Past Exhibits
Kristin Lorraine Herbster
Re:producing Motherhood
April 3, 2008 - June 13, 2008
The Institute's spring exhibit from Kristin Lorraine Herbster, a Menlo Park based artist, is a text and image exploration of how women are negotiating the belief systems that define motherhood in America. This project, more creative non-fiction essay than sociological documentary, combines documentary style photographs, interviews with contemporary mothers, and text from best-selling parenting books from the 1930s to the present - books that have produced American motherhood for these women, their mothers, and their mothers' mothers. Herbster's photographs and interviews capture the challenges and pressures of this mother role that women are struggling to recast for themselves, the extent to which they are reproducing this role, and how their beliefs expand or limit the way they mother and the way they perceive themselves as women and individuals. The projects intent is to bring to consciousness and release misaligned belief systems, revealing the myriad possibilities that exist for creating a reality that is aligned with individual well being for mothers, for women, for human beings regardless of cultural expectations and conventions. This exhibit features photos of Clayman Institute mothers and their children.
You can learn more about the artist and her work at www.kristinherbster.net.
Jana Marcus
Transfigurations
January 7, 2008 - March 21, 2008
Lecture, January 24, 2008. 4:30pm. Oak East Lounge, Tresidder Union, White Plaza, Stanford, CA 94305.
Opening reception, January 24, 2008. 6:00pm to 7:00pm.
In winter 2008, the Art at the Institute program hosted the award winning photography exhibition Transfigurations by Santa Cruz based artist Jana Marcus. Consisting of large black and white images with accompanying texts, Transfigurations explores transsexuals and their notions of masculinity and femininity as they change gender identities. Marcus' photographs shed light on the transformation from one sex/gender to another, forcing us to discover that gender is both real and illusory, natural and constructed. The series also explored the importance of the body to gender identity as well as the effects of transformative practices on the body. Blurring the lines of gender separation and stereotype, Marcusā photographs ask us to question what it means to be a man or a woman.
Transfigurations was awarded the prestigious Best Photos of The Year in both 2004 and 2005 by Photo District News of New York. It was also included in The International Photography Awards 2005, the Phelan Art Award 2005, the Excellence in Photography Award from San Jose State's School of Art & Design, and The Center for Photographic Arts Awards 2004.
Exhibition website: www.janamarcus.com/docus/docus.htm
Melanie Lacy Kusters
Migration
October 4, 2007 - December 20, 2007
Clayman Institute's 2007-08 art season was started with a solo exhibition by San Francisco based artist Melanie Lacy Kusters. Trained as a photographer, Lacy Kusters works in what might be called an expanded field of photography, using techniques inspired by photography - including notions of the index, the trace, and photography's close relationship with memory - to create sculpture and installation based work that engages with questions of domesticity, the body and the abject intimacy of everyday settings.
The exhibition at Serra House included a series of home-made pillows that Lacy Kusters had embroidered, using her own hair as thread, with loosely outlined drawings based on family photographs. Fascinated by the way bodies and objects alike "record our physical and emotional history," here, as elsewhere in her work, Lacy Kusters explores the fine line between bodies and objects, revealing the way -- whether directly or inadvertently-- our environments come to function as documents of the most intimate details of our own personal histories. Presented in the domestic setting of historic Serra House, the exhibition took on a site-specific resonance. Melanie Lacy Kusters is a 2007 graduate of the MFA program at California College of the Arts. The exhibition at Serra house was her first solo exhibition. For more information about the artist and her work, visit http://www.lacykusters.net
Paintings by Jessi Reel
Celebrating Title IX
Summer Quarter 2007
The Clayman Institute was pleased to mark the 35th anniversary of Title IX by showing a selection of paintings by Stanford artist Jessi Reel, picturing women and men in a variety of athletic situations, from rowing to yoga. Jessi previously exhibited at the Institute in the Spring Quarter 2007 student art show.
Student Art Show
Spring Quarter 2007
The Clayman Institute was pleased to host a juried exhibition of works by Stanford students. Nine artists contributed works, ranging from photographs to oil paintings. The Jury's prize for best in show was awarded to history major Melanie Reynard, for her series of photos "He/She", "Grass", and "Suffocation". The winner of the show's popular vote was engineering major Ross Karnig for his painting "A Representation of Self". Each of the winners received a prize of $300.
Jessica Walker and Cyane Tornatzky
Repetitious Antics
Winter Quarter 2007
"Repetitious Antics" is a series of works that explores the everyday
so as to re-contextualize the banal into something that is heavy with
meaning. The themes that are explored in these works arise from two
female artists testing the social landscape through issues of gender,
sexuality and identity.
Jessica Walker is an artist born in Appalachia. Her work shows the influence of a rural upbringing and her move into technological art making. Her collaborative work with Cyane Rollins Tornatzky allows for an examination of their cultural roots: two female artists, from Virginia, separated by 18 years.
