cover: SUSAN FENTON, White Gauze Mask (1996) hand painted gelatin silver print, 24" x 24" AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY

Dawn Black - paintings Iona Rozeal Brown - prints Lynden Cline - Teri Cross Davis - poetry Bailey Doogan - drawings Susan Fenton - hand painted silver print photographs Inga McCaslin Frick - digital work Clarinda Harriss - poetry J.J. McCracken - performance Judith McCombs - poetry Ledelle Moe - sculpture Elsa Mora - photograph Elena Patino - painting Phyllis Plattner - painting Athena Tacha - sculpture and photo Rosemary Winslow - poetry curator MAY 8 – JUNE 27 2009 SCHOOL 33 ART CENTER

“Masked” - The possibility of a managed presentation of self, of something hidden. Even when we are ruthless in baring all, that decision to be so present or vulnerable, so apparently guileless – is a self-conscious decision to be someone specific in the world – and that decision reveals as much as it conceals. (Or in the case of baring all…conceals as much as it reveals.) “Masked” could suggest a negative; that something is being self-consciously hidden. But when the moon masks the sun in a total solar eclipse, a sun of a different sort – the corona - magically appears. Each work in this selection, on its own, hides something and thereby reveals something else – powerfully. But, together, the sum is greater than the parts…something magical happens in this combination of work. Seen ensemble, it becomes clear that the base of each work is an uncompromised, powerful corona of humor, insight, questions and knowledge. Each work included is a performance piece of sorts; the artists have used their own bodies or their own biographies to very directly create presences that suggest stories or secrets. Rather than being a study in psychology or narrative, however where one might work to discover that secret – this assembly, is exciting in that as we experience the powerfully posited content on the surface, we know that there is an equally powerfully complex internal life. The clarity of that duality in these works is fascinating.

CURATORS’ BIO JOAN WEBER, who with her husband Bruce, is an active collector of contemporary art produced in the Baltimore-Washington region and in Oracle, Arizona with pieces ranging from figurative and abstract to digital and conceptual. Ms. Weber is a member of ArtTable and is Vice President of the Washington Sculptors Group. In 2004, she curated "I Really Want to See. . . " at Gallery Four, in Baltimore, MD. Ms. Weber lives and works as a real estate professional in Silver Spring, Maryland. CURATOR’S STATEMENT

