July 17 - September 11
Herself
"A curated exhibition, celebrating women of all gender expressions and exploring the full spectrum of the female experience.."
Photograph
Photograph
Allison Maggard
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Allison Maggard is a local Lexington, Kentucky photographer specializing in natural light studio photography and art prints. Her most recent solo exhibition titled “All 50” was with Lexington’s John Irvin Gallery at Central Bank in November of 2019. She has worked with Mango Studios in Toronto and the Print Swap via online platforms and shoots in both digital and film formats. Allison prefers neutral colors and heavy grain in her art and pulls a lot of inspiration from old black and white film slides. You can find more of her work in her online print shop, with a link to that page listed in the bio section of her instagram page @AllisonMaggard.
Sculpture
April Wright
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April Wright is a visual artist from Germantown, Tennessee. She uses humble, everyday materials to connect personal narratives about home, relationships, memory, and identity. Wright completed her BA in Sculpture and Ceramics from Union University in 2006; she received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of Kentucky with a focus in Ceramics and Fibers in 2020. She works interdisciplinary in sculpture and installation art.
Photograph
Photograph
Aurora Noctua
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Artist Statement:
Nests are places of safety and refuge, yet are constricting if you cannot yet fly. A lot of my work is autobiographical and this piece is addressing my acute feeling of being restricted by my far reaching goals as compared to my current means. I feel that everyone has had a nest at some point in their lives and have either been able to keep it a refuge and a safe place, or have had it become their prison. For some, leaving the nest is more difficult, they might have to painstakingly climb down, with any wrong move resulting in their demise; others might have the means to fly safely onward without a care. Both journeys are important and there is always hope.
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Aurora Noctua is a multimedia artist whose passion lies in surrealism and fantasy. She has displayed work in KMAC Couture, Sink or Swim Gallery, Kore Gallery—as part of the Louisville Artisan’s Guild—Art Sanctuary, and at the Loudoun House for 2019’s PRHBTN show. Currently Aurora is the Graphic Design Intern for the Lexington Art League, as well as a Senior at the University of Kentucky. Her other projects include Noctua Artistry and design work for Convergence 26.
Photography
Photography
Breanna cox​
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Artist Statement:
For many years, I didn’t want to be a mother or didn’t think I was cut out to be one; as if the maternal gene skipped me. I experienced pressures from society and my own family. On a subconscious level, I was disappointed when my cycle would start. That’s when I knew that I wanted to get pregnant but 3 pregnancy losses made me question like other women have what’s wrong with my body. This artwork is from the beginning of the 3rd trimester of my recent pregnancy when I could finally trust my body and soul. I chose the bath tub since taking care of ones self during pregnancy and beyond is imperative. Every day, I look at this new life Amara and I’m amazed at all the great things she has accomplished so far. She is beautiful, but she will teach the world her fighting spirit.
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Breanna has been a photographer and artist for nearly 18 years. She has always identified as a storyteller with a documentary approach; especially since her education and training are in the Journalism industry. Breanna’s career and personal life took a turn while she served in the U.S. Air Force; but she continued taking photos of military life. Since separation at the end of 2016, Breanna has continued a photojournalistic style as she seeks authenticity in people, dogs, landmarks, events, and nature. Finally, Breanna Cox is going into her fourth year in graduate school to be an Art Therapist and Counselor.
Mixed media painting
Sculpture
Mixed media painting
Brianna armstrong​
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Brianna Armstrong is a vivacious African American artist who was born in the Windy City of Chicago, IL and raised in Lexington, KY. She is currently working on her BFA degree at the University of Kentucky while majoring in art studio. In 2016, Ms. Armstrong founded her own art business: BriannaMarieArt. In 2019 she displayed her first solo exhibition, Royalty with the Riches for the Carnegie Classics: The Color Purple at The Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning. Within that same year, Armstrong was also awarded the Theophilla Joan Oexmann Original Art award as well as first place for the Carey Ellis Exhibition at the University of Kentucky for the College of Fine Arts. In her current works her goal is to not only celebrate black lives unapologetically, but to also reclaim the taboo ideas of sexuality by embracing it. The images in her memory quilts capture the importance of remembrance. Ms. Armstrong wants her work to be seen in a powerful light so she is able to pave a way for people without a voice, people of color, and women of color.
