The Mississippi University for Women Eugenia Summer Art Gallery is exhibiting a five-person group show, part of its “Intersections of Gender and Place” project. The exhibition runs through Nov. 6. The opening reception is Friday from 5:30-7 p.m. in the Art and Design Building on campus. A panel discussion with the artists is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in the gallery. Both events are open to the public.
“Intersections of Gender and Place” is both the title of the exhibition as well as the name of the larger project, which includes group exhibitions and will ultimately produce a 30-person invitational exhibition, a catalogue and a traveling exhibition. The project artists make work that is in part an exploration of gender, or of place, or of the interaction of gender and location. It is a collaboration between Dr. Beverly Joyce, art historian at MUW’s Department of Art and Design, and Alexander Stelioes-Wills, director of the Eugenia Summer Gallery. This project comes from Joyce’s research into the question, “Is there a Southern voice in feminist art?”
The artists
Artists in the current exhibit are Julia A. Fenton, Marita Gootee, Edna Lanieri, Lindsey Mears and Dorothy Netherland.
Fenton holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Atlanta College of Art and pursued graduate work in women’s studies at Emory University and art history at the University of Chicago. The Jackson native studied one year at MUW, but finished her bachelor’s degree at Millsaps College. She lives in Atlanta where she is curator for the Emory University School of Medicine. She has exhibited regionally and nationally.
Gootee is a professor of art at Mississippi State University. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana State University and a bachelor’s degree from the College of Mount Saint Joseph on the Ohio. She has been selected five times for the Mississippi Invitational at the Mississippi Museum of Art, more than any other artist in the state. Gootee’s work was selected for the 2008 “Women to Watch” Invitational at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Lanieri, originally from Long Island, is a New Orleans-based artist teaching photography at Xavier University of Louisiana. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and in London and Tokyo.
Mears received her Master of Fine Arts degree in book arts and printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is the recipient of the NICHE Award from American Style Magazine, and Best in Show from the Mid-Atlantic Audubon Society Exhibition, as well as numerous other awards. She teaches and holds workshops and has held numerous artist residencies, including one at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina.
Netherland, based in Charleston, South Carolina, received a bachelor’s degree in studio art from the College of Charleston. Her work was represented in the 2004 South Carolina Triennial at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, and in Studio Visits, in 2007 at the Greenville County Museum of Art, as well in two Contemporary Charleston Piccolo Spoleto Festival exhibitions.
She participated in a 2011 artist residency in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, Germany. That year, she was named Artist of the Year of the Contemporaries of the Columbia Museum of Art. Her work was included in E. Ashley Rooney’s 2012 book “100 Southern Artists,” and will be featured in Rooney’s 2014 book, “Artists in Their Studios.”
Netherland’s work was selected for inclusion in the 2013 South Carolina Biennial at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia.
Connections
According to Joyce, the works of these artists make a very diverse but coherent exhibition.
“The five artists are very different, but at the same time complement one another. Together the artwork provokes an exciting dialogue, adding a new dimension to our research,” said Joyce. “Julia Denton draws upon an esoteric myth of a dangerous woman. Lindsey Mears examines the image of womanhood in rural Virginia with her collages inspired by quilt patterns. Edna Lanieri gives us an entirely different view of gender construction in her photographic portraits. Marita Gootee remembers the final days of her elderly mother, while Dorothy Netherland presents the other end of life’s spectrum with her depictions of a pubescent girl.”
Stelioes-Wills said, “Although this exhibition shares some similarities with the previous two `Intersections’ exhibitions, it is also quite different in feeling. Having five artists instead four, including two photographers, both with work that is strongly socially engaged, exhibiting such a large installation piece dominate the back wall, and having so much more figurative work — all of these factors have combined to make this exhibition a startling, fresh take on themes that we have been exploring over the last three years.”
The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located in the Art and Design Building on the Southwest corner of the MUW campus, between Stark Recreation Center and Fant Library. The gallery is often able to extend viewing hours. For more information, call 662-329-7341 or 662-329-7291 or email [email protected].
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