YOU ARE INVITED!
Nicole Malcolm "Untitled" (left)
Juarez Hawkins "Black Like Me" (right)
Sapphire and Crystals:
BEyONd Race and Gender
Noyes Cultural Center
927 Noyes St. Evanston, IL 60201
847.448.8260 Fax: 847.328.1340
Gallery hours: Mon.-Sat. 10am -7pm, Sun 10am-6pm
Reception date: January 25, 2009, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Opening date: January 23, 2009
Show ends: March 12, 2009
Rose Blouin: "At Dawn and Dusk the Angels Gather"
The Noyes Cultural Arts Center hosts Sapphire and Crystals: BEyONd Race and Gender, an exhibition featuring twenty three African American professional women artists starting January 23 through March 12, 2009. The theme, BEyONd Race and Gender,
addresses these issues that have been especially central in electing
America’s new president and vice president. The exhibition features the
artists’ exploration of the current state of race and gender, and our
expectations and hopes for the future.
The S&C artist’s collective was established during the late 1980’s because of the biases the women faced as artists. Employing the tenets of self-determination we banded together to create exhibition opportunities for ourselves and other professional women artists. Specifically, Felicia Grant-Preston and Marva Pitchford Jolly decided to stop waiting for someone to choose them and decided to choose themselves, and other artists they knew, and in 1986 began preparing for the first Sapphire and Crystals exhibition at Chicago’s historic South Side Community Art Center in Bronzeville. That began a 20-plus year history of showing and mentoring promising and established professional women artists throughout the city and beyond.
A regular component of the exhibition is the “self portrait” silent auction. All bids open at $125.00. Another feature is a collaborative altar/installation produced on site. The Noyes exhibition will fill two floors of the center.
Joyce Owens, "Retro-racing History" series
The curator for the exhibition, artist and Chicago State University art professor, Joyce Owens, has managed a series of successful exhibitions for the group in recent years. At Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Sapphire and Crystals: Black, White and Blues was selected out of 180 citywide events as one of the twelve featured programs during the 10th annual Chicago Artists Month that year, 2005. Owens also organized Sapphire and Crystals exhibitions at Concordia University in River Forest, and the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue.
Participating artists:
Rose Blouin * Dorothy Carter * Arlene Turner Crawford
Makeba Kedem DuBose * Juarez Hawkins
Candace Hunter * Renee Williams Jefferson
Marva Pitchford Jolly * Nicole Malcolm * Joyce Owens
Frances Callaway Parks * Felicia Grant Preston * Joanne Scott
Janet Sheard * Patricia Stewart *
Shirley J.Sullivan * Dorian Sylvain * Pearlie Taylor
Anna M.Tyler * Shahar Caren Weaver
Rhonda Wheatley * Shyvette Williams
"A girl Like Me in Gray and Green" by Joyce Owens
