Hotheads Wall 2020

Julie Heffernan | Hotheads Invitational

Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait as Hothead, 2019. Oil on canvas, 78 x 64 inches.

Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait with Shulamith, 2018. Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches.

Hotheads Tribute Wall In the spirit of Anni Albers (1899-1994), a German-born textile artist, and her weaving workshops held at the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College, Julie Heffernan

established an invitational/collaboration for the Hotheads exhibit with twenty-seven invited artists. A salon-style presentation of these artworks, reminiscent of the

collections of paintings in Heffernan’s work, features the invited artists’ pieces, each honoring a hothead who inspires them.

“Hotheads dare to flout decorum and authority in their expressions of independent thought and action.”

– Julie Heffernan

Emily Davis Adams – Anna Wiener

Nina Katchadourian – Stina,

Mary Muszynski – Helen Hilton Raiser

COVID-19 patients

Suzanne Lacy – Evalina

Soledad Otero – Angeles

Sandow Birk – Doctors treating

Nunni, Lucy, and Efronia

Deborah Oropallo – Greta Thunberg

Rob Carter – Berta Cáceres

Whitney Lynn – Judith Butler,

Elyse Pignolet – Anita Hill, Monica

Kyle Coniglio – Pema Chodron

Kara Maria – Anonymous breast

Lewinsky, and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford

Lenka Clayton, Phillip Andrew Lewis,

Dennis Marks – Saint Godeberta

Michael Hall – Agnes Varda

Javier Martinez – Helen Rodríguez

Ana Teresa Fernández – Anonymous Diane Ding – Malala Yousafzai

and Early B Clayton – Early B Clayton Annice Jacoby – Mary Weinberger

Madonna, Patti Smith

Lucy Puls – Joni Mitchell

cancer survivors

Rebecca Solnit – Ana Teresa Fernández

of Noyon

Josephine Taylor – Yoko Ono

Trías

Kal Spelletich – Susan Spelletich

Masami Teraoka – Viktoria Naraxsa

Virginia Wagner – Maria Sibylla Merian Wanxin Zhang – Mulan

Emily Davis Adams

Anna Wiener, 2020

Oil on canvas over panel 24 x 18 inches $2,000

Emily Davis Adams Berkeley, CA | El Cerrito, CA Anna Wiener The first book I read in 2020 was Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, a memoir about working in the

heart of Silicon Valley start-up culture. After returning to a Bay Area, Wiener’s writing has provided me with a kind of compass that is drastically different from the one I knew in my childhood. The

book is filled with candor, observation and sharp criticism of the iniquities and inequities that she

suggests are built into the structure of tech culture as she experienced it. Her decision to leave her tech job and return to the art of writing in order to communicate her experience to a public

audience is bold and inspiring to me. I chose to base her portrait on a screen shot I obtained from an online interview with her, which I further distorted using computer software, to reflect and

emphasize the digital technology worldview she navigates in her own life and work. The painting itself is a labored rendering of this image, meant to not only celebrate the author, but also to elevate the physical, non-digital realm of existence.

Sandow Birk The Doctor, 2020 Acrylic on Masonite 19 x 14 inches $5,800

Sandow Birk Detroit, MI | Los Angeles, CA The Doctor When invited to create a work about a woman I admire, I couldn’t decide on just one. It

occurred to me, especially at this COVID-19 moment, that an image of one anonymous,

woman health care worker could stand in as a proxy for all women medical personnel

who are on the front lines of fighting the Corona virus pandemic. Their work is critical to

the health of people in this country and in the world. By depicting the physician wearing

a mask, her anonymity is easier to convey and she can more readily represent all women health care workers.

Rob Carter

Berta Cรกceres, 2020 HD video (1080p) color/sound Edition of 50 + 2AP 4:30 minutes looped $500 Berta Cรกceres can be viewed here: https://cclarkgallery.com/exhibitions/heffernan-hotheads-wall#slide2

Rob Carter UK | Richmond, VA Berta Cáceres It is sad, but perhaps unsurprising, that I first learned of Berta Cáceres after she was brutally

gunned down in her home in 2016. She was a beloved Honduran environmental activist and co-

founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).

Her ten-year fight for the indigenous rights of the Lenca people saw her take on multinational

corporations with investment from the World Bank and their plans to dam the Gualcarque River.