Over 60 people attended the artists' reception on December 1 to hear Jessica and Cye discuss their work.
Cheryl Battiato
"Patterns"
September 25, 2005 - December 15, 2006
The Institute for Research on Women and Gender was pleased to present the work of Cheryl Battiato in "Patterns" at Serra House Autumn 2005. Battiato has been showing in and around San Jose since 1993. She received her M.F.A. from San Jose State in 2000.
Patterns of many sorts underlie all of Battiato's work. For Battiato, art is a way of understanding and ordering the world, and patterns are the key to that process. On a literal level, Battiato uses the repetitions of wallpaper or chain link fences as a solid ground against which isolated images of cows or pears stand out. On a more metaphorical level, these patterns represent the everyday habits that can be repeated like a mantra to contain and ward off the difficult times life brings. In Michael's Magic Blankie, for instance, the mundane portraits of family members become talisman, repeatedly brandished for protection against her son's looming illness.
Family is at the heart of Battiato's work, and many of her floating images represent aspects or memories of members of her family. Domestic details like tea kettles and electric fans draw attention to themselves through size or repetition, and ask us to acknowledge how small pieces of the everyday become intertwined with the important events of our lives. Battiato's paintings are also a respectful nod to the generations of women before her whose creativity was largely confined to the domestic realm, where they made beautiful things out of useful objects.
Many of the pieces in this show are the result of a layperson's very personal exploration of scientific concepts that touch upon her life. Battiato's monotypes include a sequence of images exploring DNA and heredity. They represent one section of a broader exploration of family relationships and genetics started by She's Such a Clone of Her Father. Battiato's work suggests how science has become part of our everyday understanding of the world, but also suggests that we struggle to make sense of what such theories really mean to us.
Over 40 people gathered to hear the artist speak at a reception in her honor held by the Institute on October 14th, 2005.
Review by Nora Niedzielski-Eichner
September 2005
Nacéra Guerin
"Passionate Work"
Summer Quarter 05
For Nacéra Guerin, art is a vital part of society. Art makes a community come together to understand and question the ideals and actions of that community. At best, art can remove boundaries of race, age, politics, and language; and prompt discussion.
Nacéra paints the passions and energies that influence our ideas or seek to direct our efforts. She pushes and pulls imagery out of her various mediums, sometimes enhancing a perceived part of a face, figure, or animal. The artist molds and works a viscous paint or plaster into the image of her strong emotion. Her work is always a reaction to an emotion, event, dream, or awareness.
Three paintings make up her Global Warning series. She created dense, textural color fields to show a child's view of the world, a world of environmental disaster, and a possible future world.
The artist is showing several portrait heads. Using saturated, vibrant blues, purples, yellows, reds, and black, Nacéra paints herself consumed by fear, joy, or hesitation. Other work in ink and watercolor shows the artist's meditative and erotic synergistic enhancing of imagery hidden in an ink or color wash.
The artist was born in Algeria and raised in France. She has lived with her husband, son, and daughter in the United States for several years. Nacéra's work will be shown in the Biennale in Florence, Italy this year. www.nacera.com
Nancy H. Cole
Photographic Works
Fall Quarter 04
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| "Geisha Solitude, Tokyo" © Nancy Cole www.mythprints.com |
Through computer manipulations such as texturizing, or bringing up the contrast in shadow and highlight, Cole forces the image into revealing a reality beneath the surface. In "Geisha Solitude", Cole changes a flat color field and a patterned kimono to have a stone texture, creating an effect of shallow depth for both areas. She increase depth in the wall and flattens the former volume of the fabric. By what the artist terms "extreme manipulation", Cole experiments with collage, isolating color, inverting color, or excluding color to find and expose mystery, beauty, and form.
The exhibit heightens Cole's individual and intricate solutions to mood, form, and image. Nancy H. Cole earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie-Melon University and a Master of Arts from Stanford University. She has been on the faculties of New York University, Foothill College, and San Jose State University. She is the current President of the South Bay Area Women's Caucus for Art.
Julie Newdoll
"Brush with Science"
Summer Quarter 04
Finding inspiration in pictorial imagery of human cells, DNA, and ancient mythology, Julie Newdoll's paintings combine her interest in art and science. The artist portrays her belief in the parallel evolutions of ancient rituals and dramas and biological systems. In her latest series about the five senses, Newdoll works from grounds created of electron microscope imagery of sense cells, images of her sculptures, and sketches. The final images, what she calls her underpainting, is printed onto canvas. The artist then paints literal mythic imagery on and within the sense cell structures.
"Sense of Smell" series shows the artist's concept of the visual nature of smell. The ten different olfactory receptors stick to various shapes of scent molecules. The brain recognizes different scents by the unique patterns of reception each scent triggers in the olfactory tissues. For example, one scent will stick strongly and weakly to receptor tissues depending on it's combination of molecule shapes.
