Parallax Space

I have been AWOL from posting for the past few months, but for very good reason. The birth of my daughter, Harper Wren, on March 8th. It’s been an exhausting and exciting time, and I’m very appreciative that I have been able to spend so much time with Harper during her first few months of life.

At the end of March we wrapped up the Womanhouse project with a potluck feast inside the completed tent. It was a bittersweet gathering – I wish we could have kept the house up forever, as it created an amazing atmosphere for conversation and communing. Hopefully we’ll be able to find future homes for the tent in various cities around the country.

In April we showcased work by UNL Sculpture MFA students in a show titled Tragic Magic. Jamie Fritz, Matt Blache, Jacob Francois, and Liana Owald all had work in the show.

May’s show featured work by Bill Graham, my husband and fellow Parallax operator. Bill’s show, A Million Little Sorrys, included his paintings, sketches, and sculpture from the past fourteen years. The works all relate to the death of Bill’s brother in 1998, and represent a cathartic working through of the event.

Another First Friday is here! This month will feature a variety of performances during the evening, including work by Charley Friedman, Heidi Bartlett, Joan Stone, and members of the UNL Womanhouse group. Performances will be at 7:15, 8:15, and 9:15.

Please also join us tomorrow, February 29th (Leap Year!) at 7:00 pm for a group discussion. Lesley Bartlett, PhD student in English and Women and Gender Studies at UNL, will kick-start the conversation with some info from her own research on identity, performance, and activism in feminist communities. You can make your thoughts a part of the installation by writing them on fabric that will be sewn into the house. Your voice will form the House that Feminism Built!

Last week’s First Friday was a wonderful success! We had a huge crowd come through the space, engaging in discussions, cutting up clothes, sewing cloth, braiding strips of cotton, painting nails…all in the name of breaking down gendered expectations of so-called “domestic” activities. We’re looking forward to another bustling First Friday on March 2nd – Remember to bring your donation of red, purple, pink, and orange clothing, as well as those half-used no longer in rotation “beauty products” (make-up, lotions, etc.) stashed away in your bathroom cabinets. The clothing will be used to continue work on the tent, while the “beauty products” will become a separate art installation in March. See the write-up in the Omaha Reader about this project (we’re the Lincoln feminists!).

We have a series of upcoming events, so be sure to check out www.unlwomanhouse.org for a listing of activities. Due to the 11.5 inches of snow that fell last Saturday, we decided to cancel the first Sunday Funday. However, we will be there this weekend (2.12.12), so come join the conversation! We’ll have snacks and warm beverages, and invite everyone to participate in cutting, pinning, and sewing the walls of the tent (don’t worry if you don’t know how to work a sewing machine – There will be tutors!).

We also invite everyone to join us this coming Wednesday (2.15.12) for our first feminist roundtable discussion with Dr. Barbara DiBernard, UNL Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies – There will be tea, so we can call it a Feminist Tea Party, in homage to the wonderfully awesome project by Caitlin Rueter and Suzanne Stroebe. It’s political, subversive, and all around inspirational.

The House that Feminism Built opens tomorrow! Reception will be from 7-10 pm.

Check out www.unlwomanhouse.org to watch a fantastic time lapse video of the tent roof installation.

UNL Womanhouse and Parallax Space proudly present:

The House that Feminism Built
An interactive, growing exhibition making room for feminist dialogue

February 3 – March 31, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, February 3rd, 7 – 10 pm
March reception: Friday, March 2nd, 7 – 10 pm
Parallax Space
1746 “N” Street – Lincoln, Nebraska

UNL Womanhouse and Parallax Space are pleased to announce the opening of the installation The House that Feminism Built on Friday, February 3, 2012.

Help us build! We want you to bring red, pink, and purple women’s clothing for sewing, and all your half-empty, no longer using “beauty products” from those bathroom cupboards. Bring to both First Friday events!

UNL Womanhouse is a group of artists and activists coming together to proclaim our status as feminists and address the state of feminist politics in contemporary artistic practice and society. In recognition of the 40th anniversary of Womanhouse, which took place in Los Angeles from January 30 – February 28, 1972, a group of graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, as well as recent alums and professors from the Department of Art and Art History and the Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design, are creating an updated version of Womanhouse for the 21st century. The result is the construction of The House that Feminism Built, a collaborative and ongoing installation of a suspended “house” composed of patched and sewn fragments of donated women’s clothing. A series of related events will take place during the months of February and March, including film screenings, panel discussions, sewing sessions, and community activities. For a list of upcoming events visit: www.unlwomanhouse.org

January/February 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the ground-breaking Feminist Art Program installation Womanhouse. Since April 2011, a group of students (grad and undergrad) at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, as well as UNL alumns from Art and Art History and UNL faculty (myself and Wendy Weiss, Professor of Textiles, Clothing, and Design), have been engaged in a project to both honor and investigate the legacy and impact of the original Womanhouse project. Our exhibition, The House that Feminism Built, will be on view at Parallax Space from February 3 – March 31, 2012.