Ultimately, she won this battle (funding was withdrawn for the project), but she was fully aware of

the dangers to her life, becoming the victim of an assassination with alleged ties to the Honduran government, the firm, and US military.

In the face of these powers, her courage and her passion to fully engage with the climate crisis is humbling to me. My video homage includes a simple portrait of her–a purple spray-painted

version of the much-disseminated likeness that is often used in Justice for Berta protests. Her

portrait adorns a 4 by 6 foot sled kite that I flew over Chimborazo Park in Richmond, Virginia—the

site of a confederate hospital and subsequent (short-lived) Freedmen’s Community. The video is

an infinite loop of the flying effigy that invokes the four Greek elements of nature, taking us on a

short journey, pulled along by the James River, and high into the sky above the park. The flight is

infused with some of Cáceres’ passionate and inspiring words. The contrivance of a kite has always fascinated me—that they rely on being tethered, on being held, yet they are always trying to

escape (which would result in their destruction). This interaction between humans, climatological science, and nature seems, in some small way, a poetic way of honoring this profoundly brave

woman.

Ana Teresa Fernรกndez Ice Queen, 2011 HD video with sound 30:39 minutes $7,500

Ana Teresa Fernández Tampico, Mexico | San Francisco, CA Ice Queen

Rebecca Solnit San Francisco, CA The Faraway Nearby

by Rebecca Solnit

The artist Ana Teresa Fernández recently cast a pair of high-heeled shoes in ice

and stood in the gutter of an inner-city street at night until they melted and left her

barefoot and free. It was a battle between the warmth of her body and the coldness of

the shoes, between her own fierce will and the imprisonment of the Cinderella story. The shoes were astonishingly beautiful, strange, alarming. They were shoes that wanted to

kill your feet, shoes too brittle to walk in, shoes of the kind called stiletto, as though you could stab someone with them. In the two-hour video she compressed down to forty

minutes or so of ordeal, they slowly disintegrated, like a story falling apart, like a belief wearing out, like a fear melting away.

When your feet or hands go numb with cold, they don’t feel at all after a while.

It’s when they warm again that the pain begins, just as a limb hurts not when the blood flow ceases and it goes to sleep but when it wakes up. Tall, athletic Ana told me that it

was when her feet began to thaw that the agony arrived. Not everyone wakes up; gets

thawed out; leaves the glass coffin; melts the shoes in which they can’t walk. She poured warm water down her legs, endured the pain for the sake of a symbolic conquest of a

pernicious story and for the sake of her work. In Cinderella, women deform themselves to try to fit into the shoe; Ana cast the shoes big and then destroyed them, making

something beautiful out of the war between flesh and ice, between a fairytale that didn’t fit and her own warmth.

Used by permission from the author, Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), 27.

Kyle Coniglio Pema, 2020 Oil on linen 16 x 12 inches $1,700

Kyle Coniglio Wayne, NJ | Hoboken, NJ/NYC Pema

To me, the term hothead describes someone with intense emotions that fuel a tenacious aggression. Reactionary, explosive, stubborn and often irrational, the hotheaded person is one controlled by their emotions. However, when thinking of this term in the context of celebrating women, my definition shifts to one of passion and crusade. I chose to

paint Pema Chödrön because her story speaks to both definitions. When talking about her life, Pema tells a story about a pivotal time in her twenties when she discovered her

(second) husband had cheated on her. Consumed with rage, she started hurling rocks at him with full force—she had lost all control to her anger and pain. This was a breaking point that led her down a new path in which she eventually becomes the first fully ordained American nun in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition.

Through her practice, writing, and teaching, Pema Chödrön has devoted her life to

making Buddhist principals accessible to western culture. Pema applies her wisdom to

help others understand the nature of suffering and by presenting meditative practices in a secular manner, teaches how to relate to our thoughts and emotions to ease them.

She believes that if we are going to heal our society and planet, we must heal ourselves first, starting by looking inward. As a woman, Pema Chödrön’s status as a highly

respected spiritual leader is especially notable. Unfortunately, most religious/spiritual

communities are still predominantly led by men, but women like Pema are planting the seeds of change. Not only has Pema Chödrön had an impact on my life, but also her

teachings have influenced many other figures I admire. I have no doubt that her work has a ripple effect on our world, one that is direly needed.

