| YWCA Greater Cincinnati |
 |  |  |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
Brian Joiner’s Black Women Series was exhibited at the YWCA Women’s Art Gallery in memory of his grandmother, Evangeline Joiner, the first African American Board President of the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati. All the portraits in the exhibit were women who have served on the YWCA Board of Directors, its various committees and/or are YWCA Career Women |
|
For over 50 years, New Yorker Nancy Rudolph traveled over 100,000 miles to take pictures for her studies in anthropology as well as "just for joy and inquiry." Her array of experiences has culminated in a moving retrospective exhibit, Bearing Witness to the Human Spirit, which was at the YWCA Women's Art Gallery November 15 - March 20. The documentary style photography focuses on the working people of each country. The countries represented in the exhibit include India, Nepal, France, Italy, Sweden, England and the U.S. About 10 photos taken in Cincinnati were featured in a special section of this exhibit. A graduate of Union Institute and University, Rudolph lived in Cincinnati in the late 1980's and was fascinated by the urban Appalachian community. Seeing photographs of Cincinnatians within a worldwide collection will give local viewers an international perspective on our own community. The show was co-sponsored by Union Institute and University. Rudolph's stories and photographs are described as "heartwarming and heart wrenching, evocative and emotional." In her words, she tries "in some sensible way to describe social conditions that need correcting, people who need help, to witness the human condition, to make the human connection." |
|
|
The eye popping figurative glass sculptures by Margot Gotoff were featured. |
|
|
Dorothy Weil, is a Cincinnati artist, feature writer, novelist, poet, and a producer with TV image, Inc., a video production team whose documentaries about the Ohio River have won many national awards. The exhibit is a mix of media, from collage to oil, watercolor and pastel. The artist writes: |
|
Claudia DeMonte, New York based Artist, Professor, and world traveler, posed a question- What image represents “woman”? to women artists in 177 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. She invited each of them to create a work of art that expressed her view of the essential quality of woman. The stories told through the exhibition are powerful and moving messages of the condition and status of women throughout the world. Personal and powerful, Women of the World offered a showcase of global diversity and a glimpse into worlds that some of us may never travel. Expressed through these imageries of “woman” are individual, yet collective, shared experiences by women universally. From Thailand, a beautiful high heel shoe is balled and chained to depict female restriction in that region. An art piece from Bulgaria shows a woman’s outstretched hand holding the dangerous apple of knowledge. A Sudan painting characterizes woman engulfing life, yet weakened by the ethnic traditions of her culture. A painting from Switzerland portrays a mother exercising patience through daily hardship. From Zambia, a painting symbolizes woman carrying the world on her head, with a gleeful heart, because she is capable of anything. In this exhibit, the visionary and the everyday united to render a global image of the female. This compelling body of work makes an aggregate statement about the continuity of women's accomplishments and is an affirmation of survival of the will, of commonality that subsumes difference, of courage under fire, and of grace in adversity. It is a powerful and moving expression of self from people whose voices have rarely been heard. |
| The Clothesline Project was a provocative visual display of t-shirts designed by domestic violence survivors as a way to express their personal experiences and feelings resulting from violence in their lives. This international program began in 1990 and since then more than 300 local projects exist with an estimated 35,000 t-shirts made.
The exhibit at the YWCA Women’s Art Gallery included 40 shirts created by survivors of domestic violence, family and friends who have endured the loss of a loved one, and women living in the YWCA Battered Women’s Shelter. The t-shirts include words and images reflecting the individual and collective experiences of a cross section of women who have endured domestic violence. T-shirt creators worked under the guidance of women artists from the Women’s Art Gallery and volunteers from Lazarus Partners in Time. This project creates a personal and powerful display of the devastating effects of domestic violence and has become a distinctive resource for healing from violence and creating social change. Providing a face and a voice to violence against women statistics, this project celebrates a woman’s strength to survive and provides an avenue for her to courageously break the silence. |
Click here to view current and upcoming exhibits.
| YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, 898 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 email: website@ywcacin.org • Phone: 513-241-7090 • Fax: 513-241-7231 |
  
|
|
|
| Copyright 2009 |
