the journey of elevation
female as vessel as female
Art as a vessel; a container of the subject, the canal through which the subject moves through, and the embodiment of the subject. In "Female as Vessel as Female", the six artists shares their vision through a wide range of technique and medium; all of them unique, and all of them powerful.
The rhythmic weaving of Renee Baldocchi is the transcendence of an ideal when an artist draws artistry from necessary skills. With the personal mementos held together by the threads, Renee reiterates many cultures's metaphor for the entangling fate of human affairs. Examining her complex pieces up close, one is struck by the variety of details, while from afar one sees a simple pattern. The works stride the dichotomy between reflection and experience, where the latter does not always give rise to the former.
Drawing upon the strength of bronze, Lori Kay infused feminine majesty with strength through her medium and harmony through her artistry. The figures are certain, aware of their own desires and carries out the will of their sculptor. Her "Laced Up Torso" evokes the grace of Venus de Milo without the vestal withdrawal. In its posture is the life-affirming, bracing against the constraint of its form. Her sculptures are graceful without resorting to frailty, proud without haughty. This humane nobility. These forms.
Adele Louise Shaw's provocatively named series "Oology" frames the traditional masculine discomfort with the feminine reproductive power through the use of the scientific presentation. Beyond the unease, Adele celebrates the potentiality of life, and the actualization of nonconformity through its painful breaking away. Her works suggest at the enormity of the uniqueness with tell-tale signs of what has hatched from the egg, but artfully avoids limiting the viewer's imagination.
After exploring the iconoclastic social construction of woman in her previous works, Cynthia Tom's newer works center on the ego-presence of the female. The woman is now the subject proper, present and essential. Her subject is aware of self, aware of the self's power and its effect on the viewer. With new vigor, Cynthia communes directly through the painting, and places the icons in orbit, adding to, not defining nor distracting from, her clear vision of the frank female spirit.
Anchoring from daughter Cynthia Tom's surrealism, Sue Tom re-contextualizes surrealism within the universe of the unconscious. She quotes familiar image with brackets of feminine symbol, and the relational space between icon and symbol is a mute and haunting boudoir of the soul. The collage is a complex landscape, revealing much with few rich and minimal gestures.
Tina Lauren Vietmeier's encaustic collage captures the intimacy of the female body, and preserves the feeling along with the artifacts. The style evokes the unearthing of Vesuvius, where the everyday items vanished under a great cataclysm. Tina creates the appearance of her work having been lost to time in order to make them new to the viewer. In understanding the works as lost items found, the viewer unconsciously excavates their own experience to in order to connect with those things that's both contemporary and immemorial.
In these works, art is the content, the vessel and the pathway. The panoramic view of the exhibition creates a complex and sophisticated universe where the feminine has the honor that is due to her, through the celebration of her individuality, her rich inner spirit in this material world.
- Roger T. Lee, MHS
