Digital Extra

  3/1/00
Art without patronizing
Take our work for what it is, artists say.

By MARIA MIRO JOHNSON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Even with as benign a purpose as kicking off Women's History Month, an exhibit of "women's art" can't help but raise a touchy question: Is women's art different from men's art?

Organizers of a show that opens today -- "Women Creating," at the University of Rhode Island's Feinstein College of Continuing Education, 80 Washington St. -- recently found themselves unable to agree with one another, or even with themselves. No sooner did an answer arise than a "yes, but . . . " or a "then again . . . "
followed.

The discussion arose as the art show was in the process of going up on Monday in the lobby of the Shepard's Building.

Providence artist Madolin Maxey, director of the Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University, who'd recommended some of the artists for the show, was remarking on the unusual collegiality among artists in town.

"That's a real feminine spirit," offered Laurie Kiely, the college's coordinator of special events.

"Oh, I don't know . . . " Maxey replied dubiously."The feminine spirit is more about connection and cooperation," Kiely said.

"O-kay," said a wary Maxey. Pressed on it, she confessed her own view: "I don't see any difference. I see absolutely no difference!"

So, in other words, this show of painting, sculpture and jewelry by more than 30 women makes no statement at all about womanhood?

"Not for me," she said, then nodded toward Kiely. "Maybe for her."

But just a few moments later, as Maxey walked through the exhibit and paused before some works in which the patterning seemed quilt-like, she declared them so "appealingly sensual" that they did seem "feminine" to her -- "I would think this is a woman doing it."

"That can be very dangerous," warned Steven Pennell, the school's artist-in-residence, who said his own work "tends to be very feminine."

Maxey, who has two large, vibrant paintings in the show (they're one flight up, where there's more room), agreed there's a risk of stereotyping. Having been told more than once that she "paints like a man," she wonders why. "Because it's big and simple? And men are big and simple? I don't know."

In Pennell's view, if there's anything distinctive about the women's work, it's a "sense of spirituality." Not to say that that's absent from men's work, he quickly added, but "women are more up-front" about it.

Maxey granted that this does seem true. At artist talks at Brown University, she said, many female artists talk about their spiritual impulses. But "I don't. I talk about red. People ask what my art is about -- `Well, I like red.' I'm really not very deep." She describes herself as being of the "Bam!-Kick-it-up-a-notch" school of art.

Seriously, though, she said, women artists seem to come in two varieties -- those who "feel safer" in shows that speak primarily to women, and those like herself, who enjoy mixing it up with men and having a "conversation."

Maxey, who is well-traveled, said women artists around the world seem more interested than men in depicting domestic scenes. These days, especially, she said, their art is likely to be about the attempt to juggle career and family.

To that end, she said, women also use different materials to make art than men would. Men "are not going to grab so much a spatula as they will a table leg."

But even saying that may be going too far, she said, since she knows of women artists -- some of them in this show -- whose materials and methods could hardly be called feminine.

Artist Marge Dalenius, for one, wears her hair in a "little, white bun" and "looks like a sweet, little granny," Maxey said. To look at her, if not to talk to her, said Maxey, "you'd think she'd be knitting doilies."

But Dalenius's contributions to this show are two African-inspired totems, concocted out of scrap metal and computer parts.

A number of works on display have women as their subject, but Maxey cautioned against making too much of that. She suspects that many artists figured, since it's a woman's show, they'd offer whatever painting or sculpture they had of a woman.

"I don't think there's men and women," she said of the artists. "You're just telling your own story. If you're telling your story, that's all you can do: `This is what I saw, this is how I felt.' "