Call for Entries: Women Rise! part of One Billion Rising

Call for Entries: Women Rise!

Art exhibition held in conjunction with One Billion Rising RVA: 

One in Three Women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime

One Billion women violated is an atrocity!

One Billion women rising and dancing is a REVOLUTION!

One Billion Rising RVA is part of a worldwide campaign organized by Eve Ensler (the founder of V- Day and author of The Vagina Monologues) and activists across the globe. One Billion Rising RVA is your voice (and you!) rising to end violence against women and girls.  One Billion Rising RVA is an event, a rally, a revolution, a rising, a chance to dance and celebrate. February 14, 2013, from 11-2, at the Richmond Coliseum, is a time to come together to increase awareness, to demonstrate our collective strength, our numbers, and our solidarity across borders. It is a catalyst for a new time and a new way of being.

Entries should evoke a sense of women's empowerment and overcoming obstacles and/or be a celebration of the way the world CAN be when violence against women no longer exists.

(There has been some confusion - this is NOT a donation - your work may be for sale - or not - your choice. If you sell your piece, Crossroads will take a commission. The rest goes to you. I believe artists should make a living from their work and have a good place to show and sell it! That's part of the intent of this show!  If you would like to donate proceeds from sale of your work to One Billion Rising, we will be delighted, but it is NOT expected.)

Fee: $15.00 Adult, $5.00 Student (please make check out to Action Alliance) for 1 or 2 entries/person. Put "OBR Art Show" in the memo line, please.  Mail the check to Susan Singer, 3440 Northridge Rd, Richmond, VA 23235.  It must be received before your entry can be accepted.

Event Dates: 2/6/2013 – 3/4/2013 at Crossroads Art Center, 2016 Staples Mill Road, Richmond, VA 23230

Entry Deadline: Please send digital entries to Susan.Singer@hotmail.com  by 1/25/2013. You will be notified by 2/1 whether your entries have been accepted or not.  Please follow image requirements.  Entries cannot be considered otherwise.

Image Details: 

• Please send a maximum of two entries/person to Susan.Singer@hotmail.com
• Format:  Images must be in jpeg format, no larger than 2 megabytes, 300 dpi
• Name each image as follows: Your name-Title of work-medium-HxWxD.jpeg, for example: John Smith-Women Rising-oil-22x33x1.jpeg
• Works may be 2-D or 3-D, maximum size 60" on one side 
• Please send the check for $15 (Adult), $5 (student) to 3440 Northridge Rd, Richmond, VA 23235.  Entries will not be considered until the entry fee is received.

Prizes:  First, Second and Third Prizes in both Adult and Student Categories. Half the entry fees will be shared proportionally amongst the winners in the adult and student categories, with students receiving 1/3 as much as the adults.  The other half will go to the Action Alliance to help benefit those who are suffering from Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse.

Juror:  Susan Singer, artist, activist, and organizer of Beyond Barbie and One Billion Rising RVA.

Delivery of artwork:  Work must be hand-delivered Feb 6 between 10-2 to Crossroads Art Center, 2016 Staples Mill Road, Richmond, VA 23230 and picked up March 4th between 1-5.  Work must be ready to hang with wires (no saw-tooth attachments) and frame (if appropriate). 

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 9, 1-3 PM at Crossroads Art Center, Juror's Talk and Awards Disbursement will be at 1:30.

Questions:  Contact Susan Singer at Susan.Singer@hotmail.com

Calendar of Events:
Jan 25: entry deadline
Feb 1: notification of acceptance or not
Feb 6: hand deliver artwork between 10-2
Feb 9: Opening Reception at Crossroads Art Center, 1-3
Mar 4: pick up artwork from Crossroads, 1-5

PORN IV

Here's what I think it happening - women have started to come into their own power.  We have started to assume ever more positions of power.  We are getting into politics and business.  We are beginning to have a say in the way the world is run.

I think there are men who prefer being in charge and who don't want to be usurped.  I believe that the power structure which has men dominating women and women subjugated to men and their desires is getting very, very worried that it is going DOWN.  And soon. 

Any organism's response to thinking it's dying is generally to give a last ditch effort to save itself.  Think of plants which are about to die - they will put out zillions of blooms then seeds in order to propagate so they can have their genes carried on ad infinitum.

So it is with these men who are currently in power.  As women are starting to move into positions of power, they are getting scared and are grasping to hold onto it.  Thus the incredible surge in denigrating pornography.  AND, to connect some dots here, thus the surge in legislation all around the country seeking to control women's bodies and their reproductive rights.  I'm not saying there's some huge committee somewhere deviously planning to take over the world again.  Rather, I think men all over are recognizing that women are, in fact, capable of running the world, and, if they do, it will be in a way fundamentally different than it has been being run.  I think men are afraid we'll do to them what they've done to us, so they'd rather do it to us first.

But I don't know any women who are interested in dominating men and in becoming exclusively in control.  I don't know women who want to castrate men and rend them powerless.  Women lead much differently than that.  We lead through cooperation and through finding ways to work together, through consensus.  We can do the male way of leading - just look at Hillary Clinton - she's amazing!  - but there are better ways to do things - gentler, less abrasive, and more effective ways.  Women are nurturers.  What would it be like to have a country where the leaders recognized the necessary priorities of taking care of people through education and health care and employment?  If we cared for our planet well?  If we helped others rather than competing with them?  If we listened to people and countries which were having an issue with how we do things?  What if we occasionally recognized we might be wrong?!  It can and does happen!

There are male leaders who have tried to lead this way.  But I think women are fundamentally equipped to lead differently.  I hesitate to write about the differences because then it could sound like I'm saying men and women aren't equal.  I believe we are equal, but we are also different.  Anyone with any insight into the human race can see that.

So I want to invite you who are reading this blog to consider ways in which the world could be run differently.  How would you like to see the world run?  What would you do differently?  How could you begin TODAY making that difference?  It is overwhelming to me to try to figure out how to make the world a significantly better place, but it isn't so overwhelming to take one small step like writing this blog to point out what I'm seeing.

I'd love for you to post here what you're going to do today or tomorrow or this week or this year to make a small (or large!) difference in the world.  The world needs your talents and your gifts.  I hope you will join me in envisioning a better place, a kinder, gentler world with more cooperation and less competition.  If we can imagine it, we can create it.

Guardian Angels

In keeping with my new old fascination with patterns, I bought a bunch of books on patterns at the estate sale of an artist who recently passed away.  She was a fiber/quilt artist and had dozens of books on patterns.  I felt like I hit the jackpot!  The ones which called to me most strongly, for some reason, were African patterns:  Nigerian, Ethiopian, and more generalized African.  When I got home from the sale, I went out into the studio where I began to browse through the books and copy out patterns which appealed to me the most.   I learned that the Ethiopian patterns were from scrolls which were made for people to help heal them.  Many of the images were demons, most seemed to be angels.  They were drawn on scrolls along with text and were carried on the person all the time or kept in their homes.  One, for example, was for a pregnant woman and was meant to protect her and her child. 

 

I decided to incorporate one of the patterns of Guardian Angels into the painting I was just beginning.  I put it into the background as if it were wallpaper.  I was also thinking that the woman I was painting has the feel of an angel as well - a strongly protective one - so I chose to call the piece Guardian Angels. 

Here's the finished version: