Fri 9/13 @ 6pm
This Friday, Downtown’s Trinity Cathedral and local artist Stephanie Lipscomb present Women and the Artifice of Beauty — a solo exhibition featuring Lipscomb’s textile-based artwork. Lipscomb earned her degree in Studio Art with a concentration in Graphic Design from Cleveland State University in 2008.
For anyone who’s not familiar with downtown, Trinity Cathedral is directly across Euclid Ave. from CSU’s Main Classroom and Student Center. A former partner at Wall Eye Gallery, she is currently Program Manager at Progressive Arts Alliance.
Of her work, Lipscomb says:
“Thematically, much of my work relates to women’s issues, primarily gender roles, standards of beauty, and domesticity. The myth of the perfect 1950s housewife in hair and heels fascinates me. She is smiling and beautiful and wants only to make her family happy with no regard to her own happiness. I am also interested in the relationship between artifice, femininity, and self-image. As a woman, I feel the pressure to meet societal norms, but I recognize a certain absurdity in that effort. We change our appearance with hair dye, makeup, padded bras, even plastic surgery. To what end? To find love? If so, do we not want to be loved for who we really are? We work so hard to obscure ourselves only to be eventually revealed as an imposter.
“Though it was not a conscious decision on my part to use sewing, a conventionally feminine craft, to explore women’s issues, there is a distinct correlation between my subject matter and chosen medium. My objective, however, is to express my perspective rather than simply explore sewing/quilting as a medium. It is a means to an end, not an end in and of its self.”
The exhibition and opening reception are FREE and open to the public. Exhibition runs through October 17th.