Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual whose career now spans four decades. Her influence both within and beyond the art community is attested to by her inclusion in hundreds of publications throughout the world. Her art has been frequently exhibited in the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition, a number of the books she has authored have been published in foreign editions, bringing her art and philosophy to thousands of readers worldwide.
In the early seventies after a decade of professional art practice, Chicago pioneered Feminist Art and art education through a unique program for women at California State University, Fresno, a pedagogical approach that she has continued to develop over the years. In 1974, Chicago turned her attention to the subject of women's history to create her most well-known work, The Dinner Party, which was executed between 1974 and 1979 with the participation of hundreds of volunteers. This monumental multimedia project, a symbolic history of women in Western Civilization, has been seen by more than one million viewers during its sixteen exhibitions held at venues spanning six countries.
The Dinner Party has been the subject of countless articles and art history texts and is included in innumerable publications in diverse fields. The impact of The Dinner Party was examined in the 1996 exhibition, Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History. In 2007, The Dinner Party was permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, thereby achieving Chicago's long-held goal of helping to counter the erasure of women's achievements.
From 1980 to 1985, Chicago worked on the Birth Project. Having observed an absence of iconography about the subject of birth in Western art, Chicago designed a monumental series of birth and creation images for needlework which were executed under her supervision. Exhibition units from the Birth Project can be seen in numerous public collections around the country.
The Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light, which evolved over eight years and premiered in Chicago in 1993, then traveled to museums around the United States until 2002, and selections from the project continue to be exhibited.
For many decades, Chicago has produced works on paper, both monumental and intimate. These were the subject of an extensive retrospective which was organized by Dr. Viki Thompson Wilder and opened in early 1999 at the Florida State University Art Museum. Organized by Dr. Viki Thompson Wylder.
In October 2002, a major exhibition surveying Chicago's career was presented at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
In addition to a life of prodigious art making, Chicago is the author of numerous books. Her most recent publication is a final book on The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation, 2007 (Merrell Publishers) in conjunction with the permanent housing of this icon of twentieth century art now featured in Janson.
In 1999, Chicago published a book coauthored with Edward Lucie-Smith. Women and Art: Contested Territory examines images of women by both male and female artists throughout history. In the spring of 2000, Judy Chicago: An American Vision, a richly illustrated monograph about Chicago's career by Edward Lucie-Smith, was published. This book provided the first comprehensive assessment of Chicago's body of art.
Fragments From The Delta Of Venus (powerHouse Books) is a collection of images based upon the erotic writing of Anais Nin. Also included in the book was an essay about Chicago's relationship with Nin who was her mentor in the early seventies. In conjunction with the book's publication, a number of exhibits were held surveying Chicago's erotic work created over three decades. For many years, Judy Chicago has been interested in redressing the iconographic void around women's perspective on sexuality and desire.
Chicago's most recent work, which is in glass, premiered at LewAllen Contemporary in late 2006.
Chicago is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Many films have been produced about her work including The Making of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party by Johanna Demetrakas. E Entertainment Television included Judy Chicago in its three-part program, World's Most Intriguing Women. Recently, she was named one of the Eight Jewish Women Who Changed the World in the magazine published by the Union for Reform Judaism.
In 1996, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, became the repository for Chicago's papers. Chicago is the first living artist to be included in this major archive.
For over four decades, Chicago has remained steadfast in her commitment to the power of art as a vehicle for intellectual transformation and social change and to women's right to engage in the highest level of art production. As a result, she has become a symbol for people everywhere, known and respected as an artist, writer, teacher, and humanist whose work and life are models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist, and women's right to freedom of expression.
Carolee Schneemann’s pioneering work ranges across disciplines, encompassing film and video, painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Her early and prescient investigations into themes of gender and sexuality, identity and subjectivity, as well as the cultural biases of art history challenged taboos and inspired many artists of our time.
Recent solo exhibits of Schneemann’s drawings, photographs and painting-constructions were presented at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto Canada; the CEPA Gallery, Buffalo New York as well as at Pierre Menard Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. Remains To Be Seen: New & Restored Films & Videos of Carolee Schneemann was presented at Anthology Film Archives and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). Her forthcoming exhibits in 2008 include the Biennale of Sydney and PPOW Gallery New York.
www.metropicturesgallery.com/index.php?mode=artists&object_id=4
(or follow the links to Cindy Sherman at metropicturesgallery.com)
Cindy Sherman is a well-known photographer who works primarily in series.
Born in New Jersey in 1954 and currently working in New York, Sherman began painting at the State University of New York in Buffalo, but soon turned to photography. She felt that the camera enabled her to work more conceptually, putting more time into an idea than the meticulous practice of painting.
