Strong Spirits
ART WORK BY BEVERLY GORDON, DIANE HUGHES AND ANDREA MUSHER
Madison Senior Center
330 West Mifflin Street Madison, WI 53703
August 4-September 18, 2015
      Reception August 20, 2-4pm

Art-making strengthens our spirits. It brings discovery, delight and connection, as well as a deeper engagement with both the light and dark of our world.  It allows us to be more truly in the moment and to see more clearly.

While the three of us use different media and different forms, we all experience the power of making tangible something that didn't exist before. As you experience this work, we hope your spirits are also strengthened.

Beverly gordon
Kelp eye
Assemblage made from Pacific bull kelp bulb, palm stem, kelp cording, silk cording, glass rings
15”h x 7”w x 4”d

BIOGRAPHY
Beverly Gordon is an artist, writer and teacher who has long been passionate about “deep seeing” and helping people appreciate both the material and inner, intuitive worlds. She was a professor in the Design Studies department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for nearly 30 years (her academic credentials include a Ph.D. in Design History and an M.A. in Textile Arts). She is a prolific writer, having authored numerous articles and books including Textiles: The Whole Story--Uses, Meanings, Significance (2011); The Saturated World: Aesthetic Meaning, Intimate Objects, Women’s Lives, 1890-1940 (2006); Bazaars and Fair Ladies (1998); Shaker Textile Arts (1980); and Feltmaking: Traditions, Techniques and Contemporary Explorations (1980).  In retirement, her art practice is increasingly vibrant. Her work has been exhibited in such venues as the Ruth Davis Design Gallery, the Overture Center, the University of Wisconsin Hospital, the Farley Center, and the Madison Art Hunt.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My artwork is an ongoing adventure involving re-contextualization and a deep engagement with material and form. Much of it draws on the detritus of nature–materials such as bone, shell, kelp, bark and driftwood—which is given new life as it is re-imagined and refashioned into two- and three-dimensional assemblage. The work involves looking closely and continually seeing with “new” eyes.  Many of my creations have a mythic quality that suggest a deep spiritual language. I hope that viewers who engage with the work are able to share the sense of engagement, deep seeing, and mystery.

I am a facilitator of workshops in SoulCollage®, a process that uses image reconfiguration (cutting and pasting printed pictures) as a tool for self-discovery and deepening one’s intuitive voice.  For more information, visit my website, www.beverlygordon.info.

Diane Hughes
Abu gHraib
WATERCOLOR

BIOGRAPHY
Diane Hughes lives an intentionally quiet life of reading, making art, spending time in nature and with a small group of friends. She studied American History at the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, Sonoma State University in California.  Her art education involved many classes and workshops, books and museums. To say she is self-taught would ignore the valuable role of several teachers who nurtured her artistic interests. Currently, she is retired from her professional career of performing accounting and administrative services for mission-driven organizations  including A Room of One's Own, First Unitarian Society, and Taliesin. Art served as a neccessary counter-balance to her professional duties. She is now teaching a PLATO art  class "Exploring Creativity" and serves the Madison Senior Center as a volunteer, working to help organize both the Artfull Affair and the Photo Affair. She recently joined the Advisory Board of the Madison Senior Center and enjoys finally having enough time to do art on a more regular basis.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Artmaking is my spiritual practice. It is a practice of meeting the world as it is, processing both challenges and joys. I use a variety of mediums and approaches, each of which seems vital and necessary as I search for "beginner mind."  I sometimes use artmaking  to calm the anger, fears, and sorrows of living in an age when the world seems so tarnished by the poor choices of the human species, helping to me regroup and find perspective.  At times art is an attempt to explore and remain connected to Nature's abundant gifts, appreciating the beauty of ever-changing colors and forms, and to remember our ultimate condition as a part of nature, subject to Her laws. Color I regard as one of Nature's finest gifts, and is often the true motivation to do art. I am drawn especially to the human form, sometimes quite abstract, but I also enjoy drawing individuals; to focus my attention on capturing the ordinary beauty of a person may or may not result in a decent drawing, but it always opens my heart.

 

Andrea Musher
lucky cool at lapham school
WATERCOLOR

BIOGRAPHY
An award-winning poet, Andrea Musher was recognized for her work as a poetry activist when she was selected to serve as Madison’s second poet laureate (2001-2007).  Now an associate professor emerita, Dr. Musher taught Women’s Studies, English, and Creative Writing at UW-Whitewater for 26 years.  Musher holds a BA cum laude degree from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison where, in the 1970s, she took and then taught some of the first Women’s Studies courses offered—including Women and the Arts, and her own highly praised class, Women and Poetry. 
    The recipient of many grants for her work, Musher has authored, helped produce, and performed in theater pieces that featured spoken word, artists, musicians, and dancers; productions include Mothers and Other Lovers,  If It Weren’t for Her Stays, The Poetry Café (for Tap-It Theater), and Visualize This—Poetry and Art in Performance (co-produced with painter, Kelli Hoppmann and the ARTBITE Artists)
    Currently, she is writing and composing a chamber opera entitled, Frieda and Caroline (meet at the Exhibit about 1963).
    Strong Spirits—The Art of Three Women represents the first time that Musher has exhibited a group of her paintings, and she wants to thank Kelli Hoppmann, Diane Hughes, and Beverly Gordon for this opportunity.

ARTIST STATEMENT
    I make art for the joy of it, and for the challenge.  It helps me to focus, and to cultivate better seeing.  It quiets me down and revs me up.
    Art-making—sketching, painting, sculpting—has been part of my life as far back as I can remember.  Looking at art, and valuing what it revealed, also is part of my earliest memories.  I was taken by my mother to museums in Washington DC, New York City, and Chicago—frequently;  this was a treat, not tedium.  So painting and drawing is what I do when I am “on vacation” and therefore, escaping from “work” which has, most typically for me, involved words and intellectual endeavor.  As a poet and a professor of literature and writing, I have been called upon to find the language to manifest and discover ideas and emotions, and to encourage students to use their words, and the words of other writers, to probe and convey the complex structures of the self and the world.
    When I paint, I tend to simply dive in; without a conscious plan, I use what comes to hand.  If I only have three colors and two brushes, that’s what I go with.  Most of my work is done in one session-- from one to three hours at a stretch.  Though some might find this to be a bit haphazard, for me that’s part of the fun—the Zen of spontaneity.
    I have not sought  to have a formal showing of my paintings.  Usually, any new work that I do is part of a changing floor show (sketchbooks and canvases literally propped against chairs in my living room) that friends and neighbors get to observe.
    Currently,  I am recovering from a wrist that I broke-- falling down hard on a concrete sidewalk--at the end of June. When this show was proposed, getting a batch of paintings up off the floor and into frames felt like a healing gesture.  I hope that you find it to be so.