Brett Hartsfield
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Brett Hartsfield is a versatile artist, working in graphite, charcoal, oil and acrylic. She is also an accomplished muralist and illustrator. She is primarily self-taught, but has taken a variety of online instruction from many classically trained prominent artists and classes from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Brett’s work ranges from abstract to portraiture and her focus is often creating the human face or form using a variety of gestures and line variation.
Photography
Photography
Photography
Christina Conroy​
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Artist Statement:
Say you find a piece of me lying on the ground.
Would you pick me up, hide me in your pocket, and soften my rough-hewn edges with the touch
of your fingers?
Would you fashion me into a gem and wear it proudly for all to see?
Would you softly replace that piece among the others, trying to make whole
again what has been broken?
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Christina Conroy is a professor of philosophy by trade and a photographer by passion. She was born and raised in Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky. She graduated from the City University of New York, Hunter College with her BA in Philosophy and went on to earn a PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine’s Logic and Philosophy of Science Department. Photography has always been a part of Christina’s life, from her father taking long exposures during thunderstorms to her using a telescope to photograph a solar eclipse in high school. She spent a year as Kentucky Wesleyan College’s newspaper photographer and rarely left the darkroom. Since then Christina has largely moved to digital photography which has given her the freedom to more freely experiment with concepts and techniques.
Textile
Textile
Emelie weber
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Artist Statement:
Weaving on a floor loom with fine, natural threads is a long and tedious process that allows space for reflection. The fabric I weave holds the secrets and memories I hold near to my heart. Shifted was woven at a time in my life when I felt like my voice couldn’t be heard through my own personal chaos. My roles at work, home, and within my family were constantly shifting. I wanted structure and stability, but I couldn’t see through all the responsibilities and expectations to fit within a certain framework. Shifted came with finding comfort in speaking and valuing my own truth in the face of being silenced.
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Emelie Weber is a weaver and fiber artist based in Frankfort, KY. Emelie attended Columbus College of Art and Design and Berea College, where she studied Studio Art and worked as an apprentice weaver. She is the recipient of the 2014 Sarah Fuller Smith Loom Award, Design for a Summer Award, and the Hutchins Award in the Creative Arts. Emelie has exhibited at the Little Loomhouse and currently supports other artists in her role at Silo Ridge Makers Market in Frankfort, KY. Emelie sells her work at Silo Ridge Makers Market, local art festivals, and online at www.lunadendron.com.
Sculpture
Sculpture
Erica Fitzgerald
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Artist Statement:
Menstrual Cage is rooted in ecofeminism and exposes the social damage that male-dominated societies have on women in contrast with nature. This application explores the power, vulnerability, and beauty women regularly have to suppress to become successful in a predominately masculine world. Menstrual Cage combines imagery with materials to highlight brutality and suffering in relation to women, as well as animals. Oppression and control by a chauvinistic society are overcome to promote the strength women inherently possess.
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Erica Fitzgerald is a contemporary sculpture artist who explores the clash between natural and industrial worlds to inspire her work. She also focuses on feminist themes in an attempt to deconstruct a patriarchal society. These themes are supported by the use of organic fibers, highly textured materials, and salvaged man-made items in combination with bold imagery. Fitzgerald is originally from Columbus, OH and currently resides in Cincinnati, OH.
Heidi Neumann
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Artist Statement:
My work explores the relationship between traditional painting styles and modern image processing technology. I use modern technology to abstract a picture in order to plan and conceptualize my artwork, and traditional painting techniques to create a unique piece that combines modern and traditional elements. With my current work I attempt to further the idea of "modern-traditional" by exploring renaissance or traditional pictures of women and painting them in an unseen modern abstract version. By doing so I want to create a connection between the past concepts of females and the modern ongoing issues.
