April 2, 2007
Nancy Blum-Cumming and Julie Dierauer, lecturers in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, have artwork on display in the feminist art exhibition “Intersectionalities: The Feminist in Art” at the Pyle Center in Madison through April 21.
The show highlights the complexity of women’s experiences as well as the contribution of women to the arts.
Blum-Cumming’s artwork is a mixed-media sculpture titled “Nancy Nipples”; it is a part of Blum-Cumming’s “Champagne Girls” series. The series is based on Blum-Cumming’s experiences of celebrating life as a woman. The individual sculpture in the exhibition is almost bottle sized at 7” x 18” x 7.” It is made from paper gum wrapper chain, netting, doll parts, fiber, pom poms and mixed media. Blum-Cumming’s artwork helps her understand her contradictory feelings of growing up since the 1950s playing with Barbies, being influenced by fashion, and trying to understand women’s beauty rituals and the history of women’s roles over the years. Her feelings surface in her work as opposites and contradictory forms and materials.
Dierauer’s artwork is a mixed-media sculpture titled “Candy Box;” it represents the currency of gender—the gift-giving practices in courtship. Dierauer’s art is a commentary on how people give gifts as gestures of love in a process that leads to a permanent marriage or partnership. For the artwork, Dierauer reconstituted an old wooden silverware box she found in a Marshfield thrift shop. Dierauer created and inlaid into the box more than 100 2” x 2” miniature landscape acrylic paintings. The paintings are visual descriptions of the continuum of gift giving, from the beginnings of candy gift boxes to traveling to exotic places together.
“Intersectionalities” initiates a Midwestern connection to the national Feminist Art Project (http://feministartproject.rutgers.edu/), which highlights the impact of feminism on contemporary art practice nationally and internationally.
For more information, contact:
Nancy Blum-Cumming, lecturer of art and design, at work at (715) 232-1523 or at home at (715) 235-8361.
Julie Dierauer, lecturer of art and design, at dierauerj@uwstout.edu or (715) 232-1097
