“Celebrating Women” Exhibition News

WCA artists; Sue Beutler, Barbara Melnik Carson, Sophie Grillet, Sandra Shelly, Corrine Vivian and Barbara Goodsitt are in the exhibit “Celebrating Women”, an AAWA juried exhibit featuring artists interpretations of Women, their roles, relationships and importance as leaders. This exhibit is being held in conjunction with The Historical Center’s exhibit, “Petticoat Patriots”: Women’s Suffrage Movement (Michigan was the second state to put this issue on their ballot.)

Unsung Heroes FEMA Trailers    Suzanne Beutler

Cafeteria Mom   Barbara Melnik Carson

Woman of Color     Barbara Goodsitt

Women Hold Up Half the Sky   Sophie Grillet

Lamentation   Sandra Shelly

Lady of the Garden Club   Corrine Vivian

Come join us November 7th from 2pm-4pm for an Artist Reception at Michigan Women’s Historical Center & Hall of Fame 213 W Main St., Lansing, MI 48933-2315 http://www.michiganwomenshalloffame.org/pages/exhibits_art.htm

The exhibit runs November 7th through January 31, 2011. Museum hours: Wednesday – Saturday 12-4 p.m. and Sunday 2-4 p.m.

If you are a Michigan woman artist and would like your art to be considered for display inside the Historical Center’s Elizabeth Belen Gallery, please check the website for the applicaton. For more information contact the Michigan Women’s Historical Center at 517-484-1880, extension 202.

Save the date!

This year the MIWCA has an exciting event planned for the holiday party!
Roger Green, a noted critic,  has agreed to come to the studio and do a critique for the WCA-MI members…first dibs will be given to members who participated in Ann Arbor’s Art Walk if there are other members who wish to take part it will be by first come first serve basis.
If you are not a member of the WCA-MI chapter you are more then welcome to attend and take part for a contribution to the honorarium we are already paying Dr. Green.  $10.00 is the suggested contribution.
Roger Green Ph.D. was art critic for Booth Newspapers for 15 years, and now teaches art history at Eastern Michigan University.  He writes frequently for Sculpture and American Craft magazines and is ArtNews’ Detroit correspondent.
Date: December 16th 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Location:  BrendaOArt Studio, 1342 N. Main, Suite 7, Ann Arbor, MI

RSVP by Dec.10th: 734-645-9024 or boelbaum@yahoo.com

Please bring a dish to pass or beverages and what ever impliments needed to consume your pot luck item…eg drinks/cups,  meat balls/plates and forks.
Hope to see you there!

Camp Rainbear and the MI WCA

On June 25 to the 27th the Women’s Caucus of Art was represented by Shaqe Kalaj (pronounced shacha call-eye) at Camp Rainbear at the Fowler Center for Outdoor Learning in Mayville MI. A group of families from Detroit yearly have a retreat at the camp. This year Shaqe came in as the teaching artist and did art with the children and adults. Art was drop-in format held on a deck right next to the dining facilities. The focus was on printmaking, specifically block printing. To get an idea how printing worked, kids and adults worked on styrofoam, then tried carving into potatoes then the older kids and adults worked in linocut.

Many people came in with ideas of what they wanted to so I helped them create what they wanted. For a lot them this was their first time trying printmaking. Many people wanted to create their name. The idea that you could print this 100s of times intrigued them. But the difficulty with doing words was that you have to draw it backwards. Many had to put their thinking caps on. With their prints I had them print on a large mural that they kept adding to and even painting on. However, we did not finish it but its something they are going to add to next year.

There were several individuals that stayed on the desk for a long period of time learning and exploring through their art. One young man just finished high school and was going to attend college this coming fall. He will be starting art classes in the fall. He had never explored printmaking. It was really fun to see him experiment with the media. He worked with abstracting and took it a step forward on was trying multicolors in the same print.
There was another young woman that came and started working and found a voice for herself through art. She said that she had not done art for awhile. She did a design in the styrofoam and then went into the linocut and did two linocuts. Then she started exploring painting. She did a nature scene. After finishing it we talked about what she did and then I pinpointed a very interesting part to the painting and told her to try painting another picture focusing on that technique. It was really amazing where she took that painting. Something that grabbed her and allowed her to see what she could really do.

I started making drawings of some of the kids in styrofoam that they printed themselves. They seemed to really like the fact that I was drawing them. There were many that made some jewelry and others that focused on painting. On Sunday morning there were many young children who wanted to paint. They really explored color and movement in their paintings. The last art event at the camp was when there was a storm and everyone had to stay in the dining room. So several kids and adults participated in a game called “musical art chairs.” I got a young girl to sing for us. How the game works is that it is similar to musical chairs except that when the music is going on you are drawing and then when the music stops, you pass your drawing to the right. I was able to get a young singer to sing for us. When everyone received their drawings they were surprised and wanted to continue the game.

Overall that camp was a good experience that gave people an avenue to experience art and try new things.

SHAQE KALAJ

JWAN call for 2011 NY National WCA Conference

CALL TO ARTISTS – Annual Juried Exhibition

Jewish   Women   Artists’   Network

A special interest group within the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA)

Sanctuaries in Time

Columbia / Barnard University – Kraft Center for Jewish Life

606 West 115 th Street, New York, NY 10025

January 18 – March 1, 2011
Meet the Artists Reception: February 10,  2011, 5:30 – 7:00 PM ________________________________________________________________

Exhibition Theme: Sanctuaries in Time

As each person is unique, so too is each hour and each moment unique. How do we resolve the tension of the inevitable passage of time and the desire to cherish special moments?  Time envelops holiness; time interacts with space and nature; time is a constant in the world around us; time is attached to sacred events. The Book of Exodus, chapters 25-40, offers detailed instructions for constructing a sanctuary, illustrating the timeless struggle to set aside time and space for creating and building a life of values and spirituality.  How do we move “beyond the confines of measured time”(Abraham Joshua Heschel) to build our own sanctuaries in time? The challenge to the artist is to consider the balance of the mystery and continuum of time and her place in the present.

