“It is hard not to see a twenty-artist exhibition as a celebration, particularly when there is so much material exuberance, humor and physicality in the work, and By Our Own Hands builds its foundation on that. A nod to Faith Wilding’s 1977 publication of the same name, that was originally intended to accompany the unrealized exhibition, “Southern California Women’s Art Movement from 1970-1976,” the 2019 edition celebrates a range of career stages through the lens of the hand. Artists in this group show their hand, so to speak, both through tangible acts of craft and symbolic gestures – with a range of materials from glass, clay and textile to carved rock and wax”.
• Shannon Stratton, excerpt from exhibition essay.
Womanhouse was to open to the public from January 30 to February 28, 1972. It had taken two full months to complete and had attracted nation-wide attention in the media. During the month it was on view thousands of people of all ages came to see it.
Womanhouse was an historic event, a happening to which audiences came with different expectations than those they usually bring to art. Womanhouse was in fact the first public exhibition of “feminist art. - Faith Wilding, By Our Own Hands: Women Artist's Movement Southern California 1970-1976, Double X, 1977. Cover Image by Nancy Youdelman http:// www.womanhouse.net
About the Artists
Yevgeniya Baras is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Yevgeniya has a BA and MS from the University of Pennsylvania (2003) and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). Yevgeniya has exhibited her work in several New York City galleries and internationally. She is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in NY and the Landing Gallery in LA. Yevgeniya is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the Pollock-Krasner grant and the Chinati Foundation Residency in 2018, and the Yaddo Residency in 2017. She received the Artadia Prize and was selected for the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program and the MacDowell Colony residency in 2015. In 2014 she was named the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Prize. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, LA Times, ArtForum, and Art in America. Yevgeniya co-founded and co-curated Regina Rex Gallery on the Lower East Side of NY (2010-2018). Yevgeniya has curated and co-curated over twenty exhibitions at Regina Rex and other galleries in NY, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Yevgeniya is teaching at RISD and Sarah Lawrence College.
Jesse Butcher (b. 1982) is an artist and educator currently living in Memphis, TN. Butcher received a BFA from The Rhode Island School Of Design in 2005 and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Butcher has been an artist in residence at the Graham Foundation during the Breaking Glass Summer Seminar and a HATCH Resident Artist at the Chicago Artists Coalition. Curatorial projects include Okay Mountain and MASS Gallery in Austin, TX. He is a Co-founder of Walls Divide Press. Classes taught include “Introduction to Photographic Image Making,” “Damaged: Punk and Images” and “Exploratory Media.” His recent exhibitions include IN FOCUS at the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, AZ, America at PhilMOCA at Philadelphia, PA, and No Fate But What We Make at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.
kg was born in Poland 1980 lives works in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Blue Out Of My Mouth at Freerange gallery Chicago, Changeling at Julius Caesar Chicago, and Alter at Terrain in Oak Park IL. In January 2019 kg hung a solo exhibition, Some Kind Of Duty, of woven works at The DePaul Art Museum that includes a participatory badminton field made in collaboration with artist Betsy Odom. Upcoming shows include the group show Queer Forms at the katherine e. nash gallery Minneapolis MN, and the group show I Am I Said at Carthage College. Kg attended The Skowhegan School of painting and sculpture in 2017 and The Vermont Studio Center as a fellow in 2018. They currently live and work in Chicago. Their first monograph Some Kind Of Duty is available for purchase at The DePaul Art Museum and on Amazon.com . More information on kg at www.karolinagnatowski.com.
Julia Schmitt Healy was born in Elmhurst, Illinois and received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Ray Yoshida and Whitney Halsted. After graduation, Healy moved to Africa, where she traveled and lived, then later toured Europe and moved in Nova Scotia, Canada with her first husband. Her work was represented for many years by Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York and Chicago, as well as Susan Whitney Gallery in Canada. While in school, she co-curated a Mail Art Show with artist Ray Johnson, called “Intercourse,” at the Wabash Transit Gallery. Presently she divides her time between a Manhattan apartment in the East Village and a house/studio in Port Jervis, New York.
Sheree Hovsepian (American b.Iran) earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, a dual BFA/BA from the University of Toledo in 1999, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1998. Her work highlights the physicality of the photograph and photography’s relationship to the human body. Coaxed into sculptural forms, layered with tactile materials, and assembled into larger compositions, Hovsepian’s pictures oscillate between object and image, creating a sensuous, bodily experience of the photographic document. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions have been organized by Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2019) Team Bungalow, Los Angeles (with Paul Mpagi Sepuya, (2019): and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago (2018) Recent group exhibitions include Seductive Reduction, CHART Gallery, New York (2019); Material Gestures, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago (2019); and Where Do We Stand?, The Drawing Center, New York (2017). Hovsepian’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bronx Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others.
Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014) was a prolific artist involved in the New York art scene beginning in the late 1960s. Most well-known for her large-scale sculptures using fabric as the primary material, she also created works on paper, artist books, and outdoor installations, exploring themes of temporality, history, and biography. She was also a writer, art critic, and translator. She was initially involved in conceptual art and writing, collaborating with her sister, poet Bernadette Mayer, and ex-husband, Vito Acconci, on the journal 0 TO 9. A pioneer of the feminist art movement, she was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the first cooperative gallery for women in the U.S. and had one of the earliest shows there. In 1982, her translation of the diary of Mannerist artist Jacopo da Pontormo was published along with a catalogue of her work. During the 1970s and 1980s, her work was also shown at many New York alternative art spaces, including The Clocktower, Sculpture Center, and Franklin Furnace, and in university galleries throughout the country.
In 2016, Southfirst Gallery in Brooklyn exhibited a selection of Mayer’s work from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first major exhibit of her work in over thirty years, it was reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, and artforum.com. A version of this show was exhibited at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia in 2017. Her work has also been included in several group exhibitions including at Nichelle Beauchene Gallery, Murray Guy Gallery, and Bridget Donahue. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art acquired some of Mayer’s drawings and artist books from the 1970s.
Sophia Narrett holds a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University and a MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been shown at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; Lux Art Institute, Encinitas, CA; Museum Rijswijk, Holland; Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Jack Barrett Gallery, Paul Kasmin Gallery, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Museum of Sex, Freight + Volume, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Bric Arts | Media House and Nancy Margolis Gallery, all in NY. She has participated in residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME; the Museum of Arts and Design, NY; and the Lux Art Institute, Encinitas, CA. Narrett’s work was recently highlighted in a T: The New York Times Style Magazine article, “Some of the Most Provocative Political Art is Made With Fibers,” by Leslie Camhi. She is a 2018 recipient of a Pollock- Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work is included in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and the CAPP Collection of Contemporary Art at the University of Maryland. Narrett was born in 1987 in Concord, MA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Erin Jane Nelson lives and works in Atlanta, GA. In 2011 she received her BFA from The Cooper Union. Nelson has a current solo exhibition at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and recent solo presentations at Document Gallery, Chicago and Hester, New York. Her work is currently featured in a two-person exhibition with Joshua Nathanson at Van Doren Waxter, New York and has recently been included in exhibitions at Capital Gallery, San Francisco, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which recently acquired the artist’s work.
Heidi Norton (American, born 1977, lives NYC) curator of the exhibition is an artist and writer whose 1970’s upbringing as a child of New Age homesteaders in West Virginia resulted in a strong connection to the land, plant life and nature. She received her BFA from University of Maryland, Baltimore, her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was a recipient of a residency at Elmhurst Art Museum where her exhibition, Prismatic Nature, a major site responsive exhibition was on view. Other solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Monique Meloche Gallery Chicago, among others. Selective group exhibitions include Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, Depaul Art Museum, the Knitting Factory, Chicago Cultural Center, Ohio State University, Gallery 400 University of Illinois Chicago, La Box Gallery National School of Art France. Her writings and work are include in Art21, BOMB Magazine, Journal for Artistic Research, Grafts by Michael Marder, and newly released, Why Look at Plants ed. by Giovanni Aloi. She is an adjunct professor at Purchase College, FIT and International Center of Photography. Her most recent illustrated essay, The Faceless Plant: A Sketch for Timothy Morton, is in a recent issue of BOMB Magazine.
Janine Polak born in Nebraska, received a BA in Studio Art (Sculpture and Photography) and Economics from the University of Virginia in 2005, and was awarded an Aunspaugh Fellowship at UVa the following year. In 2008, she earned an MFA from the Yale University School of Art, Department of Sculpture. She has exhibited throughout the US including at Essex Flowers, NYC; Brennan & Griffin, NYC; Equity Gallery, NYC; TSA NYC; Sculpture Space NYC; Scott Charmin, Houston, TX; and two solo shows at Sardine, Brooklyn. She has also exhibited internationally in Beijing, China, and Australia. She has collaborated on projects from installations to books that have been sold at PS1 Art Book Fair and worked with Black Cat Journal on a production for the BABZ fair in Brooklyn. She has attended multiple residencies in China and the US. Her work explored materials that, much like our own bodies, contain incredible strength, yet extreme vulnerability. Tightly woven silk, slip-dipped high-fired porcelain, fused and inflated glass, and tiny bits of jewelry-turned-hardware have all been explored in recent years. She currently lives and works in Queens, New York and is an Assistant Professor of Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNY and the Chair of Foundations.
Amber Renaye (American, b. 1986) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA from the University of North Texas (Denton, TX) in 2008. Recent exhibitions include Mother Gallery (Beacon, NY), Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL), Circuit 12 Contemporary (Dallas, TX), Crystal Flowers (New York, NY), Left Field (San Luis Obispo, CA), and Johannes Vogt (New York, NY).
Brie Ruais [b. 1982] lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts in 2011. Her work has been exhibited at public institutions including the Katzen Center at American University, Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She has had solo shows with Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, NY and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Awards and residencies include The Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2018), The Sharpe Walentas Studio Program (2018), the Dieu Donne Fellowship (2016), Montello Foundation Residency (2017), Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship (2014), The Shandaken Project Residency (2014) among others. Ruais' work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; The Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Philadelphia, PA; the Pizzuti Collection, OH; and the BurgerCollection Hong Kong. She is featured Vitamin C: New Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Clay and Ceramics, by Phaidon (2017).