Diane Ding

Malala Yousafzai, 2020

Acrylic on paper 34 3/4 x 28 3/4 inches framed $2,800

Diane Ding ChangChun, China | San Francisco, CA Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai is a strong symbol of inspiration for women around the world. Her

fight for education and human rights has united so many of us with love and meaning.

Even after she was shot in Peshawar in 2012 by the Taliban when she was only 15, and

left her deaf in one ear and with half of her face damaged, she did not retreat or go into

hiding. She bravely continued fighting, not just for education for girls, but for the most

basic human rights for women. Threats of death could not stop her, and she went on to

tell the world, "I thought it was time for people to listen to other girls' stories who have suffered, as well." Her compassion, sense of justice, and strong will have influenced so many. Unfortunately, hers is an ongoing fight—there are still millions of girls not in

school today, when they should be, and Malala is still fighting for them. When I was

invited to join the Hotheads exhibition, Malala stood out to me as the person I wanted to draw—her eyes and her external sign of injury—the slightly lopsided smile—are

emblematic of one of the most brave, beautiful, and powerful people in the world.

Lenka Clayton, Phillip Andrew Lewis and Early B Clayton Early Dropping Things, 2020 Video Edition of 5 + 2AP 00:50 seconds looped $2,000

Early Dropping Things can be viewed here: https://cclarkgallery.com/exhibitions/heffernan-hotheadswall#slide3

Lenka Clayton, Phillip Andrew Lewis and Early B Clayton Pittsburgh, PA Early Dropping Things Early lives in a very free and easy way, harnessing her natural lack of control as a tool for

expressing herself. Part childhood development and part creative personality, she wanders

through situations inspired by everything around her. She is constantly trying to hold more

things than she is able. She is working beyond her limits, which often leads to clumsy endless dropping. Much like a sidewalk performance by a mime, this video captures the evolution of six-year old child attempting to hold and contain more objects than she is capable. It is a

psychological portrait of her ever changing physical, cognitive, and social-emotional growth.

Michael Hall 4 by Agnes, 2020 Watercolor on paper stretched over panel 12 x 9 inches $2,200

Michael Hall San Diego, CA | Oakland, CA 4 by Agnes I first saw Cleo 5 to 7 by Agnes Varda in 1996, when I became interested in the French New Wave (of which she is the originator). In one scene the main character, Cleo, with mirrors

surrounding her, peruses through a hat shop. Intoxicated by her vanity, Cleo moves from hat

to hat trying on different personalities. In the hands of another director, she would be judged or made hideous by this display, but Agnes Varda treated her with cool humanity. Varda

looked deep within Cleo and portrayed her compassionately. It was this moment that I fell in

love with Varda’s work and searched for it wherever I could (which in the mid ‘90s was not as easy as it is today).

Varda viewed her cinematic world with an empathetic eye, discovering the dignity of people, reflecting on herself within her films, and finding the love in the objects we keep around us.

The value she places in her films on meaningful objects has been a direct influence on my

body of work, Belongings, of which this painting is a part. A small tribute to her—the image

depicts the first collection of her early films that I could find — cherished, worn, watched and watched again, it is like old friends, aging together.

Annice Jacoby

Enable Brooklyn, 2020 Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches $2,000

Annice Jacoby New York, NY | San Francisco, CA Enable Brooklyn Enable Brooklyn, the Center for Independence of the Disabled, was founded in 1956 by Mary Weinberger, leading a group of parents who broke away from the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The MDA focused on research and science for prevention and cure. These families emphasized quality of life. The center continues to empower persons with disabilities fostering their integration into the mainstream of society.

Mary Weinberger was a pioneering advocate for everything from curb cuts to civil rights and full education. She lobbied New York State Legislature to create the first architectural barrier laws. Her home movies were used at Harvard Medical School in the late forties to show the disease indicators in children. She persuaded Leonard Bernstein to invite her son to Philharmonic rehearsals when there were limited learning opportunities for the disabled. She outfitted vans and took people permanently institutionalized to the opera and out to fancy New York restaurants, often shocking the patrons. Many of her dreams from transportation to technological advances have changed the way society treats disabled people. Her legacy is the shift from isolation and neglect to expanded opportunities for the disabled to more fully enjoy and participate in life.

