NCWCA President’s Note

A Note from NCWCA’s President

Our culture trains women to “stay small.” From girlhood, we are told not to take up too much space physically, emotionally, in our homes, and in our careers. At the moment, there’s a poem making the rounds on the internet that begins:

“I bet she’ll be pretty” They say at her cot, I wonder what this means So I ask “pretty what?” “Pretty bold? Pretty bright? Pretty wise, loud, and brave?” But they just mean her face, And they hope she’ll behave ~Kiara Whittle

So, what happens when women absorb these restrictive messages and “behave”? We may find that we become shameful, angry, self-conscious. Our power and creativity, stifled, begin to extinguish.

Then again, what happens when women throw off years of indoctrination and decide to live outside of the societal boundaries set for us by others? What happens when we center ourselves in our own narratives? When we assert rather than accommodate, spread out rather than shrink, persist—even provoke—rather than pull back?

The women-identifying artists in THE WILD SIDE exhibition unflinchingly examine these questions from a range of viewpoints, and their courage is a fair match for the challenge set by the show. Even in easy times, artmaking can be a brutal business. It takes guts to bare one’s mind and soul and the work of one’s hands to the world.

THE WILD SIDE asks these artists to go further—to let their light shine as brightly as they dare—blindingly bright, if need be—and the artists answer with a riot of creative expressions that celebrate the authentic potency that blooms from a woman unleashed.

~Sawyer Rose, NCWCA President