Aging is a natural process, but it is also very much a women’s issue. Resisting the cultural phobias about growing older begins right at home — within our own bodies. How each of us sees our own aging process can in turn influence how the culture sees it. We as elders must speak to this. We as artists can make it visible.
A signature is a unique and creative rendition of identity. To sign is to act, to leave an imprint. We sign because we are responsible for the way we choose to age; we sign to reclaim our process as our own.
After a certain age, is the right to construct our identity a freedom denied in our culture? What indicators of ourselves are we leaving for the next generation? And if we are erased because we are old, what of the despair of a life lived without past, without history, without recourse? How do we share the endowments, the wounds, the essential marks that time and experience have etched upon us?
This exhibition explores how older women artists feel about aging as a natural process and a women’s issue.
Exhibiting Artists: Grazyna Adamska-Jarecka, Linda Ammons, Joan Arbeiter, Linda Boardman, Joy Christiansen, Judy Cooperman, Peggy Dee, Henri Doner-Hedrick, Henrietta DuBois, Lucy Rose Fischer, Beatrice Fisher, Ruth Geneslaw, Beth Grossman, Katrina Miller Hawking, Cynthia Hellyer Heinz, Soyoung Jun, Joanna Katz, Janice Keaffaber, Catherine D. Lawhon, Peggy Lipschutz, Elizabeth M. Lynch, Mary Beth Mihelic, Jean Nerenberg, Louise Pappageorge, Faye Park, Rosemary Rauber, Karen Rhiner, Jody Stadler
About the Juror: Helen Redman has been creating and presenting female art that explores body image, personal identity and the life cycle experience as a source of knowledge and healing since 1962. She has been an active force in the support and recognition of women artists, co-founding Front Range Women in the Visual Arts in Boulder, Colorado (in 1974) and serving as the first president of the San Diego Women’s Caucus for the Arts (in 1992).
(Banner image: artwork by Cynthia Hellyer Heinz)