Sophie Stone (b. 1987, Massachusetts) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009). She has been featured in exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Nina Johnson, Miami, M+B Los Angeles (all 2018), Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles (solo), Romeo, New York, James Fuentes (all 2017),Johannes Vogt, New York, Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, Shoot the Lobster, New York (all 2016), Eli Ping, New York (2013), and Nicole Klagsbrun, New York (2012). Sophie has been written about in Art News, Artforum, Artsy, Frieze Magazine, and Hyperallergic. She lives and works in New York.
Katya Tepper has exhibited work at White Columns (New York), Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta), Species (Atlanta), and The Hand (Brooklyn). They are the recipient of a 2016 Wynn Newhouse Award, and a 2017 MacDowell Fellowship. They hold a BFA from The Cooper Union, and are currently an MFA candidate at the Milton Avery School of Art at Bard College. Originally from South Florida (1987), Tepper lives and works in Athens, GA.
Zipporah Camille Thompson is a visual artist and sculptor based in Atlanta, Georgia. Thompson explores ritual and alchemical transformations via the unknown and through universals. Metamorphosed, shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes reflect various archaeological, psychological, and ecological affinities, as well as a personal investigation of self and otherness. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine and Art Papers, amongst other notable publications. She has shown at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn, Rogue Space in Chelsea, Gallery 400 in Chicago, IL, and Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA, as well as a host of other venues and spaces. Her work is included in numerous private collections. Zipporah Camille Thompson is a 2016 Artadia (Atlanta) Finalist, a recipient of the Zenobia Scholarship Award for residency at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, a 2018 NCECA Multicultural Fellow, and a 2018 Idea Capital grant recipient. She is currently a selected artist for The Creatives Program, with studio residency at The Goat Farm. Thompson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA.
Cameron Welch b. 1990. Lives and works in New York. BFA 2013 School of the Art Institute of Chicago. MFA 2016 Columbia University. Welch has had recent solo exhibitions at Rental Gallery in 2018 and 2019, as well as a solo exhibition at Nino Mier Gallery also in 2019. He has been included in group shows at Phillips, Rental Gallery, and Carl Kostyal Gallery this year. The artist also has an upcoming two person show at Jenkins Johnson Projects this September.
Faith Wilding received her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. where she was a member of the Feminist Art Program and participated in the production of "Womanhouse" and other groundbreaking feminist art projects. She was a co-founder of the Los Angeles feminist art movement, about which she published the book By Our Own Hands in l977. Wilding is a recognized scholar on the history of feminist art and theory, and the emergent formations of cyberfeminism. Wilding is a Professor Emerita of Performance Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wilding is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited widely (individually and collectively) for forty years throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Her work addresses issues of the recombinant and distributed body in various media including 2-D, video, Web pages, installations, and performances that have been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; The Whitney Museum of Art; the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the Riverside Museum of Art; the Art Gallery at the University of Maryland; The Drawing Center in New York; Cooper Union Gallery, NY; Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Documenta X in Kassel, the Next Five Minutes Festival in Amsterdam; the Singapore Art Museum, and in Zurich, Vienna, Bremen, Hamburg, and Karlsruhe. Wilding received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009; Art Matters grant, (2015) two individual media grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (l986, l989) and 2 individual artist grants from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1998/2002), as well as a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1986). With subRosa she received a Creative Capital artist grant in 2002-2004. Currently, Wilding shows with ANATEBGI gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
Carmen Winant (b. 1983, San Francisco) is an artist and writer based in Columbus, OH; her work utilizes installation and collage strategies to examine feminist modes of survival and revolt. Winant's recent projects have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Sculpture Center, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Wexner Center of the Arts, and through CONTACT Photography festival, which is currently showing twenty-six of her billboards across Canada. Winant's artist books -- My Life as a Man and My Birth -- were published by Horses Think Press, SPBH Editions, and ITI press. Her forthcoming book, Notes on Fundamental Joy; seeking the elimination of oppression through the social and political transformation of the patriarchy that otherwise threatens to bury us, will be published by Printed Matter Inc. Winant is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in photography.
Lizzie Wright (b. 1979, Louisiana) lives and works in New York City and the Catskills. She has exhibited at various spaces including Rawson Projects, NY; Essex Flowers, NY; Adds Donna, Chicago; and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, NY. She received an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. Her work has been reviewed by The New Yorker and New City Art.
Bryce Zackery (Rochester, MN 1984) Self-taught artist who specializes in painting and sculpture. Began working in art professionally under the mentorship of Tim Rollins as a member of K.O.S. Following his work with K.O.S. Zackery began developing abstract reliefs and paintings connecting literature, language, and people. As a solo artist Zackery has exhibited within the United States, as well as Europe and Canada. With his stitch paintings Zackery creates portraits based upon people he meets or simply watches in passing. The materials are a naive metaphor for the interwoven nature of social interaction in both the physical and digital worlds. Although the methods of connection my evolve the primitive to desire to connect endures.
