SAN DIEGO -- Helen Redman: The Other Side of Birth
March 10 - April 14
Reception: Thursday, March 12, 5 - 7 pm, D101; Artist Lecture 7 pm, G101
Conversation with the Artist in the Gallery: Friday, April 10, 1:30 pm, D101
Decades before the controversial Vanity Fair cover of a pregnant Demi Moore, artist Helen Redman had been painting and drawing portraits of herself—naked and pregnant. The Other Side of Birth features these explorations of motherhood plus a selection from a ‘family lifeline’ series that Redman has been working on starting in 1962 and continuing to the present. These striking family portraits are intimate explorations of her pregnancies and the emotional bonds between a mother and her children. The pictorial compositions are an ode to her children and grandchildren, to their discoveries, and to the development of their identities. The gallery will be filled with lushly executed paintings, drawings, and pastels by San Diego based Redman. A slightly different selection of works, also curated by Alessandra Moctezuma, will be shown at the Women’s Museum of California from April 23 through May 31, and entitled Through A Mother’s Eye. Most of the works in these exhibits were culled from the artist’s personal collection and many of them are being shown for the first time.
Throughout history we have been exposed to images of mother and child: religious paintings of Madonnas and the tender images by Mary Cassatt. Feminist artists in the 1970s delved into the topic but at a time when minimalism and abstraction reigned, powerfully emotional views of motherhood and pregnancy were mostly disparaged. The works by Redman are particularly unique; she observes with love, but not with the romanticized gaze of Cassatt; she lets the weight of life and responsibility show through. There is a rawness and boldness that show through in her portraits.
Expanding on the tradition of the self-portrait, Redman chronicles every dramatic aspect of motherhood. She captures the changes in her body, the swollen belly, the engorged breasts, and growing hips. As a life develops inside, she draws herself, standing or sitting with pen in hand and forearms resting on the drawing pad. That ink line, that fluid life-line will continue to follow the contours of her babies’ little bodies, the hills and valleys of their patterned pajamas, the wide-open eyes in surprised young faces, the bodies that float, reach and curl in the white void of the paper. As her kids grow, the compositions fill with joyful quilted patterns. The children seem to recede and emerge, a tension between an engulfing foreground (a waiting universe) and a nascent personality peeking through.
The exhibit will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with essays by art historians Amy Galpin, Ph.D. and Malia Serrano, M.A. In the catalog, Redman’s children and grandchildren contribute short memoirs about the documentary aura that surrounded them all their lives. Redman invites us to experience a truly novel family album.
Helen Redman is an internationally exhibited figurative painter and mixed-media artist. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum; the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center and the Rose Medical Center, Denver, Colorado. She co-founded Front Range Women in the Visual Arts in Boulder, Colorado. After her move to the West Coast, she was the first president of the San Diego Women’s Caucus for the Arts in 1990 and received their Honor Award for lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2010. Redman received her MFA from University of Colorado in 1963.
http://www.birthingthecrone.com/
Gallery Hours: MTW 11-4 pm, Thursday 11 – 8 pm. Closed Fridays, Weekends and School Holidays.
http://www.sdmesa.edu/art-gallery
PARKING IS FREE ON RECEPTION NIGHT: Park in the upper faculty parking areas adjacent and across from the flagpole. For parking info during regular gallery hours go to http://www.sdmesa.edu/parking
Contact
Alessandra Moctezuma