Nina Katchadourian Return Trip, 1991/1993/2013 Digitized Super 8 and 8mm home movies Edition of 5 + 1AP; 1/5 $10,000

Return Trip can be viewed here: https://cclarkgallery.com/exhibitions/heffernan-hotheads-wall#slide4

Nina Katchadourian Stanford, CA | Brooklyn, NY/Berlin, Germany Return Trip While I was a graduate student at UC San Diego in the early 1990s, I began working with my family’s collection of 8mm and Super 8 home movies. Some of the footage was shot by my own parents and some of it by other family members, mostly in Finland and in Lebanon. Most of the footage had no soundtrack. I shot additional Super 8 footage, adding it to the older material and making new films, and also added sound from a

variety of sources: language learning cassette tapes, fables and family stories recounted by my relatives, songs my brother and I improvised and recorded together as children,

and interviews that I conducted with my parents. This yielded a collection of very short

videos, ranging from under a minute to a few minutes long, which became the piece 30

Years 21 Minutes 17 Tapes. When shown originally, each video was on a separate VHS

video tape with a title on the spine. There was no prescribed sequence for viewing the

tapes: a viewer could select a title, view the video, and then chose another. In this way,

each viewer had an experience of the material that built a loose story out of fragments in a different order.

I revisited this piece when invited to exhibit at testsite in Austin, TX, in 2013. For this

show, I decided to sequence the works into one continuous piece and to call it Return

Trip. Undergirding this collection are the voices and images of women who have been central to my family and to the preservation of these stories.

Suzanne Lacy

Evalina (Shopping Cart) from Evalina and I: Crime, Quilts and Art, 1975/80 Postcard and photo on fabric 11 x 21 inches framed NFS

Suzanne Lacy Wasco, CA | Los Angeles, CA Evalina (Shopping Cart) from Evalina and I: Crime, Quilts and Art, 1975/80 In the beginning I did not know Evalina Newman, who lived in the furthermost apartment of the 22-unit complex. As I drove across town from Venice, and on those hot August days, the air changed from ocean-moist to hot and arid. The scenery changed too, from large homes, apartments and green lawns to the dry, almost treeless vacant lots, liquor stores, and plentiful storefront churches of Watts. Riots 15 years earlier had left the still-visible marks of rage, frustration, and despair on the community. I felt the lack of small restaurants to escape the heat, movie theaters to stifle boredom, supermarkets or shopping centers or parks that seemed safe. Here there was no refuge.

Jim introduced me to Evalina, a resident of the Guy Miller Homes complex for the elderly, who opened her home, offered her friendship, and shared her life with me. Her small apartment stuffed full of cloth scraps and half-finished quilts, crocheted needlework, color snapshots, handmade dolls and Kleenex box covers, its television going constantly to ward off would-be intruders, became my refuge in Watts.

One thing we had in common was knowing how to bring people together. Both of us thought as organizers. Evalina figured prominently in the social activities of Guy Miller Homes. Her apartment was a meeting place for spontaneous neighborhood discussions.

She had organized a Wednesday afternoon sewing circle for women residents. Each week this group met to work on small lap quilts they took as Christmas gifts to convalescents. Sometimes she was frustrated with the difficulties of maintaining attendance. It took energy to maintain the group, yet she loved working with these women.

Quilting became a metaphor for the network developing between the residents, Evalina and myself. I began to love the bright colored squares and triangles, arranged according to a sometimes tentative and sometimes decided personal aesthetic. Evalina worked as a collagist, with a strong sense of color, utility, and thrift. She liked making something new from what had been discarded, liked making gifts for friends—feelings we shared. I began to make quilts too, with cloth scraps and the photos I had been taking during the project. I did not simply adopt her art form as a frame for my photos but used it to explore the place where our aesthetics, like our activist interest, merged.

Whitney Lynn

Untitled (L’Orgine du Monde), 2020 Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches $800

Whitney Lynn Maricopa County, AZ | Seattle, WA https://whitneylynnstudio.com/ Shock (after Courbet), 2020

oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches Routinely censored by various social media networks, Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du

Monde (The Origin of the World) is a provocative icon of modern art that continues to shock today. Based on a selfie posted to Instagram, in Shock (after Courbet), Courbet is summoned by way of Madonna, a pop icon who has courted controversy since the

1980s. In both paintings, truncated images offer rare portrayals of women's body hair, a

taboo in both art and popular culture that defies normative ideals of the hairless female subject.

