Author:  Josh Porter; curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League

Author:  Josh Porter; curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League

Author: Josh Porter; curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League

Author:  Josh Porter, curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League

We hope that everyone has a wonderful day! We are here at the house spending the day folding and stringing dragons for our 1000 Dragon Challenge community art project. You can download and print this coloring page drawn by our talented intern Aurora. Have fun, y'all!

American Exceptionalism, Degenerate Counterculture, and the 100 Seconds Till Midnight features a series of paintings and digital works by Lexington-based artist Ken Howl. This highly charged show interrogates notions of patriotism, nationalism, and Americanism in our current moment. Howl’s work expresses the anxieties and fears that plague contemporary America using images and sounds that are as abstract as they are chaotic. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, his show is an apt illustration of everything that’s happened over the last several years. ​​

And finally, Being in the Land is on view in the Neal Sulier Gallery. Featuring a series of photographic artworks by artist Robyn Moore; Being in the Land visually expresses the intangible and inaccessible forces that dwell within our world. Using two distinct processes, pinhole photography and photopolymer gravure, Moore explores how the Land carries within it a biological and historical significance that is immaterial but present. In the small gallery adjacent to the Neal Sulier, Moore is also showing work from a related series called Embodied Knowledge. This series develops and expands on the ideas that undergird Being in the Land. These works reflect on ‘embodiment’: the philosophical/psychological theory that knowledge is something that we experience through our physical body. Knowledge is, as the name implies, embodied.  Together, Being in the Land and Embodied Knowledges reflect on the unseen forces within nature that effect and shape us in ways that we often don’t recognize. ​

These three shows, though quite different from one another, offer an exciting and fascinating juxtaposition. I think that, together, these shows ask us (maybe even force us) to consider our relationship to the world(s) we’re enmeshed in. Howl’s show confronts us with the anxiety and discomfort of many Americans at this time. We’re forced to consider (even feel) the oppressive forces that the governing authorities inflict on people every day. Manifesting Presence explores the revolutionary potential of presence and shows us the many ways that it is expressed. Finally, Moore’s work contemplates the ways that presence can be embodied and the ways in which we embody forces larger than ourselves. 

American Exceptionalism, Degenerate Counterculture, and the 100 Seconds Till Midnight, Manifesting Presence, and Being in the Land are on view at the Loudon House until November 6. We encourage you to stop in and see them or take a virtual tour of the exhibitions. These can be found at http://www.lexingtonartleague.org/current.html.

​Author: Aaron Reynolds
Aaron Reynolds is the curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and visual studies from the University of Kentucky, and is now working towards an MFA in curatorial studies.

Herself Exhibition Photo

​One of the interesting parts about programming and curating a gallery space is facilitating conversations: between both people and artworks. In the gallery space, works of art not only respond to and inform each other of their meaning, but exhibitions do the same. Our experience of an exhibition is marked by what we have seen and what we will see. Curating recognizes that no art object and no art space exists in a vacuum. Simultaneous art shows don’t always have to complement each other, but they should enhance each other. 
 
Last week, the Lexington Art League closed two major shows: Herself and Unsought Discoveries. In Herself, we saw how 17 different artists explored female experiences from multiple perspectives and dimensions. A series of sculptures, paintings, and multi-media art pieces examined the various and complex ways in which the feminine experience is embodied. In Unsought Discoveries, we saw artist Benjamin MacKethan explore the materiality and possibility of woods and ceramics. MacKethan demonstrated how art objects are the result of a collaboration between the artist’s aims and a medium’s limits. 

​When I was reflecting on these shows this week, I was thinking about the Feminist theories course I’m currently taking. At the beginning of this course, we focused on Standpoint Theory: 
the idea that an individual’s perspectives are shaped by their social and political experiences. Standpoint Theory recognize that each point of view is unique and multifaced; informed by a person’s class, race, sex, gender expression, and ability. No two points of view can ever be the same, meaning that every point of view is an essential and necessary part of a broad understand of the world. From a Feminist perspective, Standpoint Theory recognizes that women’s experiences, while traditionally de-valued, are vital. It proposes that women, because of their historical oppression within a patriarchal system, are better equipped to understand the system. 
 
Herself amplified women’s experiences and showed how each woman’s experience is uniquely embodied. Unsought Discoveries showed how the creation process is defined by conscious and unconscious actions. In my experience, both shows reflected who we are as individuals. Each of us is the unique result of a negotiation between our own desires, our own limits, and the visible and invisible systems we’re enmeshed in. Because of this, each of us (but especially women and the historically marginalized) have perspectives that can and must be heard. 
 
 
Addendum: After writing this, I started to reflect on the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. As I think about the necessity of women’s perspectives, I am grateful for people like Ruth Bader Ginsberg who demonstrated that justice for women means justice for everyone. As a champion for women’s rights, she showed how listening to the experiences of those historically marginalized is vital for a just society. 

