, in 1952. During his distinguished career, Saul Bass became a graphic-design legend for conceiving the corporate identity packages of such companies as AT&T, Warner Communications and United Airlines. The logos he created for these business giants are considered among the most instantly recognized in 20th-century American popular culture.

Award-winning filmmaker Otto Preminger was the first to offer Saul Bass the opportunity to design a title sequence, for the film Carmen Jones (1954). Saul Bass approached the formerly unremarkable moments before the film began as an opportunity to set audience mood and enhance entertainment value, not just list credits. The following year, for the opening sequence to Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm, Saul Bass used an animated paper cut-out of a disjointed arm, which helped draw the audience into the film’s tale of drug addiction from the very first frames. On view will be the now-famous and often-imitated title sequence for The Man with the Golden Arm along with the poster and soundtrack-album cover, both of which repeated the disjointed-arm motif. Taken together, these works reveal the visual identity Saul Bass created for the film as a whole.

From this groundbreaking early work, Saul Bass would eventually work with illustrious filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer, Billy Wilder and many more. These directors valued Saul Bass’s innovative use of animation, live action and dynamic typography. Saul Bass —who, beginning with Spartacus (1960), worked in collaboration with his wife, Elaine— created more than 50 title sequences and fully integrated advertising campaigns for such celebrated films as North by Northwest (1959) West Side Story (1961), Vertigo, Exodus and Grand Prix (1966). The title sequences for these films were featured in the exhibition’s montage. For Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Saul Bass not only contributed the title sequence but helped to storyboard the film. A reproduction of Bass’s storyboard for the film’s classic shower scene were also displayed in the exhibition.

After winning, in 1969, the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subjects, for Why Man Creates, an animated film exploring the nature of creativity, Saul Bass took a nearly decade-long hiatus from film work and focused on his landmark graphic-design campaigns for companies worldwide.

The Basses returned to the movies in the 1980s, producing the title sequences, among many others, for Danny De Vitos’s War of the Roses (1989), Billy Crystal’s Mr. Saturday Night (1992) and Martin Scorcese’s GoodFellas (1990) and Cape Fear (1991). The montage in the exhibition includes these later works. In 1991 and 1993–1996, Saul Bass designed the official posters for the Academy Awards, all of which were displayed in the exhibition. Saul Bass had served as a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors for nine years.

Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection was on view in the Skirball’s Ruby Gallery and Hurd Gallery. The exhibition was presented as part of the Skirball’s Our California series, exploring the changing cultural, social and civic forces that have shaped California.

Related film screenings: During the run of Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection, the Skirball presented free Tuesday afternoon screenings of the following films for which Saul Bass created the title sequences and advertising campaigns: Psycho (January 9) Vertigo (January 23), Anatomy of a Murder (February 6) and Bonjour Tristesse (February 27). The Skirball also showing Phase IV, a rarely screened science-fiction film directed by Saul Bass (February 22).

 

The Exhibition was developed with the curatorial guidance of the FILM ARCHIVE OF THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES.

 

SAUL BASS: THE HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION
January 4–April 1, 2007

SKIRBALL CULTURAL CENTER
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Updated

Jeff Elrod at Texas Gallery, Houston - Fingers Never Stop

Jeff Elrod: Fingers Never Stop
Texas Gallery, Houston
December 8, 2006 - January 6, 2007

Texas Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by JEFF ELROD. A former Glassell Core artist, Jeff Elrod was born in Texas and works in both New York and Marfa. This will be his third show one person at the gallery. Titled Fingers Never Stop, the show consists of a series of new works on canvas utilizing silkscreen, latex and airbrushed acrylic paint. Known for use of graffiti like gestures made originally as drawings on a computer which were then embedded in monochromatic fields of color, Jeff Elrod in the new work balances expressive color and gestures, strong positive and negative spaces, with a background grid that still retains references to the computer origins of his drawings. Like Brice Marden or even earlier abstract artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, Jeff Elrod balances the elements applied to the painting surface in a tension that resists any direct reference to content or illusion and re introduces the idea of the shallow space of the picture plane. The work brings to mind the work of the color field painters of the 1960s and 1970s in the use of large areas of color but given a different kick through the use of spray paint as the colors glow rather than recede. Casual marks which are a serendipitous result of the working process are sprinkled throughout the paintings. The resulting paintings are exuberant abstractions of color and light following in the best tradition of modern American painting.

