ABOUT

Woman as Artist: A Radical Act (Still)

I have been active in the Southern Oregon art community for 15 years as a mixed media/experimental artist, digital art and content creator for nonprofits and businesses, blogger, art event producer, and social media consultant/contractor.

I like to say I was a digital pioneer. I launched a social media marketing business in 2008, working with artists to promote their businesses and nonprofit organizations to bring attention to their causes. I was also working remotely for much of the time and travel blogging – years before either of these became commonplace.

I produced several art events in the Rogue Valley, including 3 large-scale community events: The Healing Power of Mandala Art, The Dark Night of the Soul, and Who Does She Think She Is: Mothers as Artists.

In 2012, I embarked on what I called a “Walkabout.” As the “Walkabout Woman”, I set out on a 7-year tour around Oregon, living in Imnaha, Portland, the Oregon Coast, Bend, and Grants Pass — making art and blogging about my personal/creative growth along the way.

Back in the Rogue Valley in 2020, I began experimenting with adding fiber to my works on paper and paintings on canvas. The melding of paint, paper, canvas, and thread worked surprisingly well.

I went back to my roots, where I had learned needle skills at the knees of my female relatives. My art became an honoring of these talented foremothers. “Repurposing” these traditional skills/materials, with a contemporary flair, was a creative delight.

I also (re)-discovered the feminist collage (femmage) movement of the 1970s and the subversive stitch movement, both of which served to elevate the work of women fiber artists.

 I was shocked to see how little progress has been made in the professional lives of women artists. Statistics from the National Museum of Women in the Arts reveal that women artists still earn less, sell less, are exhibited less, have less representation, show up in art history less, and win fewer prizes/awards than men.

I conclude that a woman expecting to be taken seriously as an artist is still a radical act.

Feminism, psychology/healing, and social justice themes are the consistent threads that have run through my work and my life. With my latest body of work, Turtle Dreams: A History of Love and Magic, I hope to contribute to changing the trajectory of the future for women artists, so that they can be valued, recognized, and compensated in equal measure with male artists.

Turtle Dreams: A History of Love & Magic is an ongoing body of creative work — including visual art in a variety of media, writing, poetry, music, and movement — all working co-creatively to accomplish one thing: to tell a good story.

The story begins at the beginning — at creation — with the tumultuous birth of all flora and fauna of land, sea, and sky from the womb of the great mother whale.

A divine being, who takes the form of a sea turtle in water and a woman on land, makes her entrance at the dawn of time also!

From there, the story follows a family of women artists and storytellers — matrilineally through the generations — who are the memory keepers of “tales of love without end.

You can find out more about the story and view an exhibition of my Turtle Dreams inspired collages, paintings, fiber art, digital art, paper collages, and poetry from December 8, 2023, through January 12, 2024, at Rogue Gallery & Art Center in Medford, Oregon. The opening reception is Friday, December 15th, 5:30 – 8:00 PM.

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