Holiday Luncheon
Sunday, December 5, 2021, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Carderock Springs Club
8200 Hamilton Spring Court
Bethesda, MD 20817
Hooray! An in-person event! Yowza!!
Woot!! Woot!! An actual party! We hope you can come!
Gourmet lunch by Vie de France!
(Keep an eye out for an email soon with details and RSVP info.)
Meantime, mark your calendars and we look forward to seeing you there.
Women’s Caucus for Art Conference 2022 Occupy the Moment: Embracing Our History, Enhancing Our Impact 50th Anniversary of the Women’s Caucus for Art Chicago, IL February 17–20, 2022 This conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Caucus for Art. Our theme celebrates our strengths and accomplishments and explores how we are moving forward to embrace new agendas and support emerging voices. The conference will include panels, workshops, a national member exhibition, the Lifetime Achievement Awards, and festive celebrations of this historic anniversary. Save the dates and plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you there. A block of rooms will be reserved at The Hilton Hotel near the Art Institute.
Book your hotel rooms soon, prices are guaranteed through Jan 21, 2022.
In-Person Art Gallery Visit . . .
Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands
Come in person on Sunday November 14 at 2:00 p.m. for the Second Sunday Art Chat, Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands at the National Portrait Gallery.
This exhibition is the first large retrospective of the Chinese-born American artist who died this year. Hung Liu’s paintings are often based on photographs of overlooked people. She herself lived through war, political revolution, exile, and displacement. Her work shows a complex picture of an Asian Pacific American experience. Her portraits speak powerfully to those seeking a better life, in the United States and elsewhere. A curator who knew the artist may join us. (Read more here . . . https://npg.si.edu/exhibition/hung-liu-portraits-promised-lands.)
We may also want to move on to Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibitions Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, or Chemical Balance II by Jean Shin (Read more here . . . https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/shin.)
Meet at the entrance to the Hung Liu exhibition. Masks required. Take Metro to Gallery Place.
Entry deadline is November 15!!!
Pass the Word About Our Scholarship!
Thanks to our Community Outreach Committee, Tronja Anglero, Sandra Davis, Cynthia Farrell Johnson, Deb Walmer and Jeanine Cooper, our scholarship program is now accepting applications. Pass the word!
And . . . consider volunteering, for this, or another function. WCADC is 100% volunteer-run. Anything good that happens is because people like YOU decide to make a positive change by volunteering.
When Art Becomes a Climate Statement
Diane Burko at the American University Museum
by Ellen Maidman-Tanner
I met up with fellow WCADCers at the American University Museum last month to meet artist Diane Burko, and to walk through her impressive, multi-room, multi-media installation entitled ‘Seeing Climate Change’. It is the perfect title for this show, a culmination of decades of Diane’s travels, observations, and documentation concerning vast and significant changes to our planet due to global warming. (My brother, a meteorologist, is angered that ‘global warming’ was swapped out for ‘climate change’ so as not to anger the noisy deniers.) Diane is not tall – I am thinking maybe 5 feet or so, yet her canvases and canvas walls are very big, an attestation to her energy and zeal for this cause.
Diane’s intense efforts to work with scientists and organizations dealing with this issue is evident in the large works, some that combine beautiful, almost Helen Frankenthaler-ish abstract washes, overlaid with what are obviously hard-edge borders of landmasses or in some places, graph-like overlays. Some works sport sand and pieces of red coral, and other 3D collage bits, like glued painted circles on top of the canvases. Also on display are traditional, ‘unadorned’ landscapes in oil and acrylic.
Two of my favorite works are the two side-by-side paintings from 2010, entitled ‘Grinnell Overlook’, that in a strong painterly manner depicts the diminution of the glacier. A partner piece, developed from 1980-2005 and 2011, entitled ‘Columbia Glacier, Lines of Recession’ concerning glacial shrinkage, is of a glacier viewed from above (Diane at times works from her photographs shot from planes or helicopters), with multi-colored lines laid over it; more a powerful conceptual statement than successful visual art. Other rooms deal with our precious, and vanishing, coral reefs.
I greatly appreciate and value what Diane is doing in her work – alerting us to the climate peril we daily perpetuate. However, there are times when the goals result in finished works of varying solidity. I found some works to be in the realm of craft or cartography, more message to be understood than pure fine art. In this regard, Diane Burko has chosen a tough balancing act; is her work art, or a lesson?
Her show remains a thought-provoking tour-de-force, with passion, commitment, concern and determination filling the numerous galleries. All-in-all, worth taking in.
WCADC Board Positions Open
When I stepped in as President of the DC metro area chapter two years ago January, I had no idea that we'd go into lockdown mode over the Covid pandemic, that we would have outrage over the murder of African-Americans at the hands of the police, or that our bylaws needed updating. Now, at the close of my two-year term, I can say that our chapter is thriving with 130 members strong. The chapter had long wanted to start a scholarship program, and we finally did! We are becoming more diverse, and are richer for it.
I am so glad I volunteered to do this job. I have a satisfying sense of accomplishment for keeping this ship sailing through a storm, and making progress.
The Women's Caucus for Art mission is "dedicated to creating community through art, education, and social activism." We help women artists to grow, and thrive.
How would you like to help WCADC continue strong? Each of us has something special we can give to make a difference. If we each volunteer to do what we can, it is possible to move the needle. What can you do to carry the torch forward? The road is open to you.
Holly Stone
WCADC President, 2020-2021
Check the WCADC website often for new programs, activities and opportunities.
