The concept for this exhibition was developed by artist and juror Jan Brown Checco. “Traditions: The Blessing & The Curse” looks at the positive and negative consequences of traditions. How have customs, ways of life, mores impacted our lives? What is the legacy of your individual ethnic, social or racial backgrounds?
The juried part of the exhibition includes works by twenty-six artists from across the United States and from Great Britain addressing the way in which personal, cultural, social, and religious traditions have shaped, actually and metaphorically, the lives, experiences, memories, and expectations of women of different ages, races, belief systems, and sexual orientations. Many works in this exhibition manifest the anxiety associated with the demand for the impossible realization of an ideal female body, at once mother, wife, lover, and cultural producer. Other artists directly appropriate reference to religious iconography and practice, including those of Jews, Catholics, and even ancient Mayans in order to offer visual signifiers for bodily or psychological pain and suffering or social/historical marginalization.
Juried Exhibition Artists: Martha Bruin Degen, Adrienne Defendi, Emily Dvorin, Emile Ferris, Jill Foote-Hutton, Jennifer Maria Harris, Leila Hernandez, Melanie Hill, Adrienne Walker Hoard, Beth Irwin, Lynda Jarman, Keri Kaczmarek, Lisa Klakulak, Stephanie Land, Doris Monti, Sana Musasma, Leslie A. Schug, Judith Segall, Carol A. Shikany, Sara E. Simon, Galen Bell Smith, Priscilla Troy, Christina Vodicka, Lynette Vought, Renee Wirtz, and Hae Sook Yong
Juror/Curator: Jan Brown Checco
Jan Brown Checco is a working studio artist and administrator of visual arts programming. Independent curatorial and project management activities take her around the world to a variety of cities where her work is held in public and private collections. Checco holds a BFA in painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA in sculpture from DAAP in the University of Cincinnati, and has studied in Florence, Italy and Paris, France. Her painting and sculpture studio is in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The accompanying Invitational includes the work of eighteen artists from the international community, including Bogota, Australia, Northern Ireland, Germany and India, as well as the United States. All of the images exhibited in the Invitational address in some way the social, cultural, political, and psychological aspects of contemporary femininity, its possibilities and its perils.
Invitational Exhibition Artists: Trixi Allina, Sun Choi, Lilian Duque-Pineiro, Karen Goulet, Melanie Herzog, Pearl Hirshfield, Fujika Isomura, Indira Freitas Johnson, Ruth Jones, Li-Ting Hung, Maria Lobo, Regina Noakes, Roslyn Nolen, Ima Picó, Kelly Reedy, Nancy Spero, Angelika Maria Stiegler, Babette Wainwright and Jan Brown Checco.
(Banner image: artwork by Melanie Hill)