Whitney Lynn

Untitled (after The Woman in the Waves), 2020 Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches $800

Whitney Lynn Maricopa County, AZ | Seattle, WA https://whitneylynnstudio.com/ Untitled (after The Woman in the Waves), 2020 In 1977, Patti Smith fell from a stage in Tampa, Florida. The accident resulted in broken teeth, a fractured skull and spine, and broken vertebrae in her neck. After months of

painful physical therapy, during a photo shoot for the cover of Easter, Smith was able to

lift her arms, a symbolic gesture of resurrection.

This painting is one of two new works that combines photographic images of iconic

musicians with overt references to the 19th century Realist painter, Gustave Courbet. In

this piece, Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of Patti Smith meets the 1863 painting, Woman

in the Waves, which subverted conventional academic portrayals of Venus by depicting a trace of the model’s underarm hair.

Whitney Lynn Bust, 2020 Multicolor composite print 2 1/2 x 1 1 /4 x 1 1/2 inches $500

Whitney Lynn Maricopa County, AZ | Seattle, WA Bust Drawing from dual traditions of the miniature portrait and the philosopher's bust, I created a small-scale sculpture depicting the iconic, critical theorist, Judith Butler. I

rendered a 3-D model of Butler through a process of converting screenshots of her

online, public lectures into an image that could then be printed three dimensionally. The

intimate scale of the portrait bust takes on connotations of a memento—an often small object kept as a reminder of something that has a larger-than-life presence as Butler, a renowned intellectual, is for me.

Kara Maria

Break Portrait #7, 2012

Acrylic on canvas 12 x 12 inches $2,500

Kara Maria Binghamton, NY | San Francisco, CA Break Portrait #7 My “Breast Portraits” series began after a mammogram showed an abnormality in one of my breasts. I decided to paint a self-portrait that showed my breasts being held in my hands. It was interesting to take on this pose (which is so often used in pornography but that also has ancient origins) and use it in a new way. This led me to consider the extent to which issues of the breasts are a cause of concern for many women: from fertility and sexuality to body image and disease. I e-mailed female friends–including artists, art historians, curators, collectors, and others from across the US and abroad–requesting photos of them posing in this particular way. The response was very enthusiastic. Several visited my studio to be photographed; others sent photos to me.

These paintings are part of a single body of work that is on-going. I hope to get as diverse a group of women to participate as possible and to explore the complex physical reality of being human.

Dennis Marks

Saint Godeberta of Noyon, 2020

Ink on rusted steel mounted on gold leaf board 10 3/8 x 7 1/2 inches $1,000

Dennis Marks California Saint Godeberta of Noyon Saint Godeberta of Noyon is a 7th century saint, patron of drought relief, and protection

from plague. The painting is part of a series called “Sacreblue/Saints in Heaven.� The

series is a response to ongoing drought and my interest in clouds as objects of wonder

and veneration, here presented as an icon.

Javier Martinez

Helen RodrĂ­guez TrĂ­as, 2020 Dibond mounted photograph 14 x 11 inches $500

Javier Martinez Los Angeles, CA | San Francisco, CA Helen Rodríguez Trías As the son of immigrant parents, I have always had great respect and admiration for those who overcome the challenges that come with being a migrant or part of a

minority group. The accomplishments of one such person, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trías are

many. Her passion to help others is inspiring and her work in social medicine has made the world a better place. Dr. Helen was a pediatrician, educator, and woman’s rights

activist. She was pivotal in expanding the range of public health services for women and children in minority and low-income populations. She was the first Latina to be

President of the American Public Health Association, founding member of the

Committee for Abortion Rights, and founding member of the Committee to end

Sterilization Abuse. In 2001, she received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Clinton for her work on behalf of women, children, people with HIV, AIDS, and lowincome communities.

Mary Muszynski

A Focus on the Horizon (Helen Hilton Raiser), 2020

Watercolor and pen on paper 17 x 21 inches $800

Mary Muszynski Rocky Branch, NC | Emeryville, California A Focus on the Horizon (Helen Hilton Raiser) This portrait of Helen Hilton Raiser is a landscape of a real and specific place, at a certain

moment in time.

After working for Helen for several years on landscape and planning projects, we became friends.

