ARTIST STATEMENT
These works celebrate women whose actions and writings have planted seeds of thought that have affected us all. “Luna” features Julia Butterfly Hill during her 738 day tree-sitting vigil atop the ancient redwood “Luna”. Her heroic and successful action to protect this 1000 year old tree from logging planted the seeds of the environmental movement as we know it. ” Sowing the Seeds of Liberty” depicts two early female activists whose actions planted the seeds of the woman’s rights movement and the passing of the 19th Ammendment. Lucy Stone, a women’s rights activist in the mid 1800s and Alice Paul, a feminist and woman’s rights activist in the early 1900s, set forth the tenants of many of the rights that we have today. “Virginia’s Garden” depicts the feminist writer Virginia Woolf. She is shown viewing a garden of ideas. The women depicted in the garden are her sister Vanessa Bell, her lover Vita Sackville-West, and a writer/journalist who also promoted the ideas of equality for women.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I live and work in Easton, Ct. I am a recipient of the Connecticut Artist Fellowship Grant. I also received a Dan Long grant for my work about sustainability and the environment. My work has been featured in solo or group shows in the following museums, including the Museum Of Contemporary Art Westport, the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee,New Britain Museum of American Art, the New York Hall of Science, the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, the Discovery Museum, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the Mattatuck Museum, the Barnum Museum, Monmouth Museum, the Morris Museum, and Shore Institute for Contemporary Arts. My work is in the permanent collection of the Housatonic Museum and the Mattatuck Museum.I am an artist member of Silvermine Guild of Artists and previous member of the Board of Directors and a past member of the National Association of Women Artists. My fiber art was selected by the Textile Alliance of the Cleveland Museum of Art for the five- month exhibit “Focus: Fiber 2019” at Kent State University Museum. I have exhibited at many other university galleries, including UNC Pembroke Gallery; Penn State University HUB-Robeson Galleries; Robert Morris University Gallery; Sacred Heart University Gallery; Manchester Community College, Dehn Gallery; and the Schelfhaudt Gallery, University of Bridgeport.
© Joan Wheeler