About one year ago, in Bailey Doogan’s studio in Tucson, Arizona, I stood looking at her new large charcoal drawings Five Fingered Grin and Four Fingered Smile and listened to Bailey describe having gone through a deep depression for two years during which time she had not been able to work. She said that one day she had stood in front of her mirror and used her hands to manipulate her face to create affect. Bailey hired a portrait photographer to capture her now-rehearsed gestures, and produced a body of work, drawings and paintings around that experience. It occurred to me that I wanted to find other work that powerfully developed themes of the ways identities are created, hidden or revealed. Once I began that exploration, it became clear that masking, like an eclipse, often reveals as much as it conceals. So – this exhibit took shape: the powerful personal and introspective work of secrets, grief or celebration; the political and social pieces presenting layers of power struggles, history and community; and the performative and more formal work where the process of establishing identities right in front of us is the art object, itself. In some of the pieces, the secret is the story we work to uncover; in other pieces the process of creating the work is the enigma. Sculptor Lynden Cline’s work, for years, has been driven by her feelings of having been rejected by her birth mother. Her work, Soft Creamy Center, deals very directly with hidden information and secret places and then, in Self-Portrait, after learning of a life-changing event, Lynden’s pain spews out, the mask is off, the energy is more raw for having been controlled and contained. With Bound and its uneven wheels, the curving involuting spiraling fate is sealed. The photos of black and red masks by Elsa Mora had to be in this exhibit. Mora’s series, Perda de Sentido, (Loss of Reason) is frightening; the work is dark and dangerous and raises questions that we are not sure we want answered because they may be deeper and more troubling than we want to know. Her images, at first, were deeply troubling as if they were calling on awful demons. The work was generated by the suicide of a close friend of Mora’s, artist Belquis Ayon. The black mask represents that mysterious part of life that cannot be explained; the red mask represents life and the part of her friend that will always be alive in her. Knowing this did not diminish the sense of danger and mystery in the work; on living with these images, the confusion, pathos and tribute behind the masks became clear. The social and political aspect of identity is the subject of Iona Rozeal Brown who powerfully explores the phenomenon of Japanese young people who in an effort to be “cool” blackened their faces, permed their hair, and donned the garb of what they thought to be the African American hip-hop culture. Although as many fads, this may have passed, what remains is a broad based adoption of the music, CURATOR’S STATEMENT language and popularized lifestyle of hip-hop into contemporary Japanese culture. The cultural mixes that Iona’s work presents, with extraor- dinary color, humor and elegance reflect her witness of the complexity of choosing one’s own face – again, the creation of a social identity. Athena Tacha’s several Rape Patches, Breast Patch, and Chemotherapy Mask are part of a body of work Tacha did following the deaths from cancer of two of her closest friends and the rapes of some others. The illness or trauma each had gone through caused Tacha to explore our vulnerability as humans – to pain, loss or violation, and the ways that we think we can protect ourselves (the ways we mask the reality)– with our beliefs in medical treatments, preventative measures and, simply, by denial. But the fragility and porosity of the various types of armor shows how little we are protected. Wine Spine Shield which is the latest in a series of shields – is now more dense and angry, and aggressive, even. The gold leaf and oil altarpieces, Legends, by Phyllis Plattner, move the exhibition to the powerfully political and combine elements of two cultures - Mexican revolutionary and Italian Christian renaissance art. The ski-masked figures are depictions of actual small woolen dolls from Chiapas, Mexico representing the Zapatista guerilla warriors, made by Mayan women since the 1994 indigenous uprising there. As Plattner says, “At the same time that they are beautiful and appealing, they often depict imagery of violence, danger and threat.” She writes, further, “… they raise questions about the role of religion, history, depiction, myth, legend, and symbol in our understanding of our culture.” The Congregation by Ledelle Moe is a world of unique faces, a crowd. Are they masks? Are they individual people? Their massing tells a story that is at once both history (they appear old and weather-worn) and future (features emerging out of a crowd in the instant before they are particular; the clarity is yet to be). The Congregation is us as a community of fellows - present but anonymous. Dawn Black’s Conceal Project, uses “real” people culled from the Internet or various periodicals to explore the way in which as she says, “…masquerade allows the disguise wearer to be powerful through anonymity and to allow the concealed to be his or her authentic self.” But what do we know of the powerlessness and the defined vulnerability of the hooded prisoner? Of the glamorized ladies? Of the clown? They are all existentially present in Black’s world just mixed in this grid without rhyme or reason – but aren’t we all there anyway? The performative work of J.J. McCracken involves creating living of actors coated in clay who become their pose or task. With a limited number or range of props – the vignette, a cellist playing a composition of her own and the artist’s making, who then listens to it played back in reverse, who then plays a composition of her own and the artist’s making, who then listens to it played back, in reverse. The CURATOR’S STATEMENT performer builds a whole world. The clay mask on the performer and on the cello and on the vignette dries and cracks adding to the physical and emotional tension of the piece. Me by Others, Others by Me, a performance piece by Elena Patino takes work done of matching skin color into a new and interactive direction. On 20 separate appointments, Patino invited an “other” to join her in her studio for a painting exercise in which they would each mix paint to match, and then paint wood panels, with what each viewed to be their own and other’s skin color in that studio, in that light that day. For each visit by a particular “other” then, there are four painted panels – two painted by Elena and two by the “other.” This is documentation where we see, graphically recorded, the distortions (by whom is irrelevant) in how people visually perceive themselves and others. How might our prejudices mask or reinforce how we construct who we think we are in the world? In the more formal presentations of Maja and the Untitled images by Inga McCaslin Frick, the artist has created self-portraits in the studio with mirrors and fabric, holding a camera to her face so that the implement of the creative process becomes the mask and the identity of the creator. In each, there is a painterly quality (reference to Frick’s history as a painter) and a dance quality (reference to the movement and dynamic that is central to Frick’s work as an artist). The tools, the process and the person are the identity of the portrait. Susan Fenton’s works, most literally about masks and veils, are black and white silver print photographs that are then meticulously hand painted with photographic oil pigments layer upon layer. These are elegant pieces, mysterious and exotic – the scenes are set with a formality that is breathtaking. But they are not frightening or threatening in any way. They are serene and disciplined, and although we have no access to the sitters as personalities, nor sometimes even can we clearly discern their gender - we are able, somehow, to connect to the complexity in the person we witness in front of us. Having begun with Bailey Doogan, this statement will end with Doogan’s Pour It On. In the article Logo Girls, Bailey describes the process by which, early in her career as a graphic artist for an ad agency in New York, she developed the image of the Morton Salt Girl, “Mortie” who Bailey describes as a Frankenstein, a composite of requisite cuteness of pieces, of arms and legs from various designers and artists. In Pour It On the real person is present; Mortie is aging and flawed, highly sexual and “acting bad!” The mask of the construct of “the perfect” that we’re all sold - is off! Some of you may have noticed that these are all works by women artists. I’m not sure what extra information is added by that fact but that is so. DAWN BLACK

