Reigning Queens: Modern and Contemporary Representations of Women, Power, and Religion –  Exhibition

Reigning Queens: Modern and Contemporary Representations of Women, Power, and Religion – Exhibition

Wanda Ewing’s artwork, Girl (#8) from the Black as Pitch, Hot as Hell series, will be on view at the Sheldon Museum of Art in the exhibition Reigning Queens: Modern and Contemporary Representations of Women, Power, and Religion from January 27 through May 26, 2023.

This exhibition examines twentieth-and twenty-first-century representations of women in art. From temptresses and monarchs to advocates and activists, Reigning Queens invites viewer to consider the ways artists have explored and challenged gender stereotypes.

https://sheldonartmuseum.org/exhibitions/reigning-queens-modern-and-contemporary-representations-of-women-power-and-religion

January 27, 2023 through May 26, 2023
Sheldon Museum of Art
Sheldon is located at 12th & R Streets in Lincoln, NE

Growing Up Black Growing Up Wanda – Exhibition

Growing Up Black Growing Up Wanda – Exhibition

Exploring race, beauty, sexuality, and identity, Wanda Ewing’s (1970-2013) art is as relevant today as when she created it. Exhibited for the first time at the Union for Contemporary Art, Wanda’s thesis book (completed in 1997 at the San Francisco Art Institute), Growing Up Black Growing Up Wanda contains both visual and textual documentation of the obstacles/experiences she encountered as a young woman of color growing up in Omaha. The unabashed frankness of image and text imbue Wanda’s work with a raw power and freshness that continues to resonate with viewers.

Growing Up Black Growing Up Wanda is the start of her journey of discovery, love, and acceptance of what it means to love yourself, understand how you look in & at the world, and how to pave your way in it. There will be a show of this work, opening the weekend of Oct 14, 2022, in Omaha, NE, at these three galleries: RBRG Gallery, The Union, and Gallery 1516. We will have a book for sale of her early work, a showing of her Senior Project, “The Book – Growing Up Black Growing Black.”

We will be selling her book for $40 each during the show at The Union. The sale of her book will go to her scholarship at the University of Omaha. This scholarship helps undergraduate art students with supplies, tuition, and books.

https://www.u-ca.org/exhibition/growing-up-black-growing-up-wanda

Opening the weekend of Oct 14, 2022
RBR G Gallery
The Union For Contemporary Art
Gallery 1516
Omaha, Nebraska

Threads Laid Bare – Exhibition

Threads Laid Bare – Exhibition

Threads Laid Bare is on view at the Anderson Gallery at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, from September 3 – October 16, 2020.

This exhibition brings together fiber and textile artists from around the country who use the medium to reveal identity, showcase a high sense of craft, and promote community. It features contemporary artists working in a variety of fibers and textile processes ranging from the conceptual use of threads to functional stitches. Artists blend drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and video with textiles and fibers to produce works that tackle issues of race, disability, stereotypes, immigration, heritage, and religious and domestic rituals.

Participating artists include Indira Allegra, Anna Carlson, Ann C. Clarke, Nicole Davis, Wanda Ewing, Jiseon Lee Isbara, Guen Montgomery, Cynthia O’hern, Katya Oicherman, Catherine Reinhart, Sophia Ruppert, and Alanna Stapleton.

Over the course of the exhibition, Threads Laid Bare will discuss the gendering and hierarchy between fine art and craft, educate viewers and explore textiles and fiber techniques, and promote community building through accessible events and activities.

Anderson Gallery at Drake University
Des Moines, Iowa

Wanda Ewing Prints – Exhibition

Wanda Ewing Prints – Exhibition

RBR G is proud to present a collection of prints by the late Wanda Ewing.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 13th, 5-9pm

The exhibition runs from 3/13/2020 through 4/4/2020.

Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 10-6pm

The majority of the prints featured in this exhibition are woodcuts. The Bougie Girl series, The Shape of Things (Dress) series and the 100 Hairdos series will all be included, as well as a wide variety of other prints.

Wanda Ewing was a north Omaha native and was a prolific artist that created thought?provoking artwork exploring the subjects of race, beauty, sexuality and identity.

Ewing was influenced by folk-art, and the lack thereof, of African-American women in popular culture and the art history. Within Ewing’s career, she represented the connection between autobiography, community, and history – often with a biting, comical edge.

