HARRIET CALDWELL
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
The brain is a complex organ, and I am very fascinated with the energy that occurs in the brain. For the past several years my work has focused on how activity is altered, how the brain ages, processes and stores information, and how experience is translated and memory recalled. My works waiver between two and three dimension and incorporates drawing, sculpture and installation and are fabricated in vellum and mixed media. I repurpose recycled papers, electrical components, and other materials, which relate in some way to the content of my work. Some of the Petri dishes include vellum drawings and are made with graphite and ink, and coated with bee’s wax; the wrinkling of the vellum from heat and wax treatment also evokes the topography of the brain, and implies the tension between fragility and strength. The creation of this work is a complex, visceral and a multi-layered process: the intersection of biology, chemistry and interconnected humanity.
SUSAN HACKETT
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
For the past five years I have built memorials made of glass-a material that makes an excellent metaphor for life. It is perceived as fragile, yet it is much stronger than it appears. The edges gleam, and light is transmitted through the material, reflected from the edges, and is refracted through the planes of each piece. It is that light that activates the material, that is so much like the sacred energy that fuels each of our lives on Earth.
LYN HORTON
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
When I attended California Institute of the Arts, beginning in 1970 and ending with an MFA in 1974, I was completely open to my artistic development. My greatest interest became “Lines” and how best to endow them with a character of their own. I have done hundreds of drawings, using both mixed media and traditional drawing materials. Most of the drawings deal with the idea and scale of my body in various forms; but they also examine spirituality, death, divorce and, finally, who I am as a person. When I released myself from the binds of the past within my work, fluid lines returned to the drawing surface. This has happened since the change of the millennium. I have learned that my spirit pervades the making of my work. The process of doing the art is more important than the art object itself. For, it is in the process that new ideas are born and the art grows and becomes more of how it is meant to be.
ROSEMARY LASER
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
All art is based on personal experience. Like many women of my generation, I began sewing at a young age. Several decades ago I began using sewing techniques to create fabric constructions which are intended to be viewed as visual art. During most of these years I worked as a government research analyst, specializing in database statistical analysis. I have come to realize that the images I create in my art reflect my analytical nature. The difference between the two pursuits is that as an analyst I worked toward solving research problems, while as an artist I work to find significance in form and color in order to create an aesthetic experience for myself and viewers.
XANDA MCCAGG
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
At the core of my work is a fascination with the human experience. As an artist, I am observing and commenting on the human condition on both an intimate and global level. Exploring those points of contact between a solitary individual and her/his/its environment takes me to the untouched mental and physical space that separates us from and connects us to one another. The dichotomies we are affected by and that define us are the root and structure that informs my work. While my work is abstract, the strength of my paintings comes from my training in the classical figurative tradition. I use classical principles both literally and metaphorically as the source vocabulary from which I develop my compositions. More specifically I am beginning to experiment with the addition of small pieces of collage to a canvas; accenting a central canvas with smaller canvases; and layering lines and shapes to develop the ‘accidental form.’ I am deeply interested in how a mark or color creates a shift that affects the entire composition. Central to my work is the analogy of line to form, light, color, and to the spaces these describe. My work continues to explore the fine line between perception and imagination through an articulation of compositional effects. Using line and form, I determine how much or how little information is necessary to communicate these shifts and impressions. Ultimately, I search for a balance in my work that evokes a whole world of connections.
LAURA MOSQUERA
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
Each piece captures an instant of human experience by visually delving into the complex of memories, emotions, reactions and physical states which erupt at various moments of existence. The sculpted canvases establish a fleeting psychological space in which the colors, shapes and patterns push, pull, pierce and bounce, seeking recognition, understanding, and relief. Their relationships continually define one another through their dynamic state of existence, while the resulting visual tension manifests itself as a solitary expression. Difficult and complex memories are the foundation from which I begin my work. The vibrancy of my paintings make them hard to ignore, much like those experiences or issues we unsuccessfully try and bury. I bring these twisted and bent shapes to the surface of my work to show a path for them to exist in a beautiful way.
JULIE SHAPIRO
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
I work between two-dimensional media: printmaking, drawing, painting and collage. I am interested in the rapport that working between these mediums has encouraged and the reexamination of contemporary usage of these traditional materials and practices. Each media offers a different resistance, different palette, different surface and space. Cutouts and collages as stencil forms and templates have become an essential tool in my working process through all the media I work with. The use of cutout and collage has been strongly influenced by the printmaking process, the layering of color through multiple plates and the kind of decision this requires. The structure from stencil is developed through freehand mark making, using brush, pencil, eraser and rag, among other materials and dependent on the medium of a particular work. The literal layering and combining of the already made structure with the more reactive response encourages the reexamination and self-critique that is essential to my working method. The work is strongly inspired by the geography that surrounds me. The variety of experiences and perceptual relationships that I find within and seek out in my surroundings are an intrinsic source to the work. I find in the landscape visual occurrences of the new within the familiar, the irregular within the regular, the unexpected within the assumed. As significant as landscape is, the gathering of information and experience is broad and varied with parts and pieces entering the work in different ways. Within the making of an individual work, there occurs a shift that separates, selects and asserts through an open-ended process that involves visual constructs. There occurs a shift of the experiential through materiality and formal constructs to resulting form. The consequence of the collisions of history, critique and my individual response are what trigger ideas and drive my practice.
KATE TEN EYCK
NO MAN'S LAND: WOMEN AND ABSTRACTION | EAST & WEST GALLERIES | MAY 31 - JULY 7, 2018
Drawing is immediate gratification. The feeling of making marks by dragging charcoal across paper is deeply pleasurable. I am intrigued by palimpsest, traces left behind after erasing, as much as marks themselves. While I enjoy drawing from life, I see that activity as primarily a means by which to make beautiful marks. My drawing practice begins with the fundamental act of mark making. Taking a chunk of charcoal in one hand or attaching smaller pieces to all eight of my fingers, I move my body, running my hands across large sheets of paper in a loose sort of choreography. As I do this, forms emerge. After building up many layers of marks, I step back and interpret what I see, developing the drawing through erasing and adding more marks. While I could make works that are solely about process, I enjoy the act of interpretation. The forms that I find within my marks reflect my interests in such things as architectural ruins and the anatomy of plants and animals. The resulting drawings created through the process of interpreting marks always surprise me. I enjoy that the images are things I have never seen before, nor consciously imagined. The intuitive nature of this process reveals imagery that comes from a part of me that I cannot access directly. Curious, I continue to draw, intrigued by what I might find.
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