Conceal Project - detail 2008 and 2009 gouache, watercolor and ink on paper 60 drawings, each 7.5"x 5.5“ Courtesy Curator’s Office, Washington, D.C. IONA ROZEAL BROWN

“...you opened my eyes man, thought I had a man, but how could I eye scan...” Tryptch, - right detail 2008 pigment print 27.75"x 69“ Courtesy David Adamson Gallery LYNDEN CLINE

Self Portrait 2006 photographs from photo booth, hand forged steel rod 70”x 55”x 15” BAILEY DOOGAN

Four Fingered Smile 2008 charcoal on primed paper 64”x 52” Courtesy Etherton Gallery, Tucson, Arizona SUSAN FENTON

Bowed Head with Boxed Mask 1992 browned toned gelatin silver print hand painted with photographic oils 16"x 16" INGA FRICK

Maja 2009 archival digital photograph 23” x 15.75” J.J. MC CRACKEN

Living Sculpture, CelloVignette, active-082908 2008 archival digital photograph 20” x 16” Courtesy Project 4 Gallery, Washington, D.C. LEDELLE MOE

Congregation (detail above) 2008 concrete and steel variable size ELSA MORA

Perda de Sentido (Loss of Reason) 1999 signed and numbered photograph, edition of 2512”x13” framed to 20” x 21” Courtesy Fraser Gallery, Bethesda, Maryland ELENA PATINO

Me By Others, Others By Me 2008 wood panels installation 24” x 180” PHYLLIS PLATTNER

Legends #44 In god’s Name (after Mantegna) 2006 oil and gold leaf on linen on panel 55" x 45" ATHENA TACHA

Wine Spines Shield 2007 red wine corks and 4 inch needles 33” diameter x ca. 10” deep Courtesy of Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C. ARTISTS’ BIOS