Author: Aaron Reynolds
Aaron Reynolds is the curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and visual studies from the University of Kentucky, and is now working towards an MFA in curatorial studies.

Graphic by, Aurora Noctua
Happy Women’s Equality Day, readers! Exactly 100 years ago, the 19 th Amendment was certified; ensuring that state and federal government cannot deny a citizen the right to vote based on their sex. This was the result of a large-scale civil rights movement that (formally) began in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The 19th and 20th century women’s suffrage movement was a massive, international struggle composed of activist groups as far away as Australia and as local as Lexington, Kentucky. (Fun fact: I just recently discovered that my great-grandmother was a suffragette from Somerset, Kentucky!) Around the world, organized groups of women rose up and demanded that their governments recognize them as full human beings under the law. The Movement for Women’s Suffrage highlighted structural inequalities that have further marginalized women and silenced their voices throughout history.

Suffragists from Madison, Fayette, and Franklin Counties.
In honor of Women’s Equality Day, I want to highlight a few late 20 th and 21 st century women artists that I find particularly interesting. Since today honors the American Women’s Suffrage Movement, I’ve chosen American artists (or in the case of one, an artist working in America). 

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927)
Popularly known as “the Baroness,” this larger-than-life artist was a major figure in New York’s Dadaist art scene. A sculptor, performance artist, and poet; Freytag-Loringhoven is often credited as the inventor of the “ready-made” – a sculpture pulled from the materials of everyday life. Born in Germany, the Baroness moved to the US in 1910 after helping her second husband fake his own death. (Interestingly, Kentucky was the first place they lived when they immigrated to the US.) She was famous for her absurd sense of humor and her boundary-pushing definition of art. In a letter to fellow artist Sarah Freedman McPherson, the Baroness wrote “Sarah, if you find a tin can on the street, stand by it until a truck runs it over. Then bring it to me.” Though long ignored in the history of art, Freytag-Loringhoven is now recognized as being an important influence on the work of Marcel Duchamp. One scandalous theory claim  that Duchamp’s most famous work, The Fountain, was made in collaboration with the Freytag. Though the jury is still out, The Fountain bears a remarkable similarity to Freytag’s work which was often bawdy, sexual, and otherwise unseemly. 

Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven
​
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890-1960)
This important but too-often-overlooked American sculptor was the first women of color to graduate from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Prophet’s career was marked by a deep commitment to creative independence that saw her move from New York, to Paris, and finally to Atlanta. She’s most famous for her figurative sculptures and busts, which convey an intense but restrained emotional response to feelings of depression, loneliness, and isolation.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
During her life, she moved between periods of relative to fame to relative obscurity. Often unable to hire live models to sculpt, she worked mostly from her imagination. Her figures are often ethnically ambiguous, reflecting what some scholars see as her complicated relationship to her African and Native American heritage. Describing her artistic philosophy, Prophet wrote “The principles of the arts which are form, rhythm, harmony; and the abstract qualities, some of which are poise and courage, are factors which no civilized man who aspires to be educated can live successfully without attaining.”​

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Discontent, 1929
​
Carrie Mae Weems (1953-Present)
Carrie Mae Weems is a multi-media African American artist working with text, fabric, audio, digital images, and video installation. She’s best known, however, for her work in photography. Since the mid 1980s, Weems has used visual and verbal narratives to address the black experience of racial and gender stereotyping here in the US. Her work explores possible methods for black women’s liberation and self discovery by engaging African American folklore as well as American culture at large.

Carrie Mae Weems, From The Kitchen Table Series
One of her most famous works, The Kitchen Table Series, documented the artist sitting at her kitchen table in various scenarios. Throughout the course of about two years, we follow Weems through her relationships with her lover, her friends, and her daughter. The series intimately repositions and reimagines how the black experience has often been depicted in mainstream American culture. It explores the intersection of blackness and womanhood in contemporary American culture. Reflecting on the series, Weems writes “I use my body as a landscape to explore the complex realities of the lives of women,” and “At the end of the day, it has a great deal to do with the breadth of the humanity of African-Americans who are usually stereotyped and narrowly defined and often viewed as a social problem.”

Though I’ve only talked about three artists within the vast story of feminist art history, I hope
that it inspires you to do your own research. On this Women’s Equality Day, let’s express our
gratitude for the women throughout history that have raised their voices (both audibly and
visually) to envision a more just society.

To see contemporary work by local women artists, consider checking out our virtual Herself Exhibition at: https://lexingtonartleague.wixsite.com/herself

Sources: UofK Archive, and Artstor

Author: Aaron Reynolds
Aaron Reynolds is the curatorial intern for the Lexington Art League. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and visual studies from the University of Kentucky, and is now working towards an MFA in curatorial studies.