-- SENSUOUS ABUNDANCE --
Exploring the Mystique of the Eternal Feminine
DECEMBER 4, 2004 - JANUARY 2, 2005
OPENING RECEPTION
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 4:00 to 7:00 P.M.
Diana Schmertz, "Gwenn." |
 Janet
Morgan, "Floating
Kwan Yin (Goddess of Compassion)" |
Robin
Gaynes-Bachman, "Saraswati" |
Anki
King,"Not Given" |
Alejandra Villasmil,
"Fantasy Landscape (#1)" |
 Patricia Cazorla,
"One Moment..."
|
" The Oldest of the Old follows us in our thinking,
yet it comes to meet us..."
--Martin Heidegger
Kim Bach * C Bangs * Anna B. Bogatin * Patricia Cazorla * Robin Gaynes-Bachman * Anki King * Sári Menna * Janet Morgan * Diana Schmertz * Katherine Stecko * Alejandra Villasmil
There resides at the innermost of every poet and artist an exigency to reverence the forms of feminine graciousness. From the dawn of time mankind has acknowledged and worshipped the Eternal Feminine as the spiritual underpinning of the world's most profound mysteries: Creation & Birth, Gathering & Sheltering, Death & Renewal -- Earth Mother, Warrior Goddess, Divine Bride, The Queen of the Universe -- countless appellatives for an ineffable deity more ancient than religion itself...
SENSUOUS ABUNDANCE addresses the elusive mystique of the feminine image through the contemporary renderings of 11 women artists. Acknowledging the quiet promptings of the Muse as central to their creative self-exploration, and ever sensitive to the intimate intermingling of history and immediacy, these artists honor the Eternal Feminine. In imagery expressive of the free life of the imagination, and in rapt appreciation for its sensory adventure, these portraitures evoke through vital, passionate language and symbolic revelations, a plentitude of feminine modes in full-bodied character: anguishing sorrow, exhilerating joy, sultry sensuousness, unpitying wrath, and the enigmatic smile of abiding desideration.
Re-evaluating the image of 'woman' is imperative in these times of renewed paternalism, when the identity and esteem of gender is once again the target of routine degradation by parochial political structures. SENSUOUS ABUNDANCE recognizes the feminine prerogative at the core of the artistic process, for women are sentient to the relationship between Nature and the destinies of Her subjects, and as artists and poets they are aware of their special stewardship in Her creation -- privy to that unconcealment of Her essential being, women alone define the sensuous abundance of the world.
James Pinney, Curator