Eleven Ways of Working

Eleven Ways of Working: The Fresno Journal Project
Joyce Aiken / Shannon Bickford / Joy Johnson / Jean Ray Laury / Elaine Lynn / Trude
McDermott / Jerrie L. Peters / Bobbie Smetherman / Sally Stallings / Barbara Van Arnam / Kathy Wosika

When:  Fri., Sept. 12 – Sun., Nov. 2, 2008
Lobby and Concourse Galleries
Panel Discussion: Thurs., Sept. 18, 7:00 pm


Introduced by one of the participating artists, Fresno’s own Jean Ray Laury, the Fresno Art Museum presented the exhibition, Women of Influence – a Collaboration of Twelve Artist and Their Visual Journey, in the summer of 2006. The current installation, created by eleven Fresno artists inspired by the original exhibition, took on a life of its own as evidenced in the individual and original works now on display. Unlike the original, united by the “round robin” sharing of twelve journals to which all contributed, the Fresno show challenged each of the women to immerse themselves in the evolution of their individual quest for artistic expression. Deciding not to have a particular theme, nor to require any particular format, each artist was left to her discretion to amend or add to any of the ideas that she was already working on.

Jean Ray Laury’s accordion-style journal examines through color and humor the process of aging while Joy Johnson uses angels to symbolize the spiritual journey demanded by the challenge of her medical crisis. Elaine Lynn has always developed sketchbooks as journals where her interest in the changing valley landscape has been recorded whereas Shannon Bickford examines the relationship between herself and nature and how that relationship influences perception. For Sally Stallings, the light upon the household laundry hanging on the line just outside her lace-framed window, takes on the aspect of the sacred. Contrasted by the collecting of cigarette’s from London’s streets, Joyce Aiken’s journal becomes a sociological visual journal punctuated by the warnings on cigarette packages.

Photographer Bobbie Smetherman has recorded the graveyards and ghost towns of the Old West with a sense of the nostalgic as contrasted with the current boom in the New West. It is an exploration in the contrast between myths and realities. Jerrie Peters work is a personal collection of icons, artists and places crafted from wood, fabric and collage. She has elaborated on a stand-up accordion fold book for which she has designed a wooden box. Papermaker Kathy Wosika has used dried vegetal fragments from her gardens in her exploration of the mysteries of the earth and her seasonal changes.

Painter Trude McDermott’s meditative journal of photo collages with text uses the images of caves to express the search for ascension into the true light of reality – eight of the pages of the journal have been translated into mixed media paintings related to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” The symbolic painting by Barbara Van Arnam expresses the Cycle of Life and the seasonal changes of birth through death and life again. Safeguarded by the Goddess Nut, the elaborate expression of thought journaled over more than a year is powerfully recorded symbolically through the sun’s journey through the night hours.

Current Exhibits List