In Sense of Smell Four; Yellow Olfactory Garden, the olfactory tissue cells have been changed into red and yellow flowers. It is a picture of the scent imagery of the brain.
Newdoll's A Chorus for Dionysus, shows Greek dancers and singers moving within a space made of inner ear hair cells. Music is heard and so created within the brain. The Greeks believed music influenced and connected the spirit and physical worlds, a belief the artist portrays in this work.
In another series, titled Life Forms, DNA, RNA, and protein molecules are constructed of small human figures against a hot red and orange ground. Julie Newdoll has a B.A. in Microbiology with a minor in Art, and an M.A. in Medical and Biological Illustration. Her work toured for three years in nine countries, in an exhibit with the San Francisco Exploratorium. Several scientific journal covers feature her artwork. After working in scientific visualization and computer graphics at UCSF, Newdoll worked as a supervisor of digital lighting in movie special effects at Tippett Studio.
www.brushwithscience.com
Terry Acebo Davis
"Diwata: Anatomy of Spirit"
Spring Quarter 04
Drawn from her experiences as an artist and nurse, her travels, and her American-Filipina culture and community, Terry Acebo Davis's mixed media collages and prints intrigue and inspire the viewer. Each piece holds a narrative between found instructional texts, political, historical, artistic, and personal photographs and imagery and gestural marks. The work is intensely personal and intimately universal. Stories of lives changed by grand events and small revealing attitudes and encounters are embedded in elegant spare juxtapositions.
In the series titled "Who needs therapy" torn paper acts as a divider and horizon to separate pictures of acupuncture points on the body and text pages of acupuncture written in Dutch. The artist's lines, drawn in to connect the images over the paper, connect Asian and Dutch healing therapies.
Fishing lures and hooks and fly fishing casting instructional pictures are placed with romantic sheet music, pages from French novels, and a photo of the artist's mother bringing to mind the search for love with its hope for happiness in future. Hope spurs the actions that help shape our future and our spirits. The artwork gives a glimpse of the effects of the past and the continued hope that has formed her spirit and that of her community. Diwata means a woman as a leader, healer, and priestess. Terry Acebo Davis takes that role for both her Filipina and American communities in this exhibit.
Kathleen Karp
Photographer
Winter Quarter 04
This Winter Quarter, Serra House is showing photographs taken during the 4th International Conference on Women, held in Hauirou, China in 1995. The photographer, Kathy Karp, was part of the Women's Caucus for Art delegation to the non-governmental organization forum at the conference. Titled, "Seeing the World through Women's Eyes", the exhibit gives the viewer an idea of the energy and determination of women to expose problems and work together to make changes in their countries. Photographs of the grand opening ceremony of dancing children and the release of thousands of doves and balloons at the beginning of the exhibit can be contrasted with the final images of the muddy tent city set up by the Chinese to house the delegates, the talks, workshops, and the art exhibits. Karp's photographs celebrate the diversity of the delegates who came together in friendship and hope. One can see women in traditional dress with cameras and cell phones, women marching together with banners declaring their demands, and women of all cultures talking and laughing together. There are portraits of delegates; Bella Abzug, an African woman, and two Chinese women. Photos of Bosnian refugees, Muslims, Filipinos, lesbians, Indians, and disabled women, among others, show demands for recognition of and solutions for problems according to each group.
"Seeing the World Through Women's Eyes" has been on exhibit at various venues in the United States since 1995. Kathleen Karp received her B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago. Her photographs have been exhibited in numerous group and one-artist shows throughout the country. She was most recently in residence at the Women's Studio workshop in Rosendale, New York.
Dotti Chichon
Photographer
Fall Quarter 03
Serra House was the scene for an intriguing exhibit of photographs by Dotti Chichon during Fall Quarter, 2003. Images in the show of her new "Abstracts" series and of Chichon's ongoing study of Venice during Carnival, illustrated the supportive relationship between beautiful baroque objects and flat surfaces of color, texture, and pattern. The abstract photographs call to mind seemingly time-worn textures: the pattern of iron rust next to delicate lacy white and a watery blue, or deep blues and greens moving fluidly over hidden textures. Some pictures juxtaposed an abstracted area with the image of a classic female face with flowing hair. Chichon's Venetian imagery ranges from the elaborately costumed and masked participants in the carnival masquerade or a lion head doorknob, to the spiral of a hotel's staircase or the spiral of a nautilus shell. The quiet beauty of each picture made it a pleasure to contemplate each image and appreciate the artist's ability to bring the viewer into her worlds.
Dotti Chichon studied archeology in England. She received her BA from U.C. Berkeley and did graduate studies there. She is coordinator and curator for the Peninsula Open Studios and the Bay Area Photographers' Alliance. During her Stanford show, Chichon was artist-in-residence at the Mendicino Art Center, California.