Sandy Spring Museum: RE/Using Our RE/Sources

 

 

 

This Women’s Caucus for Art-Washington DC exhibit is inspired by the ideals of living in greater harmony with our natural environment.  Our idea is to create and exhibit engaging work about our natural resources and our concerns for environmental balance.  We also value the ideals of community and maintaining the special qualities of place.  We believe that visual art is direct and immediate in conveying the message of environmental urgency. We would like to exhibit artwork that celebrates natural themes or that uses natural materials with a transformative vision. 

The Washington DC Chapter has organized this exhibit in partnership with the Philadelphia WCA Chapter, also an affiliate of the National Women’s Caucus.   Among the Philadelphia Chapter’s members are performance artists and artists experienced in community art projects.  We invite these members to develop art and collaborative programming.  One of the major goals of WCA is activism and participating in community programs.

Visual art is important in developing our understanding of ourselves and the natural environment  we have inherited.  It teaches us to look deeper, take introspection and to learn value.  One avenue of communication within our project may be to engage students from local schools to create visual art using recycled and/or natural materials and have the possibility of exhibiting this work.

Additionally, the exhibiting artists will be published in a catalog in order to explain the relationship of their work to environmental themes.

Thank you to our curator Barbara Wolanin, Ph.D.  She earned a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and also has master's degrees from Harvard University and Oberlin College. She is an expert on the American modernist painter Arthur B. Carles, the subject of the doctoral dissertation and two exhibition catalogues. She previously taught art history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Trinity College in Washington, D.C. and has worked as a curator for many years.  She has  curated a number of exhibitions about Philadelphia artists as well as juried shows, most recently for the Art League at the Torpedo Factory.