ARTIST STATEMENT
My feminist image depicts the backside of two lovely womyn winding a tall, freestanding, weight-driven pendulum Grandfather’s clock, with the pendulum held inside the tower or waist of the clock. Yellow and gold antique wallpaper graces the image which mimics the Autumn colors of the turning leaves.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
RHONDA URDANG has been making and exhibiting her art since 1970. She has had a varied and interesting career; she has worked as a typesetter, museum gallery attendant, apprentice dot etcher, and journeyman color separation artist on high-fashion catalogs in the graphic arts industry in Omaha and in Phoenix. Since leaving academia, the patriarchy and pseudoscience behind (some things are folktales and misbelief), her ingenuity has flourished. Rhonda is interested in making contemporary art that challenges the narrative.
The Feminist Art movement has argued that re-appropriation and re-signification is a cross-cultural process by which disregarded or oppressed individuals can reclaim artifacts or images that were previously used in a disparaging manner and uplift them in a way that brings about socio-political empowerment for under-represented womyn. She stays true to her instincts and is always authentic. Since founding Flagstaff Feminist Art Studio, she has worked in multiple disciplines including femmage, assemblage, book art, collage, digital manipulation, painting, experimental film, and satire. Her thought-provoking works have been exhibited widely in regional, national, and international shows in 40 states.
Rarely does she commit to one style — choosing rather to let her keen intuitive perception and vivid imagination guide her from one theme to the next — shedding light on the transcendent tendencies that emerge in her visionary images. Listening to her unconscious mind continues to be a great source of inspiration. Rhonda gains visual pleasure from unraveling the feminine mystique while peeling away layers of buried eidetic memory in her innovative art practice.
© Rhonda Urdang