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Heidi Neumann was born in 1986 in a small town in Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Germany. Surrounded by flat land and beautiful lakes, she quickly developed a sense for beauty and has been passionately painting since childhood. Heidi studied Occupational Therapy in Leipzig, where she used art as therapeutic treatment. After her studies, she moved toSwitzerland, which was also the beginning of her long journey of travel and adventure. Living in various countries such as Australia, England, USA and China and traveling through many more, has given her new perspectives and receptiveness. In 2017 Heidi moved to New Delhi(India), where she found her way back in the art world. Under the guidance of Kumar Vikas Saxena, she studied fine arts in the Academy ofArt and Design in New Delhi. Here she was able to experiment and develop her own personal style. In December 2018 some of her work was displayed in the group exhibition “Illumination” in the Stainless ArtGallery in New Delhi. Since 2019 Heidi is based in Lexington Kentucky, where she is establishing herself in the local art community. Her work has been displayed by the Lexington Art League for the Bluegrass TransplantsExhibition in September and the PROHBTN Exhibition in October 2019.Inspired by her experiences and surroundings she tries to capture her impressions on canvas. With fine details she combines realism with modern abstract elements.
Kelly Jo Asbury
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Artist Statement:
In 2003 I began a series of work centering around the notions of appetite and consumption, more specifically the consumption of sexual appetites and the allure of this primal, driving force as well as the sensual allure of the painting process itself. The series explores figurative abstraction through the use of oils on large cut and prepared sheets of paper. This primordial soup of fluids is ever present from one work to the next. It serves a duplicitous role through suggestively encapsulating the forms within the content of the paintings and the direct application of fluids and vehicles to the paper itself. The notion of duplicity can also be linked to the amphibious adaptation of life from water on the most fundamental level. Consequently, water is erotic. Moreover I am strongly linked to a key principle of watercolorists which is to allow the white of the ground to generate and exude light from within the work. And yet my work is not of watercolor as my technique is more subtractive than additive thereby attaining greater versatility with the vehicles associated with oils. I have arrived at an application that is very thin with explosive swells of formative space while ever chasing the economy of the stroke. Essentially a dialogue is initiated with the paper as the work evolves from a collaboration of what I sense and impose to what I see and adjust. The collection appears simultaneously ethereal and corporeal, larger than life and yet subtle. Because who doesn’t love the allure of a dichotomy? This blend also gives way, incidentally, to the propulsion of eroticism.
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Kelly Jo Asbury resides in Cold Spring, Ky where for over two decades she has lived, worked and raised her son, Nathan. In that time she has devoted herself to education, collaboration and the advancement of her body of work. She has served in all facets of education from primary to post secondary with most recently working with The Carnegie as the visual arts educator within the Covington public school system serving all five elementaries. Before that Ms. Asbury was a lecturer at NKU and an adjunct instructor for Chatfield College in Over the Rhine. Decompartmentalizing the educational process has been a constant focus regardless of the age of the audience and most certainly integrating the arts completely into the curriculum has been her passion.
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Ms. Asbury continues to expand upon her series entitled, "Appetite and Consumption" ever pushing formative spaces in the sexually charged landscape. She works in oils combining additive as well as subtractive techniques that carry a watercolorist sensibility to the ground of the surface. She has exhibited her work regionally as well as nationally with an international, group show to her credit in Budapest, Hungary. The most recent local exhibitions would include Flesh and Form at the UC Blue Ash, College Art Gallery and the Employed: Staff Exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Since the onset of the pandemic, Kelly and her son Nathan have been quarantined together as his freshman year of college was abbreviated. His love for music and hers for painting have forged an unexpected and rewarding opportunity to experience artist residencies while in residence at their home.
Krista C. Graham
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Artist Statement:
Clothes tell a story, clothes have a story. Clothes will tell you a lot about a person. Where they work, where they’re going, how they’re feeling. This is especially true for women, and what’s even more true for women is the constant criticism we face with our choices in what we put on ourselves. She’s showing too much skin, she’s wearing something cheap, she’s over-done, under-done. Criticism aside, there’s always a story behind the clothes. More importantly, the person wearing them “puts on pants one leg at a time” just like you. She also has a story to her life, just like you. I’m setting up those stories for you and I hope you find your ending well.
