Can You Hear Me Now?
An Evolving Series of Feminist Works
“Can You Hear Me Now?" is an evolving body of work that includes drawings, paintings, fiber arts, and videos that examine American women’s struggle to have their voices heard and the societal barriers that prevent women from achieving their full potential.
Through generations, women's ideas and accomplishments often remain invisible, unheard, lost to history, and essentially "washed away" from view.
The artworks in this series employ a disrupted realism, with figures or faces in impossible or unreal settings. I hope viewers can flesh out the narratives and find deeper meanings through their personal life experiences.
For most of our lives we exist in a “borderland,” tentatively peering over the border’s edge, relegated to the sidelines, or simply afraid of a leap into the unknown. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua writes, “A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a step edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.”
Here, a woman is contained within an environment with the ghosts of her memories and private thoughts. She is peering out from a window that represents the unnatural boundary between her world and the vast world beyond.
Life Sentence
Charcoal and Mixed Media. 26x27 inches [SOLD]
Entangled
Charcoal and Graphite. 24x18 inches [SOLD]
A young woman engulfed in an oversized raincoat, curled up into a fetal position, and immobilized in a web of ropes. Perhaps she is bound by fear, or trauma, or external limits placed on her. While there are charcoal smudges to indicate that she has swung back and forth and fought the entanglement, she now seems to be calm and at peace with her situation. It might seem that she has simply given up and accepted the ropes that hold her back. Or perhaps that she has donned the quiet and uncomplaining mask women often wear. In creating this drawing I hoped that viewers might consider questions like these through the lens of their own personal life stories.
Hot Cold Empathy Gap
Oil over Acrylic on Canvas. 48x36 inches [SOLD]
Originally painted by invitation for the Attleboro Arts Museum's exhibition, Scylla: The Ugly Truth Revealed in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read, the work interprets Scylla the six-headed monster as the emotional and behavioral “monsters” that can lurk within individuals. Because of the discord in today’s America, I have been wondering about the hideous monsters that lie hidden within us—what makes them become activated?
I interpreted the ugliness of Scylla through this lens, using the imagery of a swirling storm of oceanic emotion. The ghostly faces weave in and out of reality as different facets of monsters within are revealed. The tearful monster is the fear that overpowers us, breaks us, weakens our resolve and makes us incapable of actions our rational brain tells us are right and true. Other monsters reveal aggressive violence, or sniping gossip. Still others are subversively cruel. One extends her hand like a wall saying “no entry” and covers her eyes to the misery she is causing. Another, refuses to hear about anyone’s suffering. Human understanding is “state-dependent.” The silent monster at the bottom exhibits an emotional paralysis that may unexpectedly make her the worst monster of all. As Martin Luther King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Awarded Best Realist Painting,
National Association of Women Artists
Some Like it Hot exhibition, South Carolina
Reproduced on exterior banners for the Attleboro Museum of Arts
Chapter 2:
The Weight and Wait
Acrylic on Unbleached Canvas, with fabric, threads, and rusted metal. 52x28 inches.
$2,500
This monochromatic acrylic painting includes textile elements and found metal objects.The work observes that despite progress in women’s empowerment over the past 100 years, much remains to be done. The rusted broken chains slipping almost off the canvas are a metaphor for the first chapter in gender equality - the ratification of the 19th amendment.
The story continues in “Chapter 2: The Weight and Wait” referencing the ever-present weight of the inequalities that still burden women. These are imagined as 3D bags of weights that circle around the central figure, like a swarm of wasps. Chapter 2 also references the "wait" for the parity to come in Chapter 3.
The figure is stitched through the painting with dots of red thread—like tiny droplets of blood. The use of fabric and threads references generations of anonymous, poorly-paid women laboring in the Garment District. In a small rectangle, a "sampler" recalls the long history of females assigned to the acceptable feminine occupation of needlework. But rather than a trite “home sweet home” message, this sampler asks viewers a question about justice.
Awarded Best Social Commentary,
by the National Association of Women Artists, Massachusetts
Collateral Damage
Mixed Media Drawing. 22x16 inches.
$900
Collateral Damage is from a series of feminist works that explore a disrupted reality. Women's figures are placed in abstract or unreal situations to create emotional narratives that cannot be distilled into words. I often reference women’s struggles to be heard and the need for women’s empowerment around the world. “Collateral Damage” intentionally contrasts what might be a white party dress with the black hands that seem to be covered in soot or blood. I ask the viewer to imagine the narratives behind the silent image and evidence of damage.
Awarded the Judith Cantor Memorial Award for Mixed Media Drawing, National Association of Women Artists
Restoring Herstory
This is a drawing of my mother in her WWII R.A.F. Bomber Command uniform, is on pages taken from The Settlement Cookbook— a book she was given to teach her how to be a “good American housewife” upon arriving in the U.S. A drawing of her military logo and an old-fashioned stocking clip float beside her, no longer used. Painted red stitches hold these in place. Reused rough nails attach the work to an old wooden panel.
Graphite and mixed media Drawing approx. 17x22 inches. Panel 20x26 inches
$900
Awarded Drawing Prize in the exhibition Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories, at the New York Public Library, by the National Association of Women Artists, 2023
Calm in the Storm
Charcoal, Graphite, and Ink. 17x13 inches.
In this image originally titled “Untangling the Past,” a young woman does not sit passively enduring the literal and figurative rough seas that surround her. She focuses on her task with a calmness and strength.
Strangers in a New Land, 1905
33x55 inches, charcoal and chalk on reclaimed wood with rusted barbed wire
This work is from a series of works on immigrants, called Borders and Boundaries. The charcoal and chalk drawing was made on wooden boards reclaimed from broken pallets and packing crates. The broken, rough strips were nailed together to create something new, just as broken lives put themselves together to create new lives. The old life is still evident. Not forgotten.
The historical narrative of the work references the time when women and children were required to wait in limbo on Ellis Island. They could not be released from the holding area until they are claimed by a male relative. Then, their uncertain future in this strange new land would begin.
Washed Away
This hand-drawn video was first presented in the exhibition, Perspectives 2021, at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, in South Korea.
“Washed Away” was created using very limited materials: two sheets of paper, charcoal, eraser, and a cell-phone. Its vertical format suggests a looking through a window, offering a hint of voyeurism. It speaks of human life, desires, and intertwines the many meanings of water— especially its life-giving and life-taking qualities. With 60% of our bodies composed of water, humans are water-based creatures. 70% of our planet's surface is covered water, and it is essential to our very existence. We develop into human form protected by the water in our mother's womb. Each night, we exhale water into the air around us. When we are overwhelmed by emotion, salty wet tears overflow our eyes. Water is used in our cleansing rituals and sacred ceremonies. And yet it also has the power to destroy out lives, and to wipe out villages and entire cities.
The drawings in this video recognize the small scale of a human life in comparison to the eternal power of water. The immeasurable forces of water existed long before humans ever walked the face of the earth. And the throbbing pulsing cycles of tides and waves will continue long after we are gone. The drawings speak of transitions to the eternal. We live for a moment, and then are gone, changed, and consumed to be formed anew.