Roberta and Bob Rogers Gallery
1806 Vinton St, Omaha, Nebraska 68108

Happy Heavenly 50th Birthday!

Happy Heavenly 50th Birthday!

Jan 4th would have been the big 5-0 for you. As I write this, I wonder what your life would have looked like, what your art would have been like in these past 6 years since you passed. A lot has been going on in the world as I’m sure you are seeing from above. How would your art reflect the MeToo Movement? How would you have reacted to “grab them by the pussy” comment from #45? 

As you also know many of your friends and former colleagues have taken time to write funny, loving, and insightful blog post about their relationship with you. You have touched a lot of people in many different ways. Including the number of students who you have taught. One of your students, Samantha G. is now an art teacher at Benson High School. Your scholarship at UNO has awarded $7,000 to art students who needed help to finish their degree. That money comes from donations and from the sale of your artwork. 

I think you know this, but I will tell you anyway – I miss you a lot. I think about you just about every day. I wonder what dreams you would have created for yourself as you think about turning 50. 

This will be the last blog on your website. I want to thank each person who wrote something about you. It was great to read about their memories of you, your artwork, and the friendships. I want to leave everyone with an email that you sent one of your friends – you were asked to write a reflection of your work. I hope we have done good by you – keeping the spirit of your work and heart in the right place.

Email Sent: March 13, 2008

When I reflect on the images of the wallflower pin-ups and the magazine covers, I can’t help to feel incredibly selfish.  It’s really about confronting my own insecurities by creating these visual vehicles that allow me to exorcise my demons from adolescence.  Beauty is at the core of it all.  How we definite it.  How I define it.  My wallflower girls are definitely an extension of what I had always hoped a part of me would be like – fun, sexy, playful.  I have to admit, I was the textbook wallflower all through my pre-teens to college.  Never the girl to be asked to dance (sigh) and I quickly became pretty self-conscience about it all.  However, my wallflower prints are definitely not shy or shrinking violets.  They embrace themselves fully without apology.  I learned a lot from them.   Another note about the pin-up girls, I think pin-ups are sexy.  That may ruffle some women’s’ feathers because the pin-up genre is a male construct which objectifies women.  But that is such a loaded conversation to have.  I mean, how many women take sexy photos for their husbands or dress up sexy when they go out for drinks?  The line in the sand is always shifting as to what is exploitative depending on who’s drawing the line.  I see my girls as powerful and sexy.  Formally, I love floral patterns and color.  Using the old wallpaper was the perfect solution for a background.  They’re printed on a square format, referencing a box.  That box refers to what we do as human beings with having the need to categorize and place everything and everyone neatly into their box.  My girls are placed in this space not of their own will but are saying ‘No problem.  I can exist in here, but I’m going to own it as well’.   Funny thing about the pin-ups, though.  I’ve received more complaints from Black women.  Isn’t that ironic?!  As if I were creating derogatory images of black women.  And then we’re back to the line in the sand. 

My magazine covers were very fun for me because I got to do a little writing.  That’s something I’m not great at but enjoy doing.  Again, this is about beauty and the beauty industry.  I also raise the question about what black is and what it isn’t.  I’m hopeful to not sound judgmental about the society we live in.  I have my degrees of materialism and superficiality for sure.  But there are extremes and beauty magazines prey on women’s self-esteem.  They’re constantly telling you that you need to be fixed.  And the real burn is anymore, the women smiling back at you from the covers don’t really look like that in real life.  The images have been enhanced digitally creating a false and unobtainable standard.  So, making up my own magazine called Bougie made sense.  I’ve been called it a few times in my life and to be honest, I’ve never thought I could be accurately described that way.  However, this was a great chance to fully embrace my superficial side and just get shallow.  It was fun!  I may try to flesh out some of the tags I made up like ‘Are You A Strong, Black Woman?  Find out in 25 questions.  I mean really, what would those questions be?  Even funnier, it’s being implied that if you answer add up to x amount, you could be a strong, black woman without actually being black or a woman.  I’m going to have to try that out.

The opening went really well thanks.  I overheard a couple of people talking as they were looking at the magazine covers.  One person said, ‘Is she an artist or a comedian?’.  I should write a book – ha, ha! I’ll talk to you soon!

Ciao!

Wanda

Wanda Ewing, Artist
Wanda Ewing, Artist
Wanda Ewing, Artist
Wanda Ewing, Artist
Wanda Ewing, Artist
Wanda Ewing, Artist

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