To close Women's History Month, the editors are highlighting the work of (only) 9 daring and talented female artists you might to pay a visit to, virtually, or in person at their nearby studios.
Caroline Bagenal, Boston area
Toron, 2012
Cardboard, newspaper, bamboo
10ft x 6ft x 6ft
A member of the Boston Sculptors, Bagenal unveiled new work late last year in a solo show titled House of Words. Recycling economic and lightweight, but structurally strong materials, she draws in space through the combination and repetition of physical lines.
carolinebagenal.com
"I'm now working on a 12th or 20th generation Xerox."
Hepler, through years of experimentation, appropriation, and adaptation of her own visual language, creates large scale installations—variations on her own internal logic, and spatial and structural vocabulary.
This excellent video documentary by David Camlin, made in the context of Makeshift, the artist's solo show at the Portland Museum of Art, says it all.
Saint Joseph, from the series Reconciliation
"In Reconciliation I consider the way the structure of Catholic confessionals gives form to the abstract idea of forgiveness. The confessional’s architecture contains the traces of people who confess; the small spaces absorb the experiences of each penitent. I am interested in the way the ordinary materials of walls and kneelers are transformed by this interaction — becoming almost a record of interioirty made visible."
billiemandle.com
Big Brown Monkey Head, 2009
Oil on linen
60 x 60"
Schulnik's work is currently included in deCordova's Paint Things: beyond the stretcher. Don't miss this chance to see her work... it's in the gallery closest to the reception desk. Using claymation in poetic and psychedelic ways, Hobo Clown is a particular favorite.
www.allisonschulnik.com
Zsuzsanna creates large-scale participatory drawing environments. These are filmed, not simply for documentation purposes, but in order to make the video itself a part of the piece. A MassArt graduate, with a background in fine art and visual communication, she attended Janus Pannonius University, Hungary, to study painting and photography, before moving to the USA in 1997.
Zsuzsanna's work was just on view alongside Kate Gilmore's at Montserrat College of Art in Beverley, MA, in a two-woman show called Absent | Present. She was a resident of sübSamsøn in 2010-2011. This video documents her subsequent installation at Fourth Wall Project.
www.zsuzsanna.com
Men of War (Jellies 17)
Scanned plastic | archival digital print
Edition of 4
5 x 7 inches
We mentioned Deb Todd Wheeler's work, which cleverly mingles environmental awareness and humor, in this brief review of When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer at SPACE Gallery, Portland.
This work appropriates plastic detritus to create eerie representations of the very life-forms and environment they are affecting.
www.ellenmillergallery.com
Coming Soon, 2010
16 mm, color
Nicky Tavares is multimedia artist whose work ranges from experimental documentaries, to handmade 16mm films, to photographs. Her work has been shown locally at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others. She has been featured in The Boston Globe.
www.nickytavares.com
Super8 film by Anabel Vázquez with sound by Cody Hoyt
Part of a performance installation with Brandon Nastanski at Kill The Body & The Head Will Die, 2002, Zeitgeist Gallery, Cambridge
Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez is both an artist and, since 2010, curator at La Galería at the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in Boston's South End. Her photography, film, and video explores sociopolitical issues from an autobiographical perspective, and has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Vázquez Rodríguez studied Painting at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, and Photography and Film at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
"My creative work revolves around several key themes, a personal almost autobiographical view point, the close distance between daydreaming and reality. Within that distance is my female blood body, a Puerto Rican woman, self-exiled full of the sun and the moon. Exploring concepts of being and not being, life and death as major allies, are evident. Projects are approached from a historical, mythological and/or sociopolitical view. Personal connections through the physicality of the body and it's broader connections becoming palpable."
anabelvazquez.com
High-Femme Hobbit and Whoracle, 2011
Photos printed on fleece, memory foam, felt, thread, fir wood, carpet, plaster, sand, buckets
A recently matriculated SMFA undergraduate, Celeste's diverse body of work spans sculpture, installation, performance, and digital collage throughout which she explores themes of identity, queerness, and popular culture. Most recently, she participated in a one-night screening of video work at Signal Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
celestemariewelch.weebly.com