Juror: Dr. Maya Balakirsky Katz

Maya Balakirsky Katz, PhD, is associate professor of art history at Touro College and is on the faculty of Touro’s Graduate School of Jewish Studies in NYC. A prolific author, Dr. Katz explores the role that visual culture plays in Jewish history. She specializes in the intersection of modern religious identity and media, particularly surrounding public protest, such as the Dreyfus affair, the Soviet Jewry movement, and the public art campaigns of the Chabad movement.

Eligibility:

Members of the Jewish Women Artists’ Network (JWAN) and the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) are invited to submit up to three jpeg images of original work completed during 2006-2010 and not previously exhibited at a JWAN exhibit. Accepted artists must be a paid-up 2011 WCA member in order to exhibit. The JWAN entry fee does not cover WCA membership.

ABOUT THE WOMEN’S CAUCUS FOR ART:

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) is the leading national organization for women in the visual arts professions. Founded in 1972, it has 27 chapters across the country and is an affiliate of the College Art Association. WCA is dedicated to the cultural, aesthetic and economic value of women’s art. We encourage everyone submitting work to attend the WCA / CAA National conference, February 2011 in New York City. We invite non-members to join WCA and participate in an activist community of women artists. Visit www.nationalwca.org for more information.

Click -> HERE <- for more information and full prospectus.


Call for volunteers:

Participatory Art Project goes to Calder Plaza, Grand Rapids

My walk through environment, C’ood: a democracy experiment, will be installed at Calder Plaza, Grand Rapids’ City Hall, this September. It will be right next to the sculpture by Alexander Calder that put Grand Rapids on the art map 41 years ago. Frederik Meijer Gardens curators selected work for this site. Chief Curator Joseph Becherer referred to my piece as “quite innovative and I know people will find it highly rewarding.”


For C’ood: a democracy experiment, T-shirts from Michigan are woven into a circular tunnel, 24′ in diameter, 10′ tall with a central opening 12′ across. Viewers can walk around inside the weaving or move into the open space in the center. Each of the outside entrances is woven with one color, then as the weaving arches over into the center the colors mix together into a multicolor tapestry. As viewers navigate the unfamiliar space, move among other viewers, and look for shirts from their town, they practice searching for the “common good”. They engage in a transformative space and participate in an experiment in democracy’s inner workings.


My interest in T-shirts starts with their individuality – they’re like our second skin, shaped like a human torso, and the messages printed on them make them personal. No matter how the shirt is transformed, the individual quality can still be felt. This makes for very interesting art material.


Participation

The project invites participation on many levels.

– Donate Michigan T-shirts – short sleeved shirts are needed, no collar or pocket, with “Michigan” or a city or town in Michigan written on the shirt (such as “Ann Arbor Brew Pub”). Shirts can be dropped off at Downtown Home & Garden, 210 S. Ashley, Ann Arbor, MI. Or mailed to me at that address.

– Volunteer – volunteers will be needed in every step of the project: recording the messages on the shirts, cutting them up for weaving, building the structure, weaving, installation team.

Email me to get on the Volunteer List.

– Walk Through Installation – Viewers who go to ArtPrize can walk through C’ood: a democracy experiment to engage in what it looks like and feels like to search for the common good. For more information on ArtPrize: www.artprize. org.

Americans come from so many different cultures and backgrounds, we don’t have a unified historical legacy that says what “culture” is, as many other countries do. This lack of a common cultural identity is one of the reasons for the “culture wars”. But we do have the shared ideal of working for the common good. The experiment here is whether we can see the beauty of that, see the beauty of merging some of our individuality into a common benefit for all.


See more of my work at www.margaretparkers tudio.com.

Welcome to one of our new members…

As our numbers grow we thought it would be nice to welcome new members on the blog! .  We invited recent members to share a bit of information about themselves so that we could share it with you.  If you would like your information to be featured here ( nearly-new members and long timers are welcome to submit as well-it is always good to let other members get to know you!) simply leave a comment and we will get back to you about submission.

We would like to welcome  J. R. DeMers to the MIWCA:

Hello WCA, I go by many names so let’s keep it simple and say when the wig is on, it’s Proper Etiquette & when it’s off it’s J.R.DeMers.  I am a senior fashion designer & illustrator at Finlandia University and I am pleased to make your acquaintance.
Proper Etiquette is a business founded on a few base principles.  First of which is that there are too many women, young and old, who dress as if they are ladies of the night or don’t dress up at all.  As for men, well, their wardrobes aren’t exactly what I’d call show stopping.  In regards to fine art & illustration, I believe that people are becoming much too lazy when going about a piece.  I do not know what happened to symbolism and deeper meaning, but it should be here to stay.  I am here to not only display a sense of tactile decadence and demure sexuality, but also a sensual and subtle spin in art & design and what it means to have “Proper Etiquette.”

Thank you,

J.R.DeMers
Owner & Founder of Proper Etiquette

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New Page Added…

We are introducing a MIWCA Member Artist of the Month feature.  If you are interested in being considered for the MIWCA (member)  artist of the month spotlight please email 5 images of your work, a statement about your work and any information you would like included to   mi_wca (at)yahoo.com to be considered.  You will be notified via email if your work is selected.

Can’t wait to hear from you!