Beyond the Landscape Opening Is Saturday

The FIG exhibit Beyond the Landscape is currently showing at the Encinitas Community and Senior Center, 1140 Oakcrest Park Dr, Encinitas, California. The exhibit runs January 19, and the opening reception will be this Saturday, December 13, from 1-4 PM. 

The exhibit includes a wide range of art from FIG artists, showcasing our best interpretations of what happens when we explore beyond a simple landscape.

Below are some examples of what's in the show. Work includes paintings, mixed media, collage, prints, drawings, and paper cuts. Come to the opening, meet the artists, and see the art in person...

Lisa Hutton, Picnic, graphite on paper

Anna Stump, GoogleBomb, digital drawing, Giclee print

Lauren Carrera, Palimpset Series: Dawn, mixed media with oil on canvas

Irene Abraham, In Out, Acrylic

Kathy Miller, Character Map, mixed media

Nilly Gill, Deja Vu, oil

G. Pasha Turley, Microcosmic, intaglio etching

Stacie Birky Greene, Sub-historic, mixed media on wood

Additional artists in the show are Jennifer Anne Bennett, Prudence Horne, and Bhavna Mehta.

Beyond the Landscape

Members of FIG are again coming together to present a new exhibit, Beyond the Landscape, which will open at the Encinitas Community and Senior Center, 1140 Oakcrest Park Dr, Encinitas, California. The exhibit runs from December 3-January 19, and the opening reception will be Saturday, December 13, from 1-4 PM. The flyer below explains how the idea for the exhibit came about.

 The piece in the poster is Bhavna Mehta's papercut People may give you flowers but you have to grow your own trees. Below is Prudence Horne's oil on canvas Currents V, also in the show. 

Come to the exhibit to see more pieces, or watch this blog in December.

Fence/Barda September Opening

Last Saturday was the opening event for The Fence/La Barda exhibit at Art Produce in North Park, San Diego, a collaborative exhibit between Feminist Image Group and Tijuana's Distrito Diez Gallery.

The show is open through October and will include upcoming performances and another opening event on October 11.

We invited people to enter through the Mexican side of the fence, where they could view such pieces as Gabriela Escárcega's Mujer de Fuego/Woman on Fire, mixed media (20,000 matches) with FIG artist Helen Redman...

and in the foreground, Houses Fly Over the Fence/Pajaros Vuelan Sobre la Barda and in the background, Panca's painting Me Preocupa/It Worries Me, acrylic on wood...

and from left to right, ceramic sculptures by Martha Soto, Abandonadas/The Abandoned Ones, a painting by Elba Roades, Hermanos/Brothers (oil on canvas), a sculpture by Nubia Velazquez, Oración/Prayer (wire, ceramic, fabric, acrylic paint, string), and gouache paintings by Lourdes Huerta, Cadena Perpetua/Eternal Chain.

The fence itself, though, divided viewers from the American side, and from those they wanted to talk to on the other side...

We joked that it was exactly the wrong height for many of the women visiting the exhibit; you either had to lean down or be on your tiptoes to talk to someone on the other side.

To see the American side up close requires a walk around the building and into the garden.

The garden space was a great social event in itself, where both sides mingled and ate and drank.

From there, you could go through the hallway populated with birds and Nilly Gill's poem in English and Spanish...

And then into the main American side, where the houses float overhead...

And birds traverse the walls.

The American side also had booklets for visitors to fill out.

Straddling both sides was the game table, complete with game of Scrabble in play...

And these two figures reaching out towards each other in Figures by Fio Zenjim, Dos Cielos, Un Cosmos/Two Skies, One Cosmos (acrylic on plywood).

The birds are all for sale at $100 each and were created by quite a few artists, including Irene Abraham, Stephanie Bedwell, Stacie Birky-Greene, Lauren Carrera, Moya Devine, Prudence Horne, Lisa Hutton, Bhavna Mehta, Susan Myrland, Kathy Nida, Kim Neihans, Anna Stump, Anna Zappoli, and San Diego City College students Drafton Bunch, Jana Counts, Mark Cujak, Alexi Fernandez, Kathleen Forrey, Jesus Hernandez, Frances Mann, Gopika Mayell, Danielle Pino, Nicholas Prior, Oliver Reed, Melissa Riley, and Moses Tapia.

The floating houses were created by Grace Gray-Adams, Linda Litteral, Kathy Nida, Terrilyn Quick,

Cindy Zimmerman, and Southwestern College students Karen Aceves, Jacqueline Ang, Gabriella Buhain, Jorge Castro, George Causton, Shaquasia Dixon-Evans, Abelardo Felix, Cesar Gonzalez, Isaiah Marc Guerrero, Lawrence Guintu, Mignon Ingram, Mazen Kiki, Edward Lintz, Alexis Lopez, Berlin Lopez, Chasedy Murphy, Maribella Nunez, Mariela Nunez, Alejandra Ocampo, Alina Olaso, Moises Rico, Jilliane Mae Roque, Jose Sierra, and Nicholas Stenberg. The houses are for sale; if you're interested, contact the gallery. 

What I found the most interesting was the way the two sides came to be. The American side was installed two weeks prior, but was then redone 3 or 4 times as the artists brought in more work and adjusted for the Mexican counterparts. That said, the American side seems fairly freeflowing and it's hard to tell what one single artist has done in the group. The Mexican side was plagued by border-crossing and car troubles, reminding us of why we chose to do this exhibit, and highlighting their issues with the crossing itself. Their work came in at the last minute, some being installed during the actual opening. But the Mexican side is much more formal and it is obvious that certain art was done by certain artists. It looks like a regular gallery setting, while the American side is more conceptual, a group piece at heart.

