Karen McGuire
Curator
City of Carlsbad Willian D. Cannon Gallery
2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. In recognition of this milestone, the William D. Cannon Art Gallery presents the work of four local women artists, celebrating their talent and signifying the role of art in creating change.
Art holds an important place in the history of women’s fight for the vote. Art has helped to inspire and unify the suffragists who were dedicated to expanding American democracy. Today, art continues to inspire others. Four Visions: A Celebration of the Year of the Woman showcases four multigenerational women artists who each share their creativity, inspiration and vision through their work. The four artists in this exhibition challenge our assumptions of media by working with traditional, as well as unexpected materials. Many of the pieces are solid and structural, while others are ethereal. The featured artists are Anne Mudge (sculpture), Kline Swonger (mixed-media and sculpture), Bianca Juarez (ceramics) and Marisol Rendόn (drawing).
Anne Mudge, a nationally-acclaimed sculptor and public artist, lives and works in northern San Diego County. The core of her work has to do with process, and she makes work with an organic feel. She manipulates natural and man-made materials in an incremental buildup of forms, utilizing stainless steel wire, beads, fiber, cable, lead, wax and pigment. In her fragile-looking and exquisite sculptures, she often employs a variety of processes to reference living forms and systems.
Kline Swonger, a San Diego sculptor and designer, who explores spatial and psychological relationships between place, perception, memory, ritual and loss. Through use of light, shadow, and materials representative of both the urban and natural landscape, her work serves as a platform allowing for moments of reflection and pause.
A lifelong artist in multiple mediums, Bianca Juarez has found a form of highly personal and unique expression with clay, fire and glaze. Through a process of invention, imagination, and excavation, her ceramics give shape to different aspects of her subconscious and emotional life. Inspired by history, folk art and early cultures, she aims to invoke a universal emotional experience that imparts a feeling of connectedness and strives to make objects that transcend time and place.
Marisol Rendón works as artist, designer and educator. She and her husband, Ingram Ober, have collaborated on projects in public art, museum exhibitions, social and civic events and aesthetics discussions. Rendon, who was born in Colombia and now lives in San Diego, also finds in her work a means to explore the cultural divide. In her drawings, common objects are transformed into complex repositories of memories and meanings to reflect the culture at large and her memories and life experiences.
Four Visions: A Celebration of the Year of the Woman opens October 4, running through March 7, 2021. The exhibit will be presented with a virtual tour on the city’s website to accommodate viewing until reopening occurs at the library. The William D. Cannon Gallery is located at the City Library on Dove Lane, managed by the city’s Cultural Arts Office and supported by the Carlsbad Friends of the Arts and the Carlsbad Library & Arts Foundation.