Sherman gained national attention with her famous "Untitled Film Stills" series (1977-1980). In 69 black and white photographs, the artist herself appeared as stereotypical B-movie, foreign film, or film noir actresses. Her first series already raises questions about originality, identity, gender, the role of art in popular culture, and the commercialism of the art world. She expounded on these ideas and continued to capture the public interest with her 1981 series, "Centerfolds," which more pointedly called attention to the stereotyping of women in visual culture.
Although she moved away from representation of women in the mid-80s, Sherman then responded to censorship resulting from Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano's shocking photographs with her "Sex" series in 1989. These photographs features medical dummies in sexual poses. In her most recent series, exhibited widely in 2003, she appears in various clown guises.
In 2006, Sherman created a series of fashion advertisements for designer Marc Jacobs that were photographed by Juergen Teller rather than herself and released as a monograph.
Sherman began her work as a film director in 1997 with Office Killer, starring Jeanne Tripplehorn, Molly Ringwald and Carol Kane. She also had a cameo role in the John Waters' film, Pecker.
Sherman never really considered her work feminist, but she is widely recognized for her visual commentaries about women. Moreover, she came to prominence at a time when women were still fighting to gain equal recognition with men artists, and her work helped women artists break out of the patriarchal framework in which it had previously been viewed and critiqued.
PENNY ARCADE.
Penny Arcade, aka Susana Ventura,
is an internationally acclaimed and respected writer, poet, essayist, cultural
critic, performance, theater, and video artist, and cultural icon. She is one of
the few performance artists to gain international renown in the mainstream
entertainment world. Her rare position in the American avant garde is all the
rarer because she is one of the few American artists who has been able to
sustain a 40 year career in the theater and she is at the top of her game in an
arena she has helped define and influence.
From an Italian working-class family in New Britain, CT, Susana made her way to
New York as a teenager and became a superstar at Andy Warhol's Factory. She was
featured in the film Women In Revolt. Her long performance roots go back to her
involvement as an original member of The Playhouse of the Ridiculous, New York's
famed queer, glitter/glam political theatre, that influenced everything from
Punk to current performance. She started creating her own performances in the
mid-80s and went on to author ten full-length performance plays.
Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, her 1992 sex and censorship show, offers a
blend of political humanism and erotic dancing. A highly influential mainstream
commercial hit that played in 22 cities around the world, it spearheaded the
current new burlesque movement.
She is also the author/auteur of numerous one-woman shows and continues to
define both solo and group performance art. Her work has always focused on the
other and the outsider and comments on class, race, and identity.
Penny is a popular and gifted lecturer on performance art and its history and
practice, 1960s experimental theater, 1980s performance art, queer theater, art
and activism, the world of Andy Warhol , the universe of Jack Smith, Theaters of
The Ridiculous, and The Architects of The American Counter Culture, among other
subjects.
Her workshops on performance art, writing and staging for performance art,
autobiographical performance and memoir, The alchemy of poetry to performance,
video in performance, among other site and topic specific workshops geared to
the needs of special interest groups are inspirational and as life altering as
her on-stage performance work.
Her highly acclaimed and award winning documentary video series, "Stemming The
Tide Of Cultural Amnesia: The Lower East Side Biography Project,” is a series of
in-depth interviews with some of America's most self individuated artists and
thinkers. A partial collection of her performance scripts with DVDs will be
published by Semiotext Press in the fall of 2008.
Penny is currently at work on her long anticipated memoir and a book about the
artist Jack Smith, as well as a long running video project on the non-academic
history of Performance. She was recently named as one of Out Magazine’s 100 most
influential culture makers.
Janine Antoni was born on January 19, 1964 in Freeport, Bahamas. She received her BA in 1986 from Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. She received the MacArthur Fellowship and the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Inc. Painting and Sculpture Grant in 1998, and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 1999. Antoni has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad at venues including Luhring Augustine Gallery, The Wadsworth Athenaeum, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Reina Sofia, The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Aldrich Museum. Her work was included in the 1993 Venice Biennial, the 1993 Whitney Biennial, the 1995 Johannesburg Biennial, the 1997 Istanbul Biennial, the 2000 Kwangju Biennial in Korea, and SITE Santa Fe in 2002.
Lisa Yuskavage
Selected press on Yuskavage's work at http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/64/press.htm
Sara Risk
Sara Marie Risk, a talented oil painter, printer-maker, and draughtswoman, created works of incredibly delicacy, purity, and nobility.
