Monday March 27th, 2023
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EST (Zoom)
Andrew Hottle
Andrew D. Hottle is Professor of Art History at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. His research focuses on women in the visual arts, especially feminists of the 1970s. In addition to articles, essays, and book reviews, he has published two scholarly books, including The Art of the Sister Chapel: Exemplary Women, Visionary Creators, and Feminist Collaboration(2014).As a result of his research. The Sister Chapel(1974-78) was reconstituted as a permanent installation at Rowan University in 2019. He is currently completing a comprehensive monograph on the feminist artist Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010) and preparing the catalogue raisonné of her paintings. He is also writing an extensive monograph on the nineteen founding artist-members of SOHO 20 Gallery (est. 1973), a historically important women-only cooperative exhibition venue in New York City.
Cynthia Mailman
By 1970 I had developed a way of working that was personal to me. I sought to show space in a new way without blending colors on the canvas. My colors were cool and muted. My subject was ecological which I’ve continued throughout my life. In those early days I faced much rejection from galleries who saw my work as “too feminine” and “very girly”. I luckily happened upon the Premier exhibit at SOHO20, a woman’s co-operative Gallery dedicated to showing excellence in women's art without boundaries of style or medium. The work I saw was different from anything I had been seeing in the art world. I was impressed, I applied and was accepted. The relationships I formed and the support system from SOHO20 and the entire woman’s art movement changed my life and legitimized my pursuit as an artist. In 1977, I was invited to participate in the “Sister Chapel”. For this Project I painted “God” as a woman. This led me to do a series of works on paper which investigated prehistoric imagery as evidence that the earliest and most potent deities were female. By this time the Supreme Court had confirmed the right of choice. I never imagined that a woman’s sovereignty over her own body could ever be rewritten or cancelled. But, much as early female deities were replaced by other entities, mostly male, female agency is again under assault. The works in this show are a continuation of that early series, “The Origins of God”.
Vernita Nemec
Vernita Nemec AKA N’Cognita has been active in the art world as a visual/performance artist and curator since1969when she co-curated“X-12”,the first feminist art show of the period, and worked with such political art organizations as Art workers Coalition (AWC),Women Artists in Revolution (WAR),Artists Meeting for Cultural Change. In the70’s she was adjunct professor at Brooklyn College & in the80’scontinued to do curatorial and administrative work for a variety of art organizations while creating visual and performance art, receiving a Franklin Furnace/Jerome Foundation grant for her performance work at Franklin Furnace and the Woman’s Building in LA. In the90’s, Nemec was Director of Artists Talk On Art, interviewing artworld luminaries, & an independent curator at the Henry Street Settlement for the Arts while independently creating the ongoing Art From Detritus environmental art exhibits which received funding from the Puffin Foundation and the National Recycling Coalition. She is currently the Director of Viridian Artists, a contemporary art gallery in Chelsea. Nemec continues to curate independently and to create art objects and performance artworks. She has exhibited internationally in Budapest, Hungary; Mexico City; Berlin Frankfurt, Germany; Dublin, Ireland and Moscow, Russia as well as at numerous galleries & museums in the U.S. Her early art focused on autobiography but she now creates art concerned with environmental issues-the profusion of junk mail and the evils of plastic. See more on her website
Susan Grabel
Susan Grabel is a feminist, figurative, multimedia artist, curator and arts community organizer. Her work deals with the human dimensions of social issues. She takes to heart Alice Walker’s affirmation that “Activism is my rent for living on this planet.” “Influenced by her generation of 1960’s activism and her family’s humanist values, she has made a career of activism and storytelling, with a goal of increasing our awareness of social issues and ultimately our compassion.”
Grabel has exhibited in solo and group shows at galleries, universities and museums across the country including a retrospective at the Staten Island Museum in 2012. Her work was included in such important surveys of sculpture as In Three Dimension: Women Sculptors of the ‘90's, 1995, curated by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, SI, NY, and Sculpture of the 70's: the Figure, 1981 at Pratt Manhattan Center, NYC
She is currently president of Ceres Gallery, a feminist gallery in NYC and has organized numerous exhibitions and panel discussions around feminist issues. She recently co-curated with Stefany Benson, the exhibition, Don’t Shut Up 2021 at Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island. It was about the silencing of women and the need to raise and value women's voices.
Ellen Lubell
A student of art critic Lawrence Alloway, Ellen became an art critic in 1972, eventually writing for Arts Magazine, Art in America, Soho News, The Village Voice, New York Newsday (mostly about television) and The Star-Ledger of Newark.
From 1976 – 1978, Ellen was founder/editor/publisher of womanart magazine, a groundbreaking publication devoted exclusively to art by women. Mimicking the reviews/features/news format of major art magazines, womanart sought to provide the greatest number of women artists with the exposure they needed for recognition and a place in critical discourse.
In 1978, Ellen was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as editor of womanart. A full archive of womanart is available at www.womanartmag.org
Ellen has also worked in public relations for nonprofit organizations. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.