‘Women’s Work’ At Ridgefield Guild Of Artists

RIDGEFIELD — The Connecticut Chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA-CT) is presenting a major exhibition of prominent women artists throughout the state at The Ridgefield Guild of Artists Galleries through September 14.

The show, titled “Women’s Work,” explores this theme in various media with surprising and innovative results. Assemblages, collages, prints, sculpture, and paintings reflect the divergent views of the individual artists on the idea of women’s work. The show includes art by 34 artists, including Newtown residents Bahijeh Mehri and Virginia Zic.

An added feature during the run of the show is the Sunday Gallery Talks at 3 pm. WCA-CT members, each well-known in the art community, will speak about the works in the show. The first of the series will be given on August 24 by Barbara Wilk of Westport. The programs continue on August 31 with Gloria Ruenitz of Ridgefield; September 7, M.G. Martin of Woodbury, a founding member of the CT Chapter of the Women’s Caucus; and September 14, Nina Bentley, who will provide insight into the works in the exhibition.

Admission to the show and the artist gallery talks is free.

The Women’s Caucus for Art, founded in 1972, is a national organization with a multidisciplinary, multicultural membership of women in the visual arts professions including artists, art historians, students and educators, and gallery and museum professionals. Its emphasis is on women working in the visual arts professions today, and its focus is on the enormous contributions of women and people of color throughout the history of art.

On the national level WCA promotes research, exhibitions, conferences, and bestows honor awards to outstanding women for achievement in the arts. Local chapters provide regular forums and workshops about contemporary and historical issues in aesthetics, scholarship, education, law, finance, and health hazards in the visual arts.

WCA establishes a network through local chapters in New England, Midwest, Southern, and Western states and through an annual national meeting.

The Connecticut chapter has been active since 1990, offering exhibitions to its members, monthly meetings at artist’s studios, plus opportunities to participate in art forums and workshops. It also has a list of speakers on women in the arts available to schools and organizations.

The Ridgefield Guild of Artists is on Halpin Lane, off Prospect Ridge Road. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 1 to 5 pm. For more information or directions call RGA at 203-438-8863 or visit www.rgoa.org.

Representing Newtown

The two artists who live in Newtown who were selected to have artwork included in “Women’s Work” have very different styles, and each started to see a love of art emerge at a young age.

Bahijeh Mehri was born in Tehran, Iran. Today she makes her home in Newtown.

Mrs Mehri began her studies in art at The American University in Beirut, Lebanon. When she immigrated to the United States in 1960 she continued her studies full-time for three years at Silvermine Guild in New Canaan.

Subsequently she studied at Art Students League in New York City and then at Wooster Art Center in Danbury.

Mrs Mehri has had numerous exhibitions in the Northeast including solo shows at Mussavi Gallery in New York City (1984), Ward Nasse Gallery in New York City (1988, 1990, 1992, 1994), Ridgefield Guild of Arts (1983), and Tiglieto Gallery in Kent (1994). She has also participated in many group shows, including at Ward Nasse Gallery, Richter Arts Center in Danbury, Society of Creative Arts of Newtown (SCAN), Wooster Art Center, and annually at West Street Artists’ Co-op.

Mrs Mehri is a founding member of West Street Artists’ Co-op and is a past director of the group.

Virginia Zic began teaching art at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield in 1965, two years after the school opened. She was an artist long before that, though, and never stopped loving –– or sharing –– her first love: painting. She has worked with a number of media during her life, including oil, acrylic, gouache, oil sticks, and watercolor.

Mrs Zic moved to Newtown from the Midwest in 1965, the same year she began teaching at Sacred Heart; she was the school’s original art faculty member. She was born in Chicago and attended DePaul, where she received her bachelor’s degree, then went to The Art Institute in Chicago to continue her studies.

She worked toward her master’s degree at Villa Schifanoia in Florence, a graduate school of fine arts with a very limited enrollment –– 30 students, tops, of fine artists and musicians –– all instructed by Italian teachers, primarily art historians.

Mrs Zic’s home is tastefully adorned with examples of her works, found in every first-floor room, representing different stages of the artist’s progression. While her home is clearly not open to public walk-throughs for art lovers, the public has during the years been able to enjoy viewing Mrs Zic’s work when it is included in exhibitions at The Gallery of Contemporary Art at Sacred Heart University.

She retired in June 2001 after 35 years of teaching at SHU. Mrs Zic not only remains active, but can now devote more of her time and energy to her art.

This is the second show the two Newtown artists have been in together this year. Earlier this year WCA-CT presented “Now Voyager,” a three-month presentation at Bradley International Airport that has been curated by exhibitions chair Barbara Wilk of Westport. That show included three-dimensional pieces designed especially for the show: whimsical airplanes, outrageous suitcases, wild ceramic shapes, tea on the moon and in the desert, hinged panels of travel, a triptych of the Galapagos, mixed-media pieces based on Walt Whitman poems, maps, and other works meant to stretch the imagination of travelers.

Guest Speakers

Barbara Wilk, who will be opening the speaking series at the RGA gallery on Sunday, is a painter, sculptor, ceramicist, weaver, and filmmaker, as well as a printmaker specializing in monoprints. She prints at the Graphic Arts Workshop in Connecticut as well as Hand Graphics in New Mexico. She has exhibited in many national juried shows, in the Smithsonian Traveling Craft Show, New York galleries, and museums and libraries throughout New England.

Ms Wilk has produced two short films and animated and produced five award-winning films that were shown on public television and are in national distribution. She has had 13 solo shows.

Next weekend Gloria Ruenitz will discuss the concepts, relationships, places, and situations that provide her (and other artists attending the talk) with artistic inspiration.

During the past two years, Ms Ruenitz has dedicated herself to the creation of mixed-media art that presents a philosophy of, in her words, “art as life itself.”

Trained as a graphic artist, Ms Ruenitz spent 26 years developing corporate packaging and marketing images for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Nabisco, and Nestlé, while developing her own talents as a photographer and assemblage artist.

M.G. (Trudy) Martin of Woodbury works with clay and with paper, making distinctive black ceramic animal pots, colorful collages, monoprints, and linoleum block prints. Bilateral symmetry and repetition are often used in her work.

A member of Silvermine Guild of Artists, Nina Bentley’s artist statement explains her work as “conceptual whether in two or three dimensions. I have been concerned with both aesthetics and the ‘human condition,’ issues affecting not only me personally but those evident on a broader social scale. As a result, my artistic impulses tend to have social motives.

“I create art to gain some perspective on the world,” her statement continues, “trying to retain a sense of humor, something not always easily accomplished. In light of this, my work can be seen as multidimensional social commentary tinged with irony. My work is created in pursuit of social reform, with tongue in cheek and a jaundiced eye.”