In honor of Women’s History Month, YoloArts will be debuting two exhibitions at the Gibson House and Property in Woodland starting on March 12. The Barn Gallery will feature the group exhibition, Women Eco Artists Dialog: The Legacy of Jo Hanson. Inside the Gibson House, women’s clothing from the turn of the twentieth century will be featured in Fashion Forward: Women’s Wear and Social Reform, a collaborative exhibition with Yolo County Archives and the Paul W. Hollingshead Archives, courtesy of Bill and Sharon Dianne Hollingshead.
Women Eco Artists Dialog: The Legacy of Jo Hanson will showcase the artwork of 16 members of WEAD (the Women Eco Artists Dialog), a Bay Area all-volunteer nonprofit that focuses on women’s unique perspectives in ecofeminist and social justice art, and works to further the understanding of environmental and social justice art. The exhibition is co-curated by Janice Purnell, creative director at YoloArts and Nanette Wylde, a WEAD board member.
“The work in this exhibit includes paintings, photography, sculpture, and installations in a variety of media. One of the pieces is ephemeral such as the Flower Power an outdoor installation by Jane Ingram Allen made from handmade papers embedded with wildflower seeds,” stated co-curator Purnell. “And another reflects sustainable building innovations as in the fascinating 3D printing process by Maria Paz Guiterrez that reinterprets the process of manual weaving using natural plastics and plant waste. It is an honor to exhibit the work of these passionate ecoartists and shine a light on some of the most significant environmental issues of our time.”
This exhibition pays homage to the legacy of WEAD co-founder, the late Jo Hanson, and the growing movement of artists who use their voices and creative actions to focus attention on issues of social and environmental concern.
During the 1970s and 80s, Hanson was known for championing the inclusion of underrepresented women and artists of color in San Francisco’s art collections. Hanson’s strategies set precedents in public ecoart and created models for younger artists. She was an artistic political tour de force who raised community awareness and whose work served as a chronicle of San Francisco’s rapidly changing demographics. Hanson organized city-wide street sweepings, children’s anti-litter art campaigns for City Hall, and led a famous bus tour of San Francisco street dumping sites—all extensions of her conceptual real-life artworks. Even after her death in 2007, her work and legacy continues to inspire artists around the world.
“This exhibition presents a wonderful diversity of media and approach to the ecological subject. Each artist provides us with accessible and thought-provoking pathways using humor and transformation to reflect and consider how we might take action to salvage environmental health,” co-curator Wylde stated recently. “It offers a vital perspective as we work together toward a just, sane, and healthy world for all.”
Artists whose work is in the exhibition are from the Sacramento and greater Bay Area regions, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nevada, South Carolina and Texas:
Jane Ingram Allen, Krista Anandakuttan, Angela Gonzalez, Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Cynthia Jensen, Elizabeth Kenneday-Corathers, Judith Selby Lang, Linda MacDonald, Carol Newborg, Lisa Reindorf, Lorna Stevens, Michelle Waters, Melissa West, Tammy West, and Mary Bayard White.
A Collage Workshop with San Francisco artist Lorna Stevens, one of the exhibition artists, will be held on March 21 at The Barn Gallery. Participant teens and adults will explore the materials and techniques of making collage with reclaimed materials and found objects, one of the themes included in the exhibition. Workshop registration tickets are available at yoloarts.org.
Women Eco Artists Dialog: The Legacy of Jo Hanson continues at The Barn Gallery through June 18.
Fashion Forward: Women’s Wear and Social Reform is an exhibition timed to mark the centenary of women’s suffrage in America and features unique objects of clothing archived in the Yolo County Historical Collection. The emergence of the “new woman” and political and social change, brought about by the suffrage movement are explored. This will be the first time many of these articles of clothing will be on public display in Yolo County.
“This exhibition features women’s garments from 1880 -1920 and looks at how fashion and politics were changing at the turn of the twentieth century,” said Iulia Bodeneau, exhibition and museum curator. “The exhibition also features profiles of Yolo County women involved in civic and women’s groups and causes, including the suffrage movement.”
Fashion Forward: Women’s Wear and Social Reform continues at the Gibson House through June 26 and is funded, in part, by the Yolo County Women’s History Month Committee.
More information about the exhibitions and collage workshop can be found at yoloarts.org.
The Barn Gallery and the Gibson House are located at 512 Gibson Road in Woodland. For more information contact YoloArts at 530-309-6464 or ya@yoloarts.org.