Risk was born in Lafayette, Indiana, on February 12, 1965, and died on November 6, 1998. She received her M.F.A. in Painting from Queens College, City University of New York in 1990, and her B.F.A. in Painting was received from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1988. She began teaching as an Adjunct Professor both at Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, and at the University of New Haven, in the fall of 1995.
Risk, a sensitive woman with beautiful red hair and a quiet demeanor, loved art. In fact, she talked about wanting “to eat” the rich, buttery oil colors. She exhibited mostly in Connecticut, but she also exhibited elsewhere in the U.S.A. and overseas.
Risk’s life was also marked by tragedy. She struggled with eating disorders, and her life ended when she was only 33 years old in 1998.
Her exhibitions include:
Central Connecticut State University Art Galleries, New Britain Connecticut: “Sara Risk: Memorial Exhibition,” April 22 – May 13, 1999
Bowery Gallery, NYC: “Recent Paintings and Drawings,” Two Person Exhibition, 5/98.
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut: “Paintings, Drawings,” One Person Exhibition, 3/98 to 5/98.
Cole-Scott Gallery, Hartford, Connecticut: “6 x 6 x 36,” Group Exhibition, 12/97.
Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, Connecticut: “Connecticut State University Faculty Art Exhibition”, 4/97.
Artspace Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut: “Viefelt,” Juried Group Exhibition, 11/96 to 12/96.
Erector Square Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut: “144 Square,” International Juried Group Exhibition, 11/96.
Pump House Gallery, Hartford, Connecticut: “Face to Face,” Two Person Exhibition, 9/96.
Idao Gallery, Chicago, Illinois: “IdaOYOTE,” Gallery Artists Exhibition, 9/96 to 10/96.
Visuelle Kommunikation Galerie, UniversitŠt Gesamthochschule, Kassel, Germany: “Recent Monotypes,” Two Person Exhibition, 6/96.
Slater Museum, Norwich, Connecticut: “53rd Annual Connecticut Artists Exhibition,” 3/96. State Juried Exhibition.
Artspace Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut: “4th Annual Art Auction and Exhibition,” 3/96.
Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts: “Invitational Drawing Exhibition,” Invitational Group Exhibition, 2/96 to 3/96.
Judy Fox
Judy Fox is a sculptor working in New York . As an undergraduate she studied
sculpture at Yale and Skowhegan, then received a Masters in Art History and
Conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
Ms Fox started showing in the East Village in 1985, pioneering contemporary figuration with her nude children in iconic poses. Since then has participated in numerous private and public exhibitions around the US, as well as in Austria, England, Germany, Switzerland,, Belgium and Poland. Recent solo shows have been at PPOW gallery in New York,, at the Traklhaus Gallery in Salzburg and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris.
Ms. Fox has received many awards, including two NEA grants, an awards from the "Anonymous Was a Woman" foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a 2006 fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
(June 2007)
Candice Raquel Lee
I still remember the first time I smelled real modeling clay. I was in first grade and a local artist who had been invited to visit my class handed each of us a bit of the grey stuff to work with. The moment I handled it and breathed its earthy smell, it felt natural and familiar, like something from another life. Then and there at the age of six, my love affair with the medium of sculpture began.
During my childhood, my mother indulged my urge to sculpt with a set of rudimentary pottery tools, a four-pound bag of red non-firing clay each year, and some excellent anatomy books, hoping that a familiarity with the human form would catalyze a desire for a medical career. During my teen years, I continued to teach myself, refining my art and developing my skill, secretly sculpting figures in clay that were small enough to hide from my mother who urged me ever more insistently away from art and toward science. However, as I suffered from the chronic asthma and hypoglycemia that nearly took my life on several occasions, my mind turned inward away from the physical world to the realms of my imagination, which only fed my art.
After regaining my health, achieving a BFA in creative writing and undertaking a few years of teaching, I ultimately decided to follow my true joy and become a professional sculptor. I settled on ten rural acres with my husband, where I designed my dream house and studio in the countryside a few hours drive from all the major cities of southern Ontario. I never did enter the medical field, but realistic figurative sculpture in the classical tradition has been a constant in my life. Some highlights for me since turning professional have been a selection for the Sculptors Society of Canada's Emerging Sculptors Exhibition in 2006, in addition to a show for "New Canadian" artists at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham and a cross-border show at the Kenan Center in Lockport, NY. I enjoyed my first solo exhibition at the Cambridge Centre for the Arts in Cambridge, ON this summer and am honoured to be part of this CCSU invitational among so many pioneering women artists.
-Candice Raquel Lee