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Krista C. Graham was born in Lexington, KY 1988. She is an independent illustrator residing in Nicholasville. BA in art EKU, 2013. She values storytelling in art, rather than strictly allegory. Published in Aurora Literary Journal (2014, 2016), The Lawless River (2016), Nerve Lantern (2017), various online literary/arts journals. Shown in PRHBTN (2018,2019), KY Nude (2019), Please Stand By (2019)
Photograph Collage
Photograph Collage
Kristina Rideout
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Artist Statement:
“Bullet With Butterfly Wings” examines media and female model culture in the late 1960’s and 70’s. It was inspired by the artist noticing a recurring distant stare on the faces of many models. While they are presumably being photographed to sell a beauty standard, their expressions convey something unsettling. Despite these images originating during the time of the second wave of the feminist movement, they convey not strength or progress, but rather subservience and discontent. The text accompanying the image, “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage”, is taken from the 1995 album by the Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings.
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Kristina Rideout is a Kentucky based visual artist and photographer. Kristina’s current artistic focus is digital collage. In many ways this is a return to her very first medium of artwork, which was analog collage as a child. The majority of her recent work focuses on feminist politics and media, as well as an exploration of female sexuality. Kristina received her B.A. in Studio Art/Photography as well as her M.A. in Arts Administration from the University of Kentucky.
Lynn Nesseth
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Artist Statement:
I feel distinctly lizard-like whenever my eyes involuntarily flicker. I feel distinctly like a spider weaving, with instinctively moving fingers, whenever I’m disentangling my very fine threads of hair. These interspecied moments aren’t moments I’ve conceived to create, but moments I’ve attempted to document: a felt sense of being other-specied. I’ve attempted to capture the felt sense of being a spider by emphasizing the busy activity of eight fingers moving poly-rhythmically combined with an absence of expression. This is the first in an ‘Artist as Animal’ series documenting moments when I find myself animating other species.
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Lynn Nesseth was born in Cannon Falls, MN on October 12, 1978. They hold a BFA in Painting/Drawing from California College of the Arts (2006) and certifications from the Chestnut School for Herbal Medicine and the Shanti Collective School of Energy Healing and Self Transformation in the green and white witchcrafts, respectively. They’ve participated in the Black Mountain College Museum's {RE}HAPPENING, the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, and held residence at the Mission for Temporal Art (MTA). Their works borrow from all the 2D, 3D, and 4D genres though they identify primarily as a conceptual artist. For the last decade Lynn’s been creating conceptual and performance work in a genre they’ve coined the Aesthetic Occult.
Painting
Painting
Morgan Elizabeth Mcgill
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Artist Statement :
When society and religious institutions constantly preach that women should not and do not have wants, it seems strange to finally see them articulated in the visual world. Sometimes this theme is too complex to identify in nuanced expressions, especially when said institutions methodically control which sensitivities are “bad” and have no place here. The yearning, anger, fear, and angst we all feel are not always palatable to modern society— especially when we’re talking about womanhood. This is why women have been creative in finding ways to show the capacity of their desires. These hands signify the grieving process many of us have experienced of having to leave religious and societal dogma behind in order to be free to be who we are and to have what we really want. Referencing a trinitarian archetype, I portray passion through gesture rather than a fictitious brand of “woman,” who has no wants.
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Morgan McGill is a working artist from Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from the University of Louisville with her BFA in Painting and Drawing and has since called herself a “Collage Artist.” In 2017 she attended the University of the Basque Country in Spain where she studied contemporary and historical drawing and painting, co-organized her first group exhibition, and grew more fluent in Spanish. McGill finds the purity culture she grew up in fascinating as a complex cultural movement in U.S. Christianity. She questions and critiques these religiously institutionalized ideas about the roles of women through her mixed media 2D art.
