Join Leeway grantees Alice Oh (SA ’00), Barbara Bullock (BBA ’02), Betsy Casañas (LTA ’08), Marta Sanchez (ACG ’06, WOO ’02), Martina Johnson-Allen (WOO ’03), and Nannette Acker Clark (BBA ’99), along with artists Doris Nogueira-Rogers, Maya Freelon Asante, Heather Pieters, Sica and Kathleen Spicer for a Women’s Work exhibit. An opening reception will be held at the Sande Webster Gallery, 2006 Walnut Street, Philadelphia on Friday, April 9, 2010 from 6-8pm. The public is cordially invited to attend.
Women’s Work recognizes the accomplishments and cultural contributions made by dedicated female artists in the Philadelphia region. This exhibition explores a range of work by emerging to established artists. Women’s Work honors these artists whose powerful voices and individual experiences deserve our attention: Martina Johnson-Allen, Maya Freelon Asante, Barbara Bullock, Betsy Casañas, Nannette Acker Clark, Alice Oh, Heather Pieters, Doris Nogueira-Rogers, Marta Sanchez, Sica and Kathleen Spicer.
Martina Johnson-Allen was born and raised in Philadelphia. She received her BA in Elementary Education at The Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in Art Education with an emphasis in Printmaking at The University of the Arts. Martina Johnson-Allen has exhibited her prints, artist books, box constructions, graphite drawings, soft sculptures and mixed media three dimensional assemblages and dress facades in many U. S. shows, including at The African American Museum in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The American Craft Museum in New York, and the Renwick and National Museum of American Art, both of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Johnson-Allen enjoys the freedom of the creative process. In her work, Sacred Space, she explores color and surface qualities, which leads to surprising results in a grid of five sided box constructions.
Maya Freelon Asante lives in Baltimore. She is an award-winning visual artist whose work has been described by poet Dr. Maya Angelou as “observing and visualizing the truth about the vulnerability and power of the human being.” Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, The Museum of the National Center of Afro American Art and the U.S. State Department. She studied art at the American University in Paris, earned her BA from Lafayette College and her MFA from the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her signature work uses multicolored tissue paper as both a medium for sculpture and as a bleeding technique for painterly monoprinting.
Barbara Bullock was named a NJSCA Distinguished Teaching Artist in 1997 and 2001. She is a recipient of a 1997 Pew Fellowship in the Arts; Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Visual Arts Residency Grant; Pennsylvania Council on Arts Fellowship and the Leeway Foundation’s Bessie Berman Grant. Her painted and collaged works on paper are part of the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Lewis Tanner Moore Collection. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she attended Hussian School of Art with additional studies at the Fleisher Art Memorial. Since 1989, she has been a major force in integrating art into the classroom curriculum in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, through artist residency programs that offer her substantial financial support. Bullock describes her entire body of work as “Chasing After Spirits”. Her evocative images create dreamlike narratives about African American ancestral histories and intuitive memories.
Betsy Casañas studied art at Moore College of Art and Design where she received her BFA and has worked in the Latino community since 1994. Casañas has assisted and designed over 35 public murals and mosaics nationally and internationally. Presently Betsy is an exhibiting artist and a muralist for the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. In 2007 Casañas co-founded The Semilla Arts Initiative a grassroots initiative that uses art as a catalyst for social change and collaboration as a means of empowering individuals and communities through the use of art. Her figure painting is autobiographical and touches open the interconnectedness of the basic human experience.
Nannette Acker Clark earned her BFA in sculpture from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and her MA in Art Education from University of the Arts. Her contemplative and graphic sculptural works are held in many public and private collections including Hampton University Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Independence Blue Cross. Clark has received the Bessie Berman Grant for established artists from the Leeway Foundation and has been an artist-in-residence at both The Fabric Workshop and The Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia. Clark’s new works explore the interaction of line, pattern and color in three dimensional relief. Her work is partially inspired by the pieced textile construction tradition of countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, and American quilts and contemporary sculpture concepts.
Alice Oh earned her MFA from Yale University and BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Her work is included in the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Leeway Foundation, Temple University, Yale University and SAP America, Inc. She has been awarded a fellowship and a GAP Grant from Pew Fellowships in the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Painting, the Seedling Grant and the WOA Award from The Leeway Foundation, and was an artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, NE and Vermont Studio Center. She is an Assistant Professor at Moore College of Art and Design and lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. and Seoul, Korea. Oh fuses the worlds of art and science in her paintings created from layers of shifting oval shapes. She is fascinated by the coexistence of the microscopic and macroscopic worlds in nature. Her paintings express a deep curiosity and celebrate the amazing diversity and complexity of nature.
Heather Pieters is an emerging artist who has earned her BA from the State University of New York, Stoney Brook and her MFA in painting from University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Her colorful abstract paintings have been shown in several solo exhibitions in California. She is currently a teaching artist at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Pieters’ paintings explore the nuances of color mixing, compositional arrangement and textural surface.
Doris Nogueira-Rogers received a BA degree in Art, and Interior Architecture and Design from the School of Fine Arts, Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Born and raised in Brazil, Philadelphia has been her home since 1978. She has never lost her passion and sensibility for the exuberant nature of Brazil. She is an award winning multimedia artist, independent curator and teaching artist. Nogueira-Rogers consistently uses floral and organic elements in her art. Her work is focused on the preservation and celebration of the colors, shapes and textures of nature.
Marta Sanchez studied painting at University of Texas at Austin where she received her BFA, and Tyler School of Art, Temple University for her MFA. She received the Art and Change Grant in 2006 and the Window of Opportunity Grant in 2002, both from the Leeway Foundation. She is the founder and coordinator of Cascarones Por La Vida, an annual fundraiser benefiting children with AIDS and the homeless of Philadelphia. Her work was recently exhibited in Chicano Art and Soul, at the Muzeo in Anaheim, California, as a part of the Cheech Marin Collection Exhibition. Her work is also collected by the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; University of California, Los Angeles and La Salle University Museum. Sanchez’s paintings and works on paper reveal an ongoing narrative of her culture and community as it changes in scope and identity.
Sica is an international artist who lives and works in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. She has studied bronze casting in India, Indian weaving in Guatemala, printmaking in Greece and painting in Vietnam. Sica began her studies at the Arts Students League, NYC, attended the Pratt Graphics Workshop and setup a printmaking studio in the former Yugoslavia. Her work is held in major international collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Modern Art, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Portugal; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec; Brooklyn Museum, NYC and Miami Museum of Modern Art, Florida. Sica’s newest bronze sculptures reveal modern geometric shapes that are abstractions of figures, places and ideas from around the world. Her world travels and studies are the most formative influence on her life and work as an artist.
Kathleen Spicer received her BFA from Parsons School of Design, New York. She has had two public commissions in NYC and awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Her colorful painted wood sculptural work is held in many public and private collections. Her corporate collections include Citibank NA, NY; Philip Morris, Inc, NY; Arco Chemical, PA and Merck Pharmaceutical, Inc, PA. Spicer’s sculptures are organic, mathematical, animated, sensual, and analytic and have a bit of humor. Over many years she has developed work, which bridges the gap between painting and object and therefore defies category.
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