She offered a stay for a few days in her vacation home on the Big Sur coast.

From most rooms there is a view of a protected cove that opens to the tumultuous

waves and overwhelmingly vast horizon of the Pacific. Once I began to draw what I was seeing, the land and sea became a metaphor: inner calm meeting and taming erratic,

unrestrained energy.

For the first few days this was a simple vacation. A time out and a retreat. As the

pandemic approached and lockdowns began, the landscape’s power for healing and

creation became stronger.

It reminded me of Helen.

In divisive committee meetings, where the energy has been turbulent, I have watched

Helen champion beauty and nature as equal in importance to utilities—her words and actions filled with compassion and care. I have marveled at how Helen can change minds with reason backed up by a depth of calm and civility.

The horizon line in the view from her window was variable, never a simple straight level line. It was obscured by rain, fog, and clouds. The waves made its edge seem ragged.

As our lives are shifting and changing forever by a microscopic virus, the horizon line

remains a constant. It was a consistent view becoming my thoughts forward. Onward, to what’s next.

Deborah Oropallo GREAT GRETA, 2020 Digital print 19 x 13 inches $2,000

Deborah Oropallo Hackensack NJ | Novato, CA GREAT GRETA Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was born Jan 3, 2003 in Sweden. She is the

founder of FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE and EXTINCTION REBELLION.

This is a portrait of a young girl with Autistic Spectrum Disorder portrayed in her yellow

rain-coat. She has gained international recognition for promoting the view that

humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change. She is not afraid to publicly criticize world leaders about their failure to act. She cut school and inspired

20,000 other students in 270 cities to do the same to stand up for the environment.

My layered portrait of Greta, is made from approximately thirty transparent portraits

mirroring the repetition of her standing outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks

during school holding her sign SKILSTREIK for KLIMATET. (School strike for climate). You can see in her eyes that are peaking out of her raincoat, she is fierce, persistent,

passionate, and deadly serious. A child who bluntly delivers the truth to grownups.

Her protest began after heat waves and wildfires during Sweden's hottest summer in at least 262 years. Greta has declared that it is time for civil disobedience, and it is time to

rebel. In her words: “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are

collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro called her a brat. Even more horrifying, our POTUS mocked her after she was named Person of the Year by Time Magazine “Greta must

work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old-fashioned movie with

a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!"

Who is the world leader here?

Soledad Otero

Portrait of Angeles, 2020 Watercolor and digital 16 x 12 inches $500

Soledad Otero Buenos Aires, Argentina Portrait of Angeles Due to her sensitivity and imagination, my sister has been one of the people who has inspired me throughout my life. She is a source of mystery and beauty.

There is a magical passage between the observing eye, the hand that translates the form, trying to register more subtle signs, which reveals the essence or spirit of the

person in a certain time and space. This essence, which generally goes unnoticed by the

less trained eye, is what I have tried to capture.

Portraiture is for me a gift that has always captured my attention and I try to go deeper

in every attempt.

Elyse Pignolet

The Testimony Bowl, 2020

Glazed ceramic with sgraffito design Overall: 11 1/2 x 5 inches $3,500

Elyse Pignolet Oakland, CA, | Los Angeles, CA

Testimony Bowl The Testimony Bowl is a glazed ceramic with sgraffitto design. The design was created by scratching through a thin covering of black clay (called slip) to reveal the white

ceramic underneath. After the bowl was fired once, it was covered with turquoise blue glaze, and fired again for the final time.

The Testimony Bowl is inspired by a commissioned ceramic bowl by the artist Viktor

Schreckengost. His work was commissioned by Eleanore Roosevelt. Schreckgost was

asked by Roosevelt to reflect the exciting nightlife of New York City, and she wanted

him to express the jazzy pulse of the times in clay. Schreckgost created, New York (JAZZ)

Bowl, 1930.

The imagery on my bowl depicts the words and images of three American women (from 1991 - 2018), who gave public testimony. The women are Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, and Dr Christine Blasey Ford.

Inscriptions inside The Testimony Bowl are quotes from each woman:

“Never, ever give up your voice” - Anita Hill; “It may not be painless quick or easy…” Monica Lewinsky; and “I am here not because I want to be…” – Dr. Ford.

