|
Singing to the Difference:
An Examination of Surface Strategies Curated by Transmission Gallery Owner/Director, Ruth Santee
and Gallery Manager, TaVee Lee _________
Cheryl Coon, Leah Korican, Lori Murphy, Jann Nunn, Celena Peet, Adero Willard MARCH 7 - APRIL 5, 2024
Opening reception planned for March 7th 5–7 p.m. San Joaquin Delta College
LH Horton Jr Gallery 5151 Pacific Ave, Stocktone, CA 95207 |
Located on the campus of San Joaquin Delta College, the LH Horton Gallery presents an exhibition of texture, Singing to the Difference: An Examination of Surface Strategies, March 7 – April 5, with an opening reception planned for March 7th 5–7 p.m.
Horton Gallery will celebrate Women’s History Month with an exhibition of six established women artists and two women guest curators. Horton Gallery Coordinator, Jan Marlese, would like to recognize that the make-up of an all-women’s show is not typical of the larger museum and gallery industry. In addition, the artwork in the exhibition does not necessitate a focus on women’s “issues” but rather the making of nonobjective art and its formal qualities, as reflected by its title, An Examination of Surface Strategies.
The exhibition guest curators are Professor Ruth Santee, who teaches Color & Design and Printmaking at Delta College and is the co-founder of Transmission Gallery in Oakland, and TaVee Lee, Transmission Gallery Manager. Exhibiting artists are Cheryl Coon, Leah Korican, Lori Murphy, Jann Nunn, Celena Peet, and Adero Willard.
Singing to the Difference is attributed to the work of the same title by exhibiting artist Lori Murphy. Following is an excerpt of selected text from her Artist Statement, Transforming the Canon, where Murphy reflects on her series of work that dismantles and reassembles pages torn from the book,
Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
Murphy states that she was “interested in altering [Canaday’s] narrative, writing new stories over the old—breaking down this vintage canon of art history from the 1950s and reworking it to my own liking. I ripped out pages then reassembled the parts until they spoke some truth to me. At first, I hand-sewed the disassembled pages together with thread. Stitching referenced ‘women's work’ and I metaphorically mended history. My discovery of staples to fasten the fragments together significantly shifted my visual language. Not as gentle or delicate as thread, the seductive metallic staples referenced armor or weapons. Bumping up against and responding to these art history books has been insightful. Thinkingabout the artists represented, I wonder about those overlooked or not included.”
~ Lori Murphy, Singing to the Difference
Guest Curator Ruth Santee states, “Texture enriches a surface. It engages our sense of touch and tactile exploration. We are drawn to it as an important component of learning. Texture in art cannot always be physically experienced. The viewer must explore the art surface with their imagination. Whether the artist has created real tangible texture or simply the illusion of texture, it all contributes to the emotional impact of the viewer.”
-National Museum of Women’s Art
https://nmwa.org
Following are statistics compiled by the National Museum of Women’s Art that reference the work of women in the arts.
“Women earn 70% of bachelor of fine arts and 65-75% of master of fine arts degrees in the U.S., though only 46% of working artists (across all arts disciplines) are women.”
— National Endowment for the Arts, 2017
“Women still occupy fewer directorships at museums with budgets over $15 million, holding 30% of art museum director positions and earning 75¢ for every dollar earned by male directors.”
— Association of Art Museum Directors, Gender Gap Report 2017
“Only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women.”
— ArtNet, 2017
“Of the 3,050 galleries in the Artsy database, 10% represent not a single woman artist, while only 8% represent more women than men. Almost half represent 25% or fewer women.”
— The Global Art Market Report 2019 (Art Basel/UBS)
“The most expensive artwork sold by a woman artist at auction was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), sold in 2014 for $44.4 million—more than $400 million less than the auction record for a male artist: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, sold in 2017 for $450.3 million.”
— New York Times, 2017
“A survey of the permanent collections of 18 prominent U.S. art museums found that the represented artists are 87% male and 85% white.”
— Public Library of Science, 2019
Horton Gallery will celebrate Women’s History Month with an exhibition of six established women artists and two women guest curators. Horton Gallery Coordinator, Jan Marlese, would like to recognize that the make-up of an all-women’s show is not typical of the larger museum and gallery industry. In addition, the artwork in the exhibition does not necessitate a focus on women’s “issues” but rather the making of nonobjective art and its formal qualities, as reflected by its title, An Examination of Surface Strategies.
The exhibition guest curators are Professor Ruth Santee, who teaches Color & Design and Printmaking at Delta College and is the co-founder of Transmission Gallery in Oakland, and TaVee Lee, Transmission Gallery Manager. Exhibiting artists are Cheryl Coon, Leah Korican, Lori Murphy, Jann Nunn, Celena Peet, and Adero Willard.
Singing to the Difference is attributed to the work of the same title by exhibiting artist Lori Murphy. Following is an excerpt of selected text from her Artist Statement, Transforming the Canon, where Murphy reflects on her series of work that dismantles and reassembles pages torn from the book,
Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
Murphy states that she was “interested in altering [Canaday’s] narrative, writing new stories over the old—breaking down this vintage canon of art history from the 1950s and reworking it to my own liking. I ripped out pages then reassembled the parts until they spoke some truth to me. At first, I hand-sewed the disassembled pages together with thread. Stitching referenced ‘women's work’ and I metaphorically mended history. My discovery of staples to fasten the fragments together significantly shifted my visual language. Not as gentle or delicate as thread, the seductive metallic staples referenced armor or weapons. Bumping up against and responding to these art history books has been insightful. Thinkingabout the artists represented, I wonder about those overlooked or not included.”
~ Lori Murphy, Singing to the Difference
Guest Curator Ruth Santee states, “Texture enriches a surface. It engages our sense of touch and tactile exploration. We are drawn to it as an important component of learning. Texture in art cannot always be physically experienced. The viewer must explore the art surface with their imagination. Whether the artist has created real tangible texture or simply the illusion of texture, it all contributes to the emotional impact of the viewer.”
-National Museum of Women’s Art
https://nmwa.org
Following are statistics compiled by the National Museum of Women’s Art that reference the work of women in the arts.
“Women earn 70% of bachelor of fine arts and 65-75% of master of fine arts degrees in the U.S., though only 46% of working artists (across all arts disciplines) are women.”
— National Endowment for the Arts, 2017
“Women still occupy fewer directorships at museums with budgets over $15 million, holding 30% of art museum director positions and earning 75¢ for every dollar earned by male directors.”
— Association of Art Museum Directors, Gender Gap Report 2017
“Only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women.”
— ArtNet, 2017
“Of the 3,050 galleries in the Artsy database, 10% represent not a single woman artist, while only 8% represent more women than men. Almost half represent 25% or fewer women.”
— The Global Art Market Report 2019 (Art Basel/UBS)
“The most expensive artwork sold by a woman artist at auction was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), sold in 2014 for $44.4 million—more than $400 million less than the auction record for a male artist: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, sold in 2017 for $450.3 million.”
— New York Times, 2017
“A survey of the permanent collections of 18 prominent U.S. art museums found that the represented artists are 87% male and 85% white.”
— Public Library of Science, 2019
