Female Artists: Past & Present

   
   
Curated by: Christine Lee Smith 
         
   
Apr 14th - May 19th 2019
   
Opening Reception Apr 14th 2-5pm
     
   

Female artists are increasingly recognized for their artistic achievements. From lifetime career honors to being awarded significant projects, women are now more than ever, everywhere. Yet what can feel like a sudden turn of events is actually the culmination of over 150 years of women making art. Curated almost exclusively from the Inland Empire Museum of Art’s collection, Female Artists: Past & Present, features the diverse work of over 20 artists spanning nearly a century. This show presents the accomplished art of these makers and explores the through lines expressed in their works.

Perhaps because of the diversity of mediums and content presented in this show, the similarities between these works subtly emerges as the viewer considers them not only as independent pieces, but as a collective of visual voices. Harmony between the more whimsical moments of color and expression seen in works like Sumi Foley’s Radiance 2 and Nancy Caldwell’s Visiting Spainhower Ranch is at once different and completely at home with the more somber notes found in works like Jacki Knell’s Seventeen and Dorothea Lange’s Resettled Farm Child from Taos Junction to Bosque Farms Project New Mexico. These works additionally hold themes of embodiment and mystery as repeating refrains throughout the show.

Female Artists: Past & Present offers an opportunity to examine these threads in the context of their female origin, and to take measure of any internal dissonance that emerges as a result of engagement with the works. 

   
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Cindy Rinne | Hair Like Clouds 2013 | fabric 17.5"x17.5" | 687.18.02
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Jacki Knell | Seventeen 2016 | 12x16 Oil on Panel | 670.17.07
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Sumi Foley | Radiance 2 2014 | 11x11 kimono silk on canvas | 166.15.01
 
   
Barbara Beretich | Goya Grotesque | Bronze Sculptor | 77.14.04
    Exhibiting Artist
   

 

  Joanna Mersereau
BJ Lane
Marina Diaz
Marion Post Wolcot
Mary Ellen Mark
Nancy Caldwell
Patricia Woodhull
Penny  McElory
Sonia Noskowiak
Soumakis Christianna
Sumi Foley
Linda Garcia-Dahle
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
 
Marion Post Wolcott | Gas station and dance hall, Osage, West Virginia 1938 | 8x12 photo | 410.16.09
   
     
           
           
     
© 2019 Inland Empire Museum of Art
All Art © by The Artist