DAWN BLACK: Born in Louisiana, Black received a BFA from LSU, and earned her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. She recently relocated to Durham, N.C. where she has been able to focus solely on painting. She has had solo exhibits in Washington D.C.; Berlin, Germany; New Orleans among others and her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in art centers, museums and university museums in the United States. Black is represented by Curator’s Office, Washington, D.C. www.curatorsoffice.com IONA ROZEAL BROWN: Born in Washington, D.C., Brown received a BS in Kinesiological Sciences, BFA in painting from SFAI and as valedictorian was awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She earned her MFA from Yale University School of Art. In her work as a painter (she is also an accomplished DJ), Brown has been part of a number of important group exhibitions, including the Okwui Enwezor–curated Work Zones: Three Decades of Contemporary Art from SFAI. Her solo exhibitions include G Fine Art in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. www.adamsongallery.jimdo.com LYNDEN CLINE: After many years as an advertising executive, Lynden Cline redirected her career to the fine and applied arts in 1997, when she began to focus on the study of sculpture, ceramics and furniture design at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. and the Maryland Institute College of Art and Design. Cline has had numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group shows primarily in museums and alternative art spaces in the Washington area, New York, Boston, and other major cities in the eastern United States. Her work is on permanent exhibition at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. www.lyndencline.com BAILEY DOOGAN: Drawing and painting make up most of Doogan’s body of work. She received a BFA and a MA in Animated Film. Her work is in numerous public collections including The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Rutgers University, NJ; Tucson Museum of Art, University of Arizona Museum of Art among others. She has exhibited extensively in solo and group venues including: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Alternative Museum, and Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; and many other museums throughout the United States. After a career of teaching painting and drawing at the University of Arizona, Doogan is Professor Emerita of Painting and Drawing. www.baileydoogan.com or www.ethertongallery.com ARTISTS’ BIOS

SUSAN FENTON: Fenton exhibits widely, both nationally and internationally, and has received many awards including from The Independence Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Her work is in the permanent collections of Chicago Art Institute, Delaware Art Museum, James A. Michener Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Art, among other major museums and her work is in numerous corporate and private collections. She lives and works in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, and is an assistant professor of photography at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. www.susanfenton.com INGA McCASLIN FRICK: Undergraduate work in physics and art; two MFAs in painting and electronic media. With collaborator Gillian Brown, she was awarded a yearlong Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University, where they worked on a technically and conceptually complex interactive video installation, Turnaround Time. Frick’s paintings were included in the Corcoran Museum's prestigious biannual survey of American painting. Her work is held in collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Corcoran Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts among others. She has taught art and electronic media art at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Maryland, California and the Art Institute of Phoenix. www.ingamccaslinfrick.com J.J. McCRACKEN: Based in Washington, D.C., McCracken received an MFA in studio arts from The George Washington University. She is currently artist-in-residence at Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, Maryland. McCracken teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University, George Washington University, Montgomery College, and Hood College. Focusing on action, loss, the passage of time, J.J. McCracken constructs active installations that sometimes involve traditional pottery-making processes. McCracken is represented by Project 4 Gallery in Washington, D.C. www.jjmccracken.com or www.project4gallery.com LEDELLE MOE: Born in South Africa, Moe studied sculpture and graduated from Technikon Natal. After helping found the FLAT Gallery, an alternative art space in Durban, Moe came to the United States where she received her MFA in Sculpture at VCU. Moe has taught at the Corcoran, VCU, and St. Mary’s College and currently at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Moe has exhibited extensively, in the United States in Washington D.C. and New York and, internationally, in Sweden, Austria and South Africa. Moe received a Joan Mitchell Award and in 2008, received the Kreeger Museum Artist Award. www.ledellemoe.com or www.gfineartdc.com ARTISTS’ BIOS