I found that contrast intriguing and will look forward to how the gallery changes with additional performances and art coming in over the next two months.

Look for more posts over the coming days as we document more of the art and artists and additional events. Photos were provided by Susan Myrland, Helen Redman, and Kathy Nida.

The Fence/La Barda Exhibit

Opening September 13 from 6-9 at Art Produce in North Park is the newest exhibit with FIG and members of Tijuana's Distrito Diez Gallery. The Fence/La Barda includes a wide range of artwork from mostly female artists on both sides of the border.

The exhibit is an interactive, collaborative installation. A fence divides the gallery, cutting the space in half; to get to the other side, artists and guests must travel outside along a path through the Art Produce garden. Participants will interact through and around the fence during the installation and exhibition, using objects and performative gestures that reflect the reality of the San Diego/Tijuana Border Region.

Fence/Barda attempts to demonstrate how women navigate across borders. Spontaneous collaborations between artists of different cultures, conflicts of space and identity, and attempts to transcend barriers will be addressed. The installation will include video, photography, paintings, and sculptural objects, as well as book-making, sewing, games, and food performances. The gallery space will be in constant flux during the two-month installation. Artist openings will take place September 13 and October 11, with other performances planned in between.

FIG artists participating in Fence/Barda include Anna Stump, Grace Gray-Adams, Bhavna Mehta, Terri Hughes-Oelrich, Linda Litteral, Kathy Nida, Cindy Zimmerman, Lynn Susholtz, Irene Abraham, Stacie Birky-Greene, Lauren Carrera, Daphne Hill, Prudence Horne, Jennifer Bennett, Moya Devine, Nilly Gill, Terrilynn Quick, Kathy Miller, Susan Myrland, Stephanie Bedwell, Lisa Hutton, Kim Niehans, and Anna Zappoli.

Tijuana artists include Jill Marie Holslin, Cecilia Navarro, Claudia Ramirez, Laura Migliorino, Anthony Marchetti, Fio Zenhim, Gaby Escárcega, Monica Giselle, Ana Andrade, Nubia Vazquez, Irma Sofia Poeter, Lourdes Huerta, Mariel Miranda, Panca, Elva Rhoads, Gabriela Posada del Real, and Martha Soto.

FIG artists started installing work over the Labor Day weekend, continuing over the last week.

Our Tijuana cohorts struggled with border-crossing issues, highlighting the issues we hope to bring up in our work.

We had neighborhoods of floating houses, as the concept of home floats above the border.

Grace Gray-Adams organized the house creation group and helped hang the many houses artists provided.

We created floating walls of birds, who can cross country lines with no conflict, although some countries may offer them more protection than others. Stacie Birky-Greene managed the floating bird construction, creating the birds from junk mail.

Artist Nilly Gill wrote a poem for the exhibit, which Anna Stump, Daphne Hill (both seen below), and Kim Niehans painted on the gallery walls, here through the fence itself, which bisects the gallery.

Here Nilly looks on as her words begin to inhabit the wall.

Kathy Miller works on the books that will be hung from the fence itself for viewers to fill out as they move through the gallery, a way to communicate with each other.

The books are hung here from the fence with Nilly's poem in the background.

Here is the brains behind the book project, Bhavna Mehta, considering how they should be hung.

Participating artists Moya Devine and Lisa Hutton consider how to hang the many bird artworks provided.

A view of the unfinished gallery, as FIG artists prepare to pack up after two days and seven hours of installing, with a lot more to come over the next two weeks.

The show will continue to evolve over time, as additional artworks and projects continue. Please come out to both of the artists' openings, the first one this Saturday. Art Produce is located at 3139 University Avenue in North Park. Additional performances and events will be presented here as well.

Nilly Gill's Work

Nilly Gill, FIG member, is working in both paint and digitally these days. Below is Colors, an oil on canvas, 7x5", June 2013. The painting is from a new body of work she started in January 2013, one year after the loss of her daughter. In Colors are two dolls representing two daughters she lost of two races, Iris and Leora. They were personal toys as well as props in her installations for large watercolors she did earlier on. 

This is Reflected Self, oil on canvas, 10x8", January 2014.

In her most recent work, she has been experimenting for the first time with Appleworks 6, naming it "mousework" because she draws with her iMac mouse. The two images below are some of the over 25 images she has created. This is I Watched You Grow, March 31, 2014.

This is Pushing the Limit, March 5, 2014.

Closing Reception and Open House
April 19, 2014 4-7 pm

Not an Exit Gallery at Bread and Salt
1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego 92113

FIG Artist Terrilyn Quick's Uterus Flag Project at CSUSM

FIG artist Terrilyn Quick's Uterus Flag Project is currently on view on the 3rd floor of the Kellogg Library at California State University, San Marcos, through May 20.

Integrating the power of art and the ideals of feminism, The Uterus Flag Project highlights craftivism as an alternative way of giving voice to social justice. The installation is the result of a collaborative social-practice art project, empowering participants to work with fiber arts to alter consciousness about women’s health concerns.

The Uterus Flag Project encourages the viewer to interact, participate, and contemplate their views about our medical system. If you are interested in participating in the project, there is more information on Terrilyn's blog.