Lucy Puls

Caerulum Exempli (Joni Mitchell), 2020

Media: pigment print, Plexiglass, steel 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 2 inches $1,500

Lucy Puls Milwaukee, WI | Berkeley, CA Caerulum Exempli (Joni Mitchell) Joni Mitchell was a significant inspiration during a crucial time in my life. As a teenager, I fiercely studied album covers inside and out, noting that Joni Mitchell composed music, wrote lyrics, played guitar, sang, and also was a painter. Joni Mitchell – a person living and breathing in the same world, at the same time as me – accomplished all of these

things. The Blue album was my daily soundtrack. By moving the stacking arm off to the right on my record player, one side would play repeatedly. Hour after hour. Day after

day. The brilliance of Blue, wrestled from the lived life of a woman, provided the courage to imagine a future life as an artist.

Latin in title meanings:

Caerulum = 1. Blue color (dark), 2. Blue sky, 3. Deep blue sea, 4. Sky/sea 5. Steel color Exempli = 1. Example, 2. Instance, 3. Precedent, 4. Warning

Kal Spelletich

An Idea and Actions Piercing a Problem, Susan Spelletich, 2020 Aluminum 8 x 4 x 6 inches $1,500

Kal Spelletich Davenport, IA | San Francisco, CA An Idea and Actions Piercing a Problem, Susan Spelletich Susan Spelletich was a civil rights lawyer. She started in Legal Services for Children,

having worked with children in special education. Susan eventually ran a department in

the U.S. Department of Education with the Civil Rights division ensuring equal access to education through vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws. She helped shape

California education rights for children, which trickled up to shape national laws

affecting millions of students. She prosecuted educational institutions that discriminated against someone on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age. She also worked on one of the first cases related to a college’s inadequate response to

reports of sexual harassment. She could have easily made a tenfold salary working in private law, but she eschewed that for the wellbeing of humankind.

Josephine Taylor ONO (white), 2020 Designed by Josephine Taylor, 2020 Lyrics by Yoko Ono, 1973 Binding by Erin McAdams, San Francisco Paper kozo, typeface Pyramid, also used by Ono in "Grapefruit," 1964 Edition of 5 + 2AP 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches $1,800 *ONLY ONE MORE EDITION AVAILABLE*

Josephine Taylor Phoenix, AZ | San Francisco, CA ONO (white)

ONO (white) is a tribute to Yoko Ono's visionary work across genres, including her conceptual

art, performance art, print, and music. Embedded in the small book are nods to many Ono works that came into being in the late 60's-early 70's, and have been recreated in the past decades.

These include, but are not limited to, "White Chess Set" (1966/2015), “Cut Piece” (1964,

reenacted by Peaches in 2013 under Ono's direction), "Painting to See the Skies" 1964 and her

“Sky Pieces” (2019), "Now or Never" from her album Approximately Infinite Universe (1973) and rerecorded on her album Warzone (2018), and her first book of conceptual instructions,

Grapefruit (1964, 2000).

Ono has always been a feminist icon to me, firmly committed to her own work prior to her

partnership with John Lennon, during it, and long after his death and into the present day. Her

lifelong archive of work refutes stereotypes based on gender, nationality, class, cultural identity, and age. Her work has always been, and continues to be, genre-bending, radical, visionary, and demanding. It upends traditional roles of the artist and "viewer", and in doing so, models

alternatives that can be applied to opposing factions in times of war, and in gender dynamics.

When I was invited to make a portrait, it didn't make sense to me to draw Ono’s likeness. Her

practice has never emphasized superficial concerns nor has it been intricately connected to Ono herself, her face, or her body. Ono's work is rooted in thought, in clouds, in sky, in words, in

entrusting the participant to do the work. So that's what I wanted to make a portrait of—her through nods to her work. Listening to her song "Now or Never", first recorded in 1973, it

sounded as if it could have been written today, about where we stand as humans in 2020. There is a slow, deliberate cadence to the song, an emphasis on each word. It requires patience from the listener. Listening to it, I imagined the lyrics as a book. I imagined reading one word per page, and I imagined the amount of labor and time required of the reader to do this.

To tie the portrait to Ono's work more directly, I decided that I wanted the reader to do more

work still. The book is composed of 10 sheets of paper, folded so that the majority of the pages can only be seen when the reader cuts the edges themselves. This act makes the reader the

author, too. The reader could choose to cut only a few pages, and in doing so, they would be authoring an entirely new version of the lyrics. There is also a permanence in doing so,

counterbalanced by the impermanence of paper. The letters are burned into the page, and when a single page is held up to the sky, you can see the light through the burned words. The words become made of sky.