Photograph
Photograph
Photograph
Shaena NEAL
Artist Statement:
Through the quiet and still winter, she was left to her own reflection amongst the open skies. Left to witness the shadows creeping ever-closer, like a clock, consistently ticking on, growing louder as you watch the pendulum swing. After some time, she grew ill, as the shadows poured over her, seeping into her blood, churning sweetly inward and spilling back out into the skies. She plays just as much a role in this bitter cycle, she realized, as everyone else. Guilt consumed her, as she was trapped in this inevitable villainy to her own demise - for every move under the sun or moon creates a shadow - until the walls themselves are entirely shaken. So she hesitantly lit a candle, raw and honest in the darkness, and knocked at the walls that shadow her within. And she waits, as the clock ticks on. She waits with her candle in the quiet for an answer. By herself, she waits for others to understand their own shadows.
As the pendulum swings, still.
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A BFA alumni of the University of Kentucky, Shaena Neal is an artist primarily working with photography, often accompanied by the written word. She has been using her work to explore concepts of femininity, the environment, and attempting to express the non-communicable for several years, in efforts to reconcile truths and enlighten communal reflection. Self-portraiture is often a method she utilizes to externalize and process these thoughts. She currently resides on a quiet farm in the outskirts of Paris, Ky, where meditation and submersion amongst the landscape give light to her work.
Sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture
Sara Arthur-Paratley
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Artist Statement:
"Documenting Gestures and Untitled Gestures" are part of a body of work tracking the changing topology of the body and documenting its tactile and spatial particularities. In registering the negative spaces of her body in action, the artist creates a new language in abstraction for understanding her own body and subverting gendered hierarchies for interpreting and valuing bodies. Rather than an aesthetic object, the body is understood as a force that shifts the space and materials surrounding it. The series Untitled Gestures is a sculptural archive of a series of intimate gestures performed between the artist and discarded pieces of upholstery foam. This material is chosen for its malleability and its symbolic potential as a body whose physical characteristics evidence its own intimate history as a stranger’s bed, couch, or chair. The traits of the object suggest to the artist a particular gesture (hug, lean, sit, fold, wrap..) which is carried out in an act grasping for understanding of the corporeal self. These performative actions have no audience and the resulting form, which reveals the negative space of the body, becomes the only record. In contrast, Documenting Gestures invites an audience into the intimate realm where these explorations take place, becoming the audiovisual record of a performative sculptural process using slabs of clay as material tools for exploring the possibilities of a moving female body.
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Sara Arthur-Paratley is an interdisciplinary artist whose work thrives at the crossroads of sculpture, dance, and performance. A Kentucky artist currently based in Valencia, Spain, Sara has exhibited and performed in the United States and abroad. Her transdisciplinary performances were recently featured in Danza en Casa and Intramurs festivals, and she has most recently exhibited at Hygiene Gallery, RW Projects, NVCLI Cultural Center, and Confusion festival. Her collaborative drawing-poetry project was recently published in Tiny Spoon Literary Magazine and Random Sample Review. Born in Lexington, Sara graduated with honors (Cum Laude; Phi Beta Kappa) from Pomona College, Los Angeles, where she earned a BA in Studio Art and Dance. Upon graduation, Sara received the Matthew Klopfleisch Prize in Art, awarded to one graduating senior for excellence in art, as well as the Virginia Princehouse Allen Dance Award, awarded for outstanding contributions to the production work of the Pomona Dance Department. In 2017 she was awarded the Rembrandt Club Art Prize to pursue independent historical and material research connecting fiber work to performance, including a full scholarship to attend a fiber sculpture workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. This research process led to the premiere of her original choreography, Six, which involved three of her fiber sculptures and was featured in Forward Rebound Dance Concert. Sara’s collaborative performance work was selected for inclusion in Cabanyal Intim festival’s juried performance art cycle, Territori Performance, now postponed to 2021 due to Covid 19. A new original solo performance work, currently in development, is soon to premiere at Intramurs festival in Valencia, Spain in October, 2020. Through showing her work and performing she aims to connect emotionally and physically, inciting viscerally empathic responses and subverting gendered hierarchies for interpreting and valuing bodies.
LexArts, Kentucky Arts Council, Jedra Foundation, L. Tracee Whitley, Dean Langdon & Beth Hellebusch, Mike & Christine Husskison, & Ellee Ven
