Wed 8/19 @ 5-7PM
Fri 8/21 @ 5-8PM
The next show at 78th Street Studios’ HEDGE Gallery features two well-known artists, who’ve already exhibited at the gallery extensively.
Liz Maugans’ has titled her show of print-based collages I Am an Old Woman Playlist, while Rebecca Cross’s group of self-portraits is titles A Library of Shelves. Both artists explore what it means to be an older woman with an accumulation of of past experiences and memories.
Maugans’ work, we’re told, is “rooted in the musical and emotional residue of a life lived.” Her practice involves layering literal bits and pieces of her past life, some dating back to college, to created her layered collages that mingle past and present to visually explore where she’s at in her life now. “This series serves as both a declaration and a disruption, pushing against the social invisibility assigned to women as they age,” says the show’s statement. “It centers resilience, authority, and the emotional dualities of caregiving, grief, and reinvention.”
A Library of Selves is as a chronological story, formed with dyed silk fabrics on wooden boards with figures surfacing during the artist’s improvisatory process. Cross draws upon Japanese wabi sabi, which explores the beauty in impermanence and imperfections. “These faces, which the artist refers to as ‘The Furies’ and later as ‘Goddesses,’ capture various psychic and emotional states,” says the show statement. :The work asks a central question: Is it radical to paint a portrait by an old woman of her many selves?’”
There’s a meet-the-artists preview on Wednesday August 19; the opening takes place on Friday August 21 during Third Friday.
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