ARTIST STATEMENT
My work concerns itself with the intricacies of my collective unconscious. As a feminist artist living and working at 7,000 feet near my vantage point of the San Francisco Peaks in Northern Arizona, symbols are very much a part of my daily life. G-d has been a womyn since the beginning of time — a reminder that archeologists believed divinity was considered female for the first 200,000 years of human life on earth. The ovule contains positive and negative forces which together emit camouflaged existence with hidden meanings. I’m interested in making contemporary art that challenges the narrative. We are all heroines of our own collective memory. For decades stargazing has become a crucial part of my world on the Colorado Plateau.
ARTIST BIO
Rhonda Urdang is an independent studio artist working across multiple disciplines who has been making and exhibiting her work since 1970. She has had a varied and interesting career. Rhonda received her BFA in painting from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and worked as a journeyman color separation artist on high-fashion catalogs in the graphic arts industry in Phoenix. Since founding Flagstaff Feminist Art Studio, she has worked primarily in book art, mixed media collage, digital manipulation, femmage, painting, satire, and experimental film. Since leaving academia, the patriarchy, and pseudoscience behind (some things are folktales or misbelief), her ingenuity has flourished. Her thought-provoking pieces have been shown extensively in regional, national and international shows in 40 states. Rhonda’s visionary work responds to historical and world events, when painting and the female artist have been diminished, silenced, marginalized, and erased. She gains visual pleasure from unraveling the feminine mystique while peeling away layers of eidetic memory in her innovative art practice.
© Rhonda Urdang