Masami Teraoka

Viktoria Naraxsa Pussy Riot Choreographer, 2016

Drypoint on paper Edition of 15 + 5HC; 6/15 Image: 5 7/8 x 5 inches $950 unframed $1,050 framed

Masami Teraoka Onomichi, Hiroshima, Japan | Waimanalo, HI Viktoria Naraxsa Pussy Riot Choreographer In 2017, I was at work on a series of paintings that paid tribute to the Russian activist and

performance group collectively known as Pussy Riot, whose members had been imprisoned by the Russian government for their protests against injustices in Vladimir Putin’s Russian

government and in the Russian Orthodox Church. Upon receiving a Pollock Krasner Lifetime

Achievement Award, I used the monies to bring members of Pussy Riot to Honolulu, Hawaii to collaborate on a new staging and interpretation of William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest,

which focused on themes of imprisonment, colonialism, and even magic. Viktoria Naraxsa pictured in my etching, is the group’s choreographer.

Viktoria Naraxsa or Vika is passionate about her performance work. She told me that she has a

performance art and theater background, having trained at a university in this field. Her vision as a choreographer is informed by Russian cultural history. She invokes her broad knowledge of

literature in her choreography.

Vika was seriously concerned about how the audience engaged with her Tempest performance, which she performed at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2017. Her play and choreography

combined live performance with video and drone shots of pre-recorded performance—she had

climbed KoKo Head crater as part of the material for the play. Using video and drone shots, she created a mysterious experience for the audience, who were invited to go along with the

performers as they climbed Koko Head. The video and drone imagery allowed the audience to feel as if they were in the play, thereby losing the traditional separation between actors and

audience. This approach reflects Vika’s attitude about people and life—she is inclusive.

Virginia Wagner

Swarm: Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian, 2020

Ink and oil on canvas 30 x 20 inches $2,000

Virginia Wagner Berkeley, CA | Brooklyn, NY Swarm: Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian Swarm: Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian is a portrait of the 17th century Dutch

entomologist and artist, Maria Sibylla Merian. As the first European woman to undertake a scientific expedition in South America, Maria spent two years in the rainforest of Surinam with her youngest daughter, charting the life cycles of insects in exquisite illustrations. In 1699, she sold 255 of her paintings to finance the journey. Maria’s stepfather, a painter, first introduced her to art. My father, an entomologist, first introduced me to ecological stewardship and took me collecting in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Swarm: Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian plays with the form of Dutch portraiture, at once

embracing and denying the pose, attire, and framing of Golden Age artists such as Judith Leyster, Frans Hals, and Vermeer. The face, overrun with a swarm of insects, also speaks to the impossibility of seeing Maria clearly through the foggy lens of 300 years.

The painting hand-combines the meticulousness of Maria’s own scientific illustrations

and extreme realism of Dutch still life painting with chaotic, organic ink spills. The spills

become verdant growths, porous systems, insect hatches, mold, and the sweet rot of the

tropics. The tension between the tightly controlled and the leaking paint speaks as much to the external worlds Maria straddled as it does to her headspace.

Wanxin Zhang Mulan, 2020 High-fired porcelain and stoneware 26 x 18 x 4 inches $6,000

Wanxin Zhang ChangChun, China | San Francisco, CA Mulan Hua Mulan is a legendary hero—a female warrior from Chinese history (she lived during the period of the Northern and Souther dynasties, 420 and 589 CE). As a young girl,

Mulan disguised herself as a boy to take her aging father's place in the army draft. Her story and image have since encouraged generations of young people to step up,

especially young women, to be strong both mentally and physically. Personally, I am

grateful for her story since my daughter April has seemingly adopted her qualities of

resolute firmness and filial piety. This has inspired me to make many sculptures of Hua Mulan to share with the world and to show my appreciation for this cultural icon.

Furthermore, her story fits well into the Me Too movement since Mulan is a symbol of female strength. I am showing Hua Mulan with a pussy hat to represent the many

women warriors who today are fighting for their basic human rights and for justice, for themselves and their families, just like Mulan did in ages past.