Summer/Fall 2017 Exhibitions
September 22, 2017 to January 7, 2018
Curators: Michele Ellis Pracy and Kristina Hornback
The Fresno Art Museum Council of 100 chose Bay Area artist Joan Schulze as the Distinguished Woman Artist 2017.
Born in Chicago in 1936 and later relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, Joan Schulze has gained international prominence in the fiber arts as a studio artist, teacher, lecturer, and juror. She is both visual artist and lyrical poet, but her experimental and groundbreaking work in the quilt medium, using collage as the basis of her practice, is what is most admired and written about. Over the decades she has exhibited internationally, been published in prestigious catalogs and publications, and is included in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., the Oakland Museum of California, Kaiser Permanente, Adobe Systems, Inc., the John M. Walsh III Collection of Contemporary Art Quilts, and many other important public and private collections in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. The Fresno Art Museum and the Council of 100 are proud to name Joan as the Distinguished Woman Artist for 2017 and pleased to organize this exhibition of her work from the past fifteen years.
Joan describes her work: "At the heart of my work, whether it be quilts, collages, or books, is the transformation of fabric and paper in layered constructions. Improvising during the painting, image-transfer processes and collaging of materials, while chasing an idea at hand creates adventure in the studio—thoughts are made visible."
Read about Joan in the article from FiberArtNow.net, Summer 2017
(Link available courtesy of Fiber Art Now)
And go to her website at Joan-of-Arts.com
Images: Joan Schulze, Privileged Space, 2017 and Mt. Fuji, Mixed media quilts
September 22, 2017 to January 7, 2018
FAM has partnered with the Fresno County Department of Public Health to display a selection of panels from the internationally celebrated AIDS Memorial Quilt – the 54-ton, handmade tapestry that stands as a memorial to more than 94,000 individuals lost to AIDS.
Established in 1987, The NAMES Project Foundation is the international organization that is the custodian of The AIDS Memorial Quilt. The AIDS Memorial Quilt began with a single 3 x 6-foot panel created in San Francisco in 1987. Today, The Quilt is composed of more than 48,000 individual panels, each one commemorating the life or lives of someone who has died of AIDS. These panels come from every state in the nation, every corner of the globe and they have been sewn by hundreds of thousands of friends, lovers and family members into this epic memorial, the largest piece of ongoing community art in the world.
May 20, 2017 to January 7, 2018
Exhibition Curators: Michele Ellis Pracy and Kristina Hornback
Maurice Cohen is an internationally known artist who lives in both Fresno and Paris. He has won coveted awards in France for his Expressionist paintings. Dr. Cohen is also Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at California State University, Fresno, Professor of Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Bioengineering Graduate Group at the University of California, Berkeley and at UCSF. The paintings exhibited here are exceptional examples of his Impressionist and Abstract styles. Cohen is acknowledged for his combinations of colors modeled with a knife, imagery that emerges from the compositional movement he achieves, and his command of painterly styles.
Exhibition Support: Dr. Donna Hudson and Dr. Samuel Hudson
Image: Maurice Cohen, Paris Pont Neuf, 16" x 20", oil on canvas and Urban Forest, 2016, oil on canvas, 48" x 36"
May 20, 2017 to January 7, 2018
Exhibition Curators: FAM Curatorial Staff
A primary focus of the Fresno Art Museum is the maintenance and growth of our Permanent Collection. As a museum accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, we are held to the highest standards protecting this public trust. Recently accessioned selections from our collection will be shown in the Lobby and Concourse Galleries. These artworks are held for the benefit of the public, and we are delighted to present a portion of them this exhibition season.
Image: Kenda North, Girl with Violin from the Urban Pools Series, 2006, printed 2017, Ultrachrome pigment print on Hahnemuhle William Turner paper, 17" x 22", Gift of Kenda North, The Museum Project and Salvador Dali, The Flowering Inspiration,1978, Volume III, 235/350, Lithograph, 29 1/2" x 21 1/2"
MAY 20, 2017 through August 27, 2017
Exhibition Curator: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator
Fresno-based artist Nancy Youdelman is acknowledged as an original member of the feminist art movement that began five decades ago at her alma mater, California State University, Fresno, under the tutelage of Judy Chicago. Fashioning a Feminist Vision is a retrospective exhibition of Youdelman’s artistic career and encompasses the 45 years between 1972 and 2017. Exhibition Curator Michele Ellis Pracy has selected 56 pieces, divided by decade, to illustrate the development of the artist’s oeuvre beginning with her time as an art student in the early 1970s to her current command of her feminist vision as an established artist today.
Exhibition Support: Drs. Kelli Beingesser and Gail Newel
Image: Nancy Youdelmanm, Zippers and Pins, 2009, Mixed media with encaustic, 54" x 37" x 4" and Blue Baby, 2000, Mixed media, 11½" x 14½" x 13", Photos by Michael Karibian
MAY 20, 2017 through August 27, 2017
Exhibition Curator: Kristina Hornback, FAM Curator
In her newest body of work, Leslie Batty considers the subject of American feminine identity within the current political climate, addressing notions of “otherness” and conventional gender roles. Imagery of sewing and garments act as metaphor for identity, history, and culture in these paintings and collages, which aim to redress our assumptions of what it means to be “We the People.”
Exhibition Support: Drs. Kelli Beingesser and Gail Newel
Image: Leslie Batty, Bessie, 2017, oil on canvas and Red Shoes, 2017, 24" x 24", Acrylic on canvas
May 20, 2017 to June 10, 2018
Contemporary Gallery
Curator: Susan Yost Filgate, FAM Education Director
Tell Me a Story is an exhibition organized to directly relate to the storybooks read by third graders throughout the Fresno Unified School District. It includes the original artwork of six illustrators selected for their unique and appealing visual interpretations of stories based on legends, folk tales, and social issues. The artists included are Michael Allen Austin (Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale), Pascal Biet (Wolf!), Colin Bootman (Finding Lincoln), Perky Edgerton (Bravo Tavo!), G. Brian Karas (Clever Jack Takes the Cake), and Boris Kulikov (The Castle on Hester Street). Combined, the represented stories illustrate many character-building qualities: courage, determination, perseverance, resourcefulness, truth, the value of friendship, supporting tolerance and literacy, and overcoming impossible odds or misfortune with positivity.
Organized to coordinate with the Kennedy Center's Any Given Child Education Program
Underwritten annually in part by the Bonner Family Foundation
Image: Boris Kulikov, The Button Man, from The Castle on Hester Street written by Linda Heller, 18" x 10½", mixed media on paper, and Michael Allen Austin, Martina and Perez, from the book, Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale, retold by Carmen Agra Deedy, 24" x 30", acrylic, colored pencil, and pastel on illustration board
Learn more about the artists and get a peek at the exhibition by clicking here.
Read the great article on Tell Me a Story from The Fresno Bee's Central Valley Magazine.
Summer 2017 Exhibition Support: Kaye Bonner Cummings, Diadre R H Metzler in memory of Ron Metzler, Julia Smith in memory of Don and Frances Werner