What is UNL Womanhouse?
We are a group of artists, art historians, and activists coming together to proclaim our status as feminists and address the state of feminist politics and artistic practice today.
Why Womanhouse?
The “Womanhouse” title refers to the project of the same name by the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of Arts in 1971-72. Led by artists Miriam Shapiro and Judy Chicago, the program took over an empty abandoned house and re-worked it room by room into an installation of feminist artistic expression. Womanhouse was created in a consciousness-raising era, when women’s “place” in the home was being questioned. The artists provocatively presented responses to that tight gender roles and discriminations. In addition to tackling gender roles, they also brought women’s and feminist issues into the foray of artistic production. As 2012 is the fortieth anniversary of Womanhouse, we are addressing how feminist politics drives artistic creation and vice versa, then and today.
What does it mean to be a feminist today?
We’re trying to find that out ourselves. We have found the word feminism to be problematic and full of unintended, negative meaning. We think feminism means working to dismantle gender, race, sex and class restrictions for everyone. To us, this seems like a good, challenging idea and especially necessary for the art world. By organizing we have begun a conversation that is often pushed aside. We have found that feminism asks questions that are sometimes uncomfortable and attractive to dismiss. But we feel by talking, creating, reading, looking and listening we can open a feminist dialogue meant for progress.
And this is where you come in!
UNL Womanhouse will be presenting ongoing projects in February and March at Parallax Space (1746 N Street in Lincoln) and the Rotunda Gallery (UNL city campus Union). Our calendar includes interactive installations, performances, dinners, publications, discussions, films and various outreach programs. We want everyone to be part of the conversation!

[framed]
Selected Work from UNL Photography Students

December 2, 7-10 pm
December 3, 1-4 pm

This juried show includes work by: Beth Blevins, Taylor Colt, Ryan Ferguson, Kate Florian, Sarah Johnson, Bryan Klopping, Sarah Lieswald, Andrea Maack, Alisha Parpart, Bethany Rachow, Nathan Sanks, Benjamin Sattler, Ashley Sears, Megan Stokes, and Alisa Stuckert. 89 works were submitted by UNL undergraduate photography students; 30 of these works were accepted for the exhibition.

Alisa Stuckert’s photograph Billy’s Letters (2011) was selected as best in show.

Emma Nishimura’s installation Vestige: Navigating the Layers was up at Parallax from October 7-31, 2011. Here is Emma’s artist’s statment from the exhibit:

Three years after finding a box full of my grandmother’s sewing patterns in my mother’s basement, I am still trying to work through all of the memories and emotions connected with it.  Passed down through the generations, I have inherited these patterns, just as I have inherited my grandmother’s stories.  Growing up, I was very much haunted by the experiences of my Japanese Canadian grandparents, their time spent in Japan, their internment during the Second World War and the years following that time.  I heard these tales around the dinner table at my grandparent’s house, my sister and I sitting quietly, listening attentively, learning of our family’s legacy.  Yet many stories were left untold, questions unasked due to the silence and bitterness that seemed to cloak the events of the internment.  Only now, in my attempt to gather and record all that is remembered of my grandparent’s lives, do I realize the impossibility of ever knowing the entire story.  All that is left are fragments of memories and different versions of events.  Stories mediated over time through different tellings and retellings have left distinctions between fact and fiction blurred.
After sorting through these narratives, my grandmother’s patterns and their many layers of history, I have taken on their burden and have acquired baggage that I cannot seem to let go of.  Thus, it is through this body of work that I seek to explore the ideas of melancholy, of being trapped in history and returning to the same stories again and again.  In re-making the garments that my grandmother once created, I have re-traced her movements and made visible something that was long ago lost.  Yet, throughout this process I have been acutely aware of the futility of my actions, as these garments can only ever be an echo of what once was.  However, despite the fragmented versions of events that I have collected, and the elusive and fragile nature of memory, I seek to create though my work an environment in which to share these stories.

Our October show, Vestige: Navigating the Layers, will feature an installation by Emma Nishmura, a second-year MFA student in printmaking at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Emma was featured in a Lincoln Journal Star article this past March, which you can read by clicking here.

Emma’s show will be up at Parallax from October 7-31, 2011, with an opening reception on October 7th from 7-11 pm.