Five Women Explore the Figure @ Shelley Holzemer Gallery
Wednesday 27 August @ 15:19:53 |
 by Mary Ann Vincenta
Opening night at the Shelley Holzemer Gallery was hot, loud and crowded. It was definitely the place to be on a Friday night—nice snacks and wine laced with passionate political discussions in the kitchen, civilized flirtations in the gallery and conversations everywhere about art.
The show features the wonderful work of five figurative painters who happen to be women. Tina Blondell, the gallery curator (whose work is also displayed in the exhibit), said she didn’t originally set out to do a women’s show. But as she reviewed figurative work that came in, the pieces she liked best turned out to be painted by women, and the whole show fell together. While not wanting to turn it into a gender issue, she said the show is exciting to her because historically most paintings of women have been by men and therefore depict women the way men see women. Now, women have the opportunity to paint women as women see them. I wondered if I had come to the opening knowing only that it was a bunch of figurative paintings, would I have noticed they were all by women?
A group of women spoke heatedly about the incredible quality of the works and wondered why museums don’t show more work by women. Blondell agreed, referring to art authority Stephen Spaulding’s statement that the best painters alive today are women.
In art of any kind, artists place themselves on the chopping block, and everyone is free to kiss them, eat them for breakfast, place them on a pedestal or discard them. The artists with real power, such as these five, are the ones who crack open a viewer’s own melancholy, illusion, desire, isolation or arrogance, leading her/him to self-knowledge.
Entry into these five visual worlds is immediate—you are yanked in, and once inside, begin the more arduous cerebral trek.
The women in Tina Blondell’s work are harsh and glamorous. A black filigree covers their skin, like a record of their experience; they are decorated with wisdom that spreads to their children. Against pitch black backgrounds, in the brilliant hues of expertly wielded water colors, Blondell retells stories of historical and mythological female figures she has researched.
Michal Sagar’s baby boys and baby girls look wise beyond their years and symbolize the uncluttered innocence where creative energy thrives. The pink and blue conté figures float in a pink and blue pastel sea; the two colors amazingly merge into an antique brown that appears darker or lighter depending on the angle of the light.
The darkly intense acrylic and pastel-laden surfaces of Susan Morrisey parallel the darkly intense maternal protectiveness she portrays. The heavy hands, feet, eyelids and lips of her figures call forth an awareness of the world’s sorrow.
The works of Mary Kline-Misol and Emily Trovillion hang at the entrance to the show, intriguing, perplexing, personal and indescribable, perhaps the most idea-oriented images in the show, yet completely aesthetically captivating. In Kline-Misol’s world I feel a strong sense of danger and fear of chance events. It seems like Trovillion knows how power is organized in the world. And I completely appreciate her statement that “Myths, rather than being lies, are the deepest truths of a culture.”
Leaving the show, I felt as though I had stood in the gallery, surrounded by blank pieces of paper, boards and canvases, and little by little, like those time-lapse films that should flowers opening, had seen the paintings come into existence.
Five Women Explore the Figure continues through Sept. 20. Shelley Holzemer Gallery, 4810 Nicollet Ave. S., Mpls. Hours: Tue.–Sat. noon to 5 p.m., and by appointment. 612-824-0640.
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