Mixed medium art show explores women’s health issues

Works from seven female artists aim to challenge stigmas

By Estela Fuentes
The Guardsman

“Pap Art: An Atypical Exhibit” opened at the City College Arts Gallery in the Visual Arts Building on Feb. 22. The traveling show, which runs until March 18, displays works by seven female artists focusing on women’s reproductive health issues.

Curator Nancy Mizuno Elliot feels society has always attached a negative stigma to women’s health issues.

“As an elder, I realize that knowing, let alone acknowledging my body, especially my menstruating parts, was about loving me,” she said.

Atlanta-based artist Lisa Alembik is showing pencil sketches on small scraps of paper which relate to her fear of motherhood and how unprepared she and her husband were to take care of a child.

Katy Krantz, an artist from New York, has created a series of collages from prints, take-out menus, kids’ finger paintings, and dismantled pieces of her own paintings. Her full-color collection is inspired by medical text books and new age philosophy. “Self Exam (Cure for Hysteria)” is composed of magazine cut-outs and acrylic paint on white paper.

Fellow New Yorker Stephanie Liner displays prints depicting how women are viewed in society. In each picture, a model wears fabric stitched together to make it look like she is a piece of furniture.

“I hope viewers might evaluate the way they view women socially and sexually through TV, pornography and just the way we think people should behave in relation to their gender,” she said.

Oakland artist Laurel Nathanson illustrates clinical-style illustrations based on retro anatomy illustrations. “I am exploring a subject matter aesthetically lush and endlessly fertile in content: my vagina,” Nathanson wrote in her artist’s statement.

Another Bay Area artist, Bianca Kolonusz-Partee from San Francisco, has created an autobiographical mixed-medium collage. Each piece is a depiction of the view of her feet as she goes through her annual pap smear. The collage is made from magazine cut-outs, cardboard boxes and paper scraps accented with pencil drawings.

“I explore the terror around this procedure and evoke a faux experience for the viewer to have a fresh look at sexual abuse,” Kolonusz-Partee explained in her artist’s statement.

Elliot hopes the show will create a comfort level for women and men to discuss women’s health issues openly.

“Maybe that’s a lot to ask for. But, it’s not a lot to hope for,” she wrote in her curator’s statement.