In the past few years, Jeff Elrod has exhibited in Berlin, Milan, New York and Marfa, Tx. Most recently he had a solo exhibition at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York.

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com

Dynamic Range for Scanners Brought to Peak Level

LaserSoft Imaging's SilverFast scanning software, has now taken a quantum leap in the evolution of genuine High Dynamic Range Imaging. This new function in SilverFast version 6.5 utilizes varying exposures of the scan. This dramatically increases the dynamic range allowing even the most subtle nuances in both shadow and highlight areas to be recognized and enhanced. The SilverFast Multi-Exposure function is based on the principle of the distinguished Multi-Sampling Feature (multiple scan) with auto-alignment®. With Multi-Sampling the picture is scanned several times using the same settings, in order to identify and minimize noise. With Multi-Exposure the dynamic range of the scanners is utilized by repeating the scan, but with different exposure intensities. This creates a dynamic range comparable to that of a drum scanner. The patented auto-alignment secures the precision of the scan allowing for optimal sharpness and clarity. Using established film scanners, precise measurements were taken at LaserSoft Imaging's lab where dynamic increases and qualitative improvements of 25% using Multi-Exposure were documented. With this dynamic increase, the new SilverFast 6.5 can dramatically improve the results of image capture for both reflective and transparent originals. Finally, Multi-Exposure offers another advantage over Multi-Sampling: Multi-Exposure achieves the same quality in substantially less time.

Another novelty and an impressive highlight of the new SilverFast 6.5 is called the SilverFast ColorServer. New possibilities of automation and flexibility completely redefine the process of digital imaging, allowing a substantial increase in productivity. In addition to the new functions such as Multi-Exposure and the ColorServer, SilverFast's new Basic mode offers beginners an easy entry into the world of digital imaging with SilverFast.

The AutoFrame detection, an extended NegaFix dialogue, the proven selective color correction SCC with new presets, as well as the Ai-HDR auto-gamma optimization complete the spectrum of SilverFast 6.5.

Founded by the physicist Karl-Heinz Zahorsky in 1986, LaserSoft Imaging AG, SilverFast is now established as the world-wide standard for scan software, while SilverFastHDR and SilverFastDCPro have become well-known software applications to work with RAW data of scanners and digital cameras. SilverFast is bundled by many well known hardware manufacturers such as Canon, Epson, HP, Microtek, Pentacon, Plustek, Quatographic, Reflecta, Samsung, Umax and many others. Currently, there are more than 1,5 million installations of SilverFast world wide. After 20 years of successful development, Silverfast 6.5 is sure to be another milestone of convincing quality and productivity.

Grand Prix Critique BD 2007

 

 

Le Grand Prix de la Critique Bandes Dessinées 2007 couronne l’ouvrage de Pascal Rabaté « Les petits ruisseaux »  aux éditions Futuropolis

Avec ce prix, l’ACBD (Association des Critiques et journalistes de Bande Dessinée), consacre, pour la deuxième fois, un auteur exigeant, spécialiste de la chronique villageoise. Pascal Rabaté avait été honoré en 1998 pour son album Un ver dans le fruit.

“Les petits ruisseaux aborde, avec beaucoup d’humour et de tendresse, les amours du grand âge, l’un des derniers sujets tabous de la société française, sans jamais tomber dans la vulgarité et la paillardise. Outre la finesse de la narration, la saveur des dialogues et l’originalité du sujet, il faut aussi insister sur la vitalité du graphisme ! Enfin, ce petit joyau de simplicité nous montre la vie telle qu’elle est, nous rappelant, avec une infinie délicatesse, que faire l’amour n’est pas réservé uniquement à ceux qui sont jeunes et beaux !” -- ACBD

 

L’ACBD compte 77 journalistes et critiques qui parlent régulièrement de bande dessinée dans la presse écrite, audiovisuelle, nationale et régionale, et dans les nouvelles technologies. Cette année, le « Grand Prix de la Critique Bandes Dessinées » de l’ACBD a été choisi parmi quelque 3000 nouveautés publiées dans l’espace francophone européen (France, Belgique, Suisse), entre novembre 2005 et fin octobre 2006 : une production en augmentation constante depuis onze ans maintenant.