Scroll down to see each piece in the series
Beyond the Body: Abstract Portraits of Women
Artist: Jennifer Chadwick
Every now and then I’ll be working on a piece and, as it begins to take shape, I feel it wants to become some sort of portrait. Not of a face or body, but of the essence or an aspect of the personality of a particular woman. I begin to feel a kinship with specific women from the past—Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Camille Claudel—or even modern women and their struggles in general. I seek to portray these women not as bodies, but as complex human beings struggling with the circumstances of their lives. The following pages contain some of the portraits in the series I’ve completed so far.
Portrait of Eliza Tibbets
These three paper pillars represent the pillars of Eliza’s life – family, community, and spirituality – as well as her role as a pillar of the Riverside community. I am basing the colors and shapes on the work of Hilma af Klint – a spiritualist and artist who was a contemporary of Eliza’s and who many consider to be the first abstract artist in the Western tradition.
Eliza was such an interesting character in the history of Southern California, not only because she was the first person to find that the Washington Navel Orange tree could thrive in Riverside (her claim to fame) but also because of her life as an activist, a spiritualist and medium, and a woman of unusual independence during the late 1800s.
Hand Catching Cupcake
This 3 minute looping video is based on the 1968 work by Richard Serra entitled Hand Catching Lead. I found this work by Serra to reflect such a profound unconscious bias (that his white, male hand represented ALL hands) that I decided to create an ironically uber-feminine piece in the same vein. Hand Catching Cupcake utilizes all the cultural stereotypes of women: pink, sugary, domestic, frivolous. The video is a female hand, wearing a wedding band, in front of a beadboard background, catching cupcakes that fall from the sky. As each cupcake is caught and discarded, frosting starts to accumulate on the hand, making it more and more difficult for any cupcakes to be caught.
Serra based Hand Catching Lead on Hand Movie, a 1966 piece by his friend Yvonne Rainer, a dancer, choreographer, and movement artist who pioneered the idea of functional-based movement as art.
Based on Richard Serra’s 1968 video Hand Catching Lead: watch here
Portrait of The Modern Woman
Also titled: The relentless optimism required of the feminine
20”x16” oil on canvas
This piece is based on the work of activist artist Glenn Ligon and his focus on racial justice. I refer to that activism here while also exploring the issue of gender inequality and the unattainable expectations placed on women by society, by culture, and by generations of conditioning.
“There is some blue sky, let us chase it.”
- Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility from the screenplay by Emma Thompson based on Jane Austen
Portrait of Emily Dickenson
Acrylic, spray paint, embroidery thread on raw canvas 24”x 49”
Based on Emily Dickenson’s “envelope poems.”
Dickenson wrote her poems on whatever scraps of paper she could scavenge—including flaps of envelopes. This embroidery is a tracing of her handwriting from one of those scraps. This work is about the quiet emptiness of the page and Dickenson’s need to create in the leftover spaces of her day.
The text reads:
“Look back on time with kindly eyes
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature’s west!”
Portrait of Camille Claudel
Cardboard box with glazed ceramic 1’ x 2’ box 7” high
Camille Claudel was a French sculptor who was a model for, creative collaborator with, lover to, and ultimately rival of Auguste Rodin. As a woman, she struggled to secure funding for her work and was forced to rely on Rodin, who often received credit for her creations. Her work was considered by many, including her mother, to be too bold and “unbecoming of a woman.” Claudel’s father was a champion of her work, but eight days after his death she was committed to a mental institution by her family. She remained institutionalized for 30 years until her death, despite recommendations by hospital staff that she be released. She never sculpted again. This piece is about that sense of futility when one’s gifts are not recognized and cannot be utilized to their full potential.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf
Also titled: I will cut adrift
Fabric and watercolor; Height: variable (8-10’); Width: variable (1.5-3’)
This piece is about restriction, flow, and beauty – all attributes I associate with Virginia Woolf’s life, work, and death. The bowl on the following page (not seen in this installation shot) sits at the feet of this piece within the folds.
“I will cut adrift – I will sit on pavements and drink coffee – I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim – this fine October.”
- Virginia Woolf
Portrait of Virginia Woolf 2
Also titled: I will cut adrift
Ceramic bowl, scraps of the novel Silas Marner by George Eliot, rocks sewn into fabric, watercolor on paper, ribbon 14” x 14” x 8” high
This piece represents the weight of societal expectation, restricted self expression, and suffocating lack of agency that many women, like Virginia Woolf and her female contemporaries, endured. Some, like Woolf, literalized this psychological burden, filling their pockets with stones or sewing stones into the hems of their dresses before wading into bodies of water, never to resurface.