ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art
Cultural Exchange and Exhibition
China
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Our Juror
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Terri Weissman, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Weissman teaches Modern and Contemporary Art, and the History of Photography. She is the author of The Realisms of Berenice Abbott: Documentary Photography and Political Action (2011), and the co-curator (with Sharon Corwin and Jessica May) of the exhibition American Modern: Abbott, Evans and Bourke-White. Her articles “Detroit's Edible Gardens: Art and Agriculture in a Post-Environmental World,” published inThird Text (Online), and "Freedom's Just Another Word," in the collection Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present, are part of her current project on the visual culture of protest movements. http://illinois.edu/ds/search?search_&search=tweissma |
Terri Weissman
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Our Essays and Essayists
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Betsy Damon, "Betsy Damon: Knowing Water"
Brooklyn, New York Betsy Damon's journey to knowing water has taken her to the deserts of Utah, all the way to the Himalayan Mountains, into the polluted rivers of Chengdu and through the storm water pipes of Pittsburgh. For her, to follow water was to discover ancient tradition, contemporary blunders, the greed of privatization, and the generosity and strength of close-knit communities. |
Betsy Damon
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Sandra Mueller," 'Pearls of Wisdom' — A Personal Account"
Malibu, California A poignant account of a two-year community engagement project between artist Kim Abeles, nonprofit A Window Between Worlds and 800 survivors of domestic violence that the author chaired. Based on the powerful metaphor of pearls as treasures that form inside an oyster in response to a hurtful irritant, the author shares the challenges of producing this multi-faceted collaboration that produced a stunning exhibition, four-color catalogue with essays by Suzanne Lacy, Barbara T. Smith, compelling programs and an online curriculum and blog. |
Sandra Mueller
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Natalie Phillips, "To Belie the Dragonflly: Elisabeth Subrin's Rhetoric of Silence"
Muncie, Indiana This essay is an examination of the films and videos of Elisabeth Subrin, an artist whose work poignantly explores the widespread silencing of women’s voices in our culture and their desperate struggle to be heard. Subrin’s biographical and auto-biographical films help to defiantly give women back their voices and act as a powerful protest against the suppression of women’s voices by all manner of patriarchal authority. |
Natalie Phillips
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Sherry Saunders, "Celebrity and Gender in Graphic Design"
Celebrity and Gender in Graphic Design discusses how although women make up more than half the graphic design profession, men represent the majority of celebrity designers; women become the basic task workers, holding up “half the sky” in the graphic design world, yet most do not receive the same recognition as their male counterparts. Perceptions of gender in graphic design as well as the creation of a canon in graphic design are both explored as a potential problems in perpetuating this trend. |
Sherry Saunders
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Call for Essays Theme
The Academy asked us to have an essay component to the catalog around the topic of Contemporary Art Practices of Women in the US. Are there any remaining and defining boundaries to women's art practices and how does this relate to a definition of art as a whole? Are there still niches of art practice particular to a woman's perspective? What are the roots of Social Practice Art in relation to women's art history? How are Social Practice Art academic programs shaping the work of women artists? This art and cultural exchange project with its opportunities for building community and common understanding, collaborative art creation, and dialogue is, in itself, a piece of Social Practice Art. How are such works critiqued? How do we put Social Practice works in context with other art forms? What women artists in the United States are creating excitement in today’s art marketplace and/or influencing art practices? Essayists are also invited to submit essays about their collaborations with community organizations and other aritsts as well as their relationship to aesthetics, documentation practices and social interventions.
The Academy asked us to have an essay component to the catalog around the topic of Contemporary Art Practices of Women in the US. Are there any remaining and defining boundaries to women's art practices and how does this relate to a definition of art as a whole? Are there still niches of art practice particular to a woman's perspective? What are the roots of Social Practice Art in relation to women's art history? How are Social Practice Art academic programs shaping the work of women artists? This art and cultural exchange project with its opportunities for building community and common understanding, collaborative art creation, and dialogue is, in itself, a piece of Social Practice Art. How are such works critiqued? How do we put Social Practice works in context with other art forms? What women artists in the United States are creating excitement in today’s art marketplace and/or influencing art practices? Essayists are also invited to submit essays about their collaborations with community organizations and other aritsts as well as their relationship to aesthetics, documentation practices and social interventions.