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May Issue 2008
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury,
NC, Features Works by Cathy Breslaw, Susan Harbage Page, and Kathleen
Holmes
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, will present several new exhibitions including: Suspension: Color and Light, featuring brightly colored, mixed media wall hangings that explore issues of femininity, beauty, and cross-cultural boundaries by Cathy Breslaw in the Norvell Gallery; Embroideries, featuring altered domestic textiles that critique feminine submission and introduce social and political dialogue by Susan Harbage Page in the Woodson and Osborne Galleries; and Domestic Goddess, featuring mixed media sculptures of empty dress forms that reference sacred garments and pay homage to generations of female artists by Kathleen Holmes in the Young People's Gallery. All three exhibitions will be on view from May 30 through Sept. 6, 2008.
Feminism, globalization, women's issues, and female craft traditions all feature prominently in the Waterworks Visual Arts Center's summer exhibits, displaying the work of three women artists: California fiber artist Cathy Breslaw, Chapel Hill, NC, photographer and mixed-media artist Susan Harbage Page, and Florida sculptor Kathleen Holmes.
Cathy Breslaw
The large, colorful wall hangings and circular floor pieces of Cathy Breslaw first appear to be quilts or blankets. While her works are made from fibers, they are not of the soft variety from which quilts and blankets are made. Instead, Breslaw creates from plastic fibers: thin, multicolored, layered sheets of the common plastic mesh used all over the world in different products. In her exhibition Suspension: Color and Light, the artist takes this mundane material and - through creative layering and the addition of yarn, ribbon, plastic beads, and drops of paint - transforms it into something truly imaginative and beautiful, subtly touching on the concepts of globalization and femininity along the way.
Globalization refers to the increasing international integration of today's society. Immigration, multiculturalism, economic outsourcing, and global trade agreements all contribute to this phenomenon. Globalization results in a blurring of cultural lines. For example, Americans calling their computer company's customer service hotline may be answered by a representative in India. MacDonald's restaurants can be found in Costa Rica, and the Asian company Sanrio's "Hello Kitty" products are found in gift stores across the world.
Breslaw touches on globalization in her art. The plastic fibers she uses as the basis for all of her pieces have such diverse international uses as American and European produce containers, South American floral wrappings, and even Japanese garbage bags. The artist unleashes the "latent beauty of manufactured materials" by transforming this common, industrial material into art. The concept of transformation is important to the idea of globalization: just as the multiple cultures of the world are being transformed into one large world culture, Breslaw transforms a material of multiple international uses into one style of artwork. In addition, the use of vibrant color underscores this theme.
Breslaw layers sheets of different rainbow-colored mesh into complex combinations of color. Gold overlaps with bright orange to create a cheerful peach shade, filmy white drapes over scarlet to make bubble-gum pink, and purple overlaps with yellow to create an orange-brown shade. This resulting wispy, blurred effect mimics the blurred cultural boundaries of today's world. Furthermore, Breslaw's intricate lacings of ribbon, yarn, and interwoven plastic strings superimposed on top of her mesh surfaces convey the idea of a highly connected interwoven world.
A strong feminist undercurrent also emerges in Breslaw's colorful creations. Formally, her art recalls the work of Miriam Shapiro and the Pattern and Decoration Movement of the 1960s - 70s. A major leader of the Feminist Art Movement, Shapiro championed the crafts of textiles, weaving, and patterning: art forms that had been typically associated with women (and therefore undervalued). Shapiro founded the Pattern and Decoration Movement, which involved embellished surfaces, bright colors, and craft traditions. The physicality of Breslaw's creations pays further homage to women. Although the plastic mesh may appear delicate or even weak, the material is actually very strong and quite durable.
Breslaw earned an MFA in Visual Arts from Claremont Graduate University in California. The artist has exhibited for over twenty years in Colorado, Florida, Texas, and Alabama. Her work can be found in multiple corporate collections in her home state of California.
Susan Harbage Page
At first glance, the embroideries of Susan Harbage Page seem like charming domestic artifacts from a simpler time of generations past. However, one finds on further examination that these beautiful and detailed fabrics are anything but nostalgic. In Embroideries, the artist reclaims old doilies, table runners, and handkerchiefs from yard sales and flea markets; to these she adds her own stitches, introducing stark and sometimes disturbing feminist and political commentary in the process.
Feminism plays a key role within most of the embroideries, touching on ideas of patriarchal sexism, domestic violence, and female intellectual discouragement. One piece, entitled Control, shows four pretty Southern Belles, each holding a bouquet of colorful flowers in a self-contained gesture; their faces are all completely concealed by large, beribboned bonnets, showing that their individual identities matter less than their function as decoration. The viewer's eye next becomes aware of a string, a leash, extended to each girl's neck and clasped by a large, masculine hand in the very center of the composition. This hand is faintly outlined in a peach colored thread and is nearly invisible at first glance. It is no coincidence that this controlling grip is not noticeable right away - just as systems of social control are embedded within culture as natural and therefore invisible, the misogynist grasp in which these four women are trapped is also not immediately apparent.