ELSA MORA: Born in Holguin, Cuba, Mora completed her undergraduate studies at the Escuela Profesional de Artes Plásticas. While in Cuba, Mora received several prestigious awards and exhibited in England, Italy and Chile, representing Cuba. Having moved to the United States, Mora has had solo and group exhibitions at major galleries in Chicago and New York and has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Tokyo, Japan. Mora continues to exhibit in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, France, Dominican Republic, Abu-Dhabi, the United States and in Cuba. Mora currently resides in Los Angeles and is represented in the Greater Washington area by the Fraser Gallery of Bethesda, Maryland. www.frasergallery.com ELENA PATINO: A native of Peru, Patino received a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from American University in 2000 and MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008. Before choosing Washington, D.C. as the place she calls “home,” she had traveled extensively in North and South America as well as Europe. Using a variety of materials, her work examines constructed ideas of culture, race and gender and how they shape people’s identities. www.epatin.otherpeoplespixels.com PHYLLIS PLATTNER: A Washington, D.C. based artist, Plattner has spent much time living in Chiapas, Mexico, and in Florence, Italy, highly diverse cultures having had a profound impact on her art. Plattner has exhibited her work extensively both in the United States and in Europe and has won many awards including an NEA/Mid-Atlantic Fellowship and Maryland State Arts Council grants. She teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art where she won the Trustees Award for Excellence in Teaching and has held positions as Distinguished Professor, Visiting professor or Visiting Artist in Florence, Italy and many universities including RISD, NYU, Columbia College, University of Chicago among others. www.phyllisplattner.com ATHENA TACHA: Born in , Tacha received MAs in sculpture and art history, and a Ph.D. in aesthetics, Sorbonne, Paris. Tacha taught sculpture at , OH until moving to Washington, D.C. She does sculpture and conceptual/ photographic art on the female body and has executed nearly 40 large commissions for public sites throughout the United States. She has exhibited widely internationally, has had a large retrospective at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and is represented in many museums. Her most recent book is Dancing in the Landscape: the Sculpture of Athena Tacha, 2000. www.oberlin.edu/art/athena/tacha.html or www.marshamateykagallery.com POETS’ BIOS

TERI ELLEN CROSS holds a BS in Journalism from Ohio University and a MFA in Poetry from American University. She was a Ford Foundation fellow in 1997, a Cave Canem fellow, and recently attended the Soul Mountain Writer's Retreat. Her poems have been published in many anthologies including, Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade. Her work has appeared online in Beltway Quarterly and Torch, and in Natural Bridge, Gargoyle, and the Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 anthology. She recently co-edited The Evolving City issue (Volume 8, No. 4 Fall 2007) of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and can be heard online in the 2008 series "The Poet and the Poem," hosted by poet Grace Cavalieri. She is the poetry and lectures coordinator at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. and resides in Silver Spring, MD with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their daughter Zoë. CLARINA HARRISS is an English professor at Towson University, where she teaches poetry and editing. Her two latest books are Dirty Blue Voice, 2007, and Mortmain, 2008, both from Halfmoon Editions and available online via major bookstores. Her poetry and short fiction have won numerous national and international awards. She edits and directs BrickHouse Books, Inc., Maryland's oldest literary press. Writing by prison inmates is one of her main research interests. JUDITH McCOMBS was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and grew up in almost all the continental states, in a geodetic surveyor’s family. She has lived on the edge of Maryland woods and wetlands since the mid-1980s. She has published poetry and short fiction extensively, recorded for the Library of Congress and VOA, taught at the university level, held many fellowships and been in solo art shows curated by Jay Belloil and Ned Rivkin. She teaches at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda MD, arranges the Kensington Row Bookshop poetry readings, and is an associate editor for Word Works. In 2009 the Maryland State Arts Council awarded her its major grant in poetry. ROSEMARY WINSLOW, a poetry curator and poet, lives and works in Washington, D.C. (on the same street where Whitman lived for a time), with her husband John, a visual artist. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Poet Lore, The Southern Review, Crux, Innisfree Poetry Journal and other journals. She has received the Larry Neal Award for Poetry twice and Writer's Fellowships from the D.C. Commission for the Arts and The Vermont Studio Center. She teaches literature and writing at The Catholic University of America, specializing in American poetry from 1850 to the present. Her book, Green Bodies, was published 2007 from The Word Works Press. SCHOOL 33 ART CENTER 1427 Light Street School 33 Art Center is dedicated to providing opportunities for artists through exhibitions, art classes, workshops, a Studio Artist Program, and special events. Baltimore, MD 21230 School 33 Art Center is a program of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts, www.school33.org Inc., and is supported in part by grants from the Mayor and the City Council of Baltimore, Corrigan Sports / The Under Armour Baltimore Marathon, the Maryland 410.396.4641 State Arts Council, and through private contributions to School 33 Art Center.