Another one of Page's embroideries, a pale pink table runner edged in lace and decorated with a white swan, reads in blood-red cursive script "You never knew what kind of mood he would be in," insinuating alcoholism and/or domestic violence. One wonders if the lacey swan may symbolize a battered housewife, aimlessly and helplessly floating across the changeable sea of her husband's moods and tempers. A particularly poignant lace-edged handkerchief features a single flower in the lower corner and one sentence in the center: "I asked too many questions." Indeed, in this nightmare world of domestic oppression, a woman's shameful confession is her quest for knowledge and understanding.
The artist states that "we don't live in an isolated box," and that because we live in a global society, the United States' foreign policy has a great effect on people living all over the world. Page weaves this idea into her embroideries, introducing dialogue on current events in Mexico and the Middle East. Dying to Get In depicts the Texas-Mexico border stretched across a flowered table runner. Security outlines a security wall being built around Palestine. Iraq presents a geographical view of the country's rivers, lakes, and major roads. Because embroideries can be seen as symbols of everyday life, the introduction of politics into embroidery reminds us that overseas events surface within daily life. Page's art helps us realize that all parts of our global society are connected.
Page teaches photography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004 and a MM and BM in saxophone performance from Michigan State University in 1983 and 1981 as well as the Certificate of Knowledge of the Italian Language, The Italian University for Foreigners, Perugia, Italy in 1984. Her work has been exhibited in Bulgaria, Italy, France, Germany, Israel, and China as well as throughout the United States.
Page's work has been collected and exhibited by numerous venues such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado; the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC.; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, the Center for the Study of the American South, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Fulbright International Exchange Program.
Kathleen Holmes
The region in which an artist grows up often has a strong influence on the appearance and concepts of his or her work: sculptor and painter Kathleen Holmes is no exception. Born in Monroe, LA, Holmes focuses her art-making on exploring her Southern heritage, particularly the women of her youth who encouraged her creativity. In Domestic Goddess, the artist uses a wide variety of mixed media - including glass, metal, ceramic, and crocheted cloth - to create richly detailed sculptures of dresses. These beautiful domestic icons explore the symbolism of materials and pay homage to the many generations of Southern women who have endowed her contemporary art with their historic crafts.
The form and media of Holmes' art all contain special significance and rich metaphors. The dress form itself is a reference to the sacred garments - wedding gowns, christening dresses, judges' and clerics' robes, and even death shrouds - that figuratively and literally "clothe" life's processes and milestones. These dress forms consist of a wide range of materials, each with its own special meaning. The cast glass gives solidity to her domestic icons, while their translucency represents the delicacy of traditional women's work. Some sculptures include rusted, pierced, or shaped metal: this refers to man-made aspects of society and provides a perfect complement to the femininity of her work. The abundance of found objects provides another symbolic outlet in Holmes' art. These little odds and ends - buttons, porcelain roses, doll arms, metal chains, and board game tiles - introduce the elements of a girl's everyday domestic experiences while revealing a fascinating sense of intimacy.
Crocheted fabrics and their status as women's handicrafts form the conceptual cornerstone of Holmes' art. In incorporating traditional fiber art into her work, Holmes gives recognition and respect to the talented craftswomen of her Southern heritage. Through their cultural contribution, the artist is able to make her work today. The physical act of crochet, which involves the continuous weaving of one thread, underscores the artist's relationship with her predecessors. The artist notes that "just as a single thread returns again and again to loop and interlock in crochet, the creative legacy of so many women repeatedly endows my artistic heritage and creates a conceptual 'whole cloth', the 'fabric' of their lives clothing my vision." These crochet patterns also symbolize the emotional, social, and spiritual patterns of life, while their variety of color and texture reference the complex diversity of life's patterns.
Holmes has participated in over 70 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows all over the United States for nearly 25 years. The artist was featured in FIBERARTS magazine in the fall of 1998 and Ceramics Monthly in Dec. of 2004. Her work is included in 300 private and 40 corporate collections. The artist currently resides in Florida.
Thank you to our Advocates: Christine P. and James G. Whitton and the late Katharine W. Osborne.
The Waterworks Visual Arts Center is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Its mission is to offer an innovative program of exhibitions, education, and outreach that inspires and educates its regional audiences in the exploration of the evolution and forefront of contemporary art. The Waterworks is funded by individual memberships, corporations and businesses, foundations, the City of Salisbury, Rowan County, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, a federal grant-making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation of learners by helping libraries and museums serve their communities, supports the Waterworks Visual Arts Center.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Center at 704/636-1882 or visit (www.waterworks.org).
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