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Maryland Art Place presents
An exhibition featuring five artists selected by Grace Hartigan:

ATHENA’S DAUGHTERS

“It has taken centuries but at last women artists are regarded as seriously as men. I have chosen, first of all for excellence, five women who for reasons of race, color, age or sexual orientation still are not welcomed into the “main stream” art world. What is interesting is that their works could only be done by women—black women icons, lesbian marriages, motherhood. For me this gives the work seen here a special excitement.”

- Grace Hartigan

Baltimore, MD – From November 30 to January 8, 2005, Maryland Art Place (MAP) will exhibit the work of five artists who have worked with artist Grace Hartigan in the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and continue building dynamic careers in the Baltimore area. Mina Cheon, Jessica C. Damen, Espi Frazier, Tonya Ingersol and Allyson Smith will present recent works, as will Grace Hartigan. This exhibition will explore issues faced by artists who have specifically chosen to create outside the mainstream marketplace, while addressing issues of feminism and transcending traditional canonical concerns. This is a diverse group of artists with innovative work that should challenge and inspire audiences.

MAP invites the public to a talk with Hartigan and the artists on Thursday, December 9, 2004 from 6-7pm, followed by a reception from 7-9pm. The opening is free and encourages the public to join the discussion about the artists’ work and issues relevant to contemporary art.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Grace Hartigan
Hartigan is one of the most celebrated and renown artists of the region and beyond, widely recognized as one of the central figures in the Abstract Expressionist movement that was recognized worldwide as one of the most important periods in twentieth century art history. Throughout her career, Hartigan has created work that balances between abstract and figurative, focusing on dramatic use of color, line and figure. Typically her figures have been boldly outlined in black, with wide washes of color, both in large canvases and smaller drawings. Born in Newark, NJ, Hartigan worked and became recognized with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner and Mark Rothko (among others) and for decades has been internationally recognized for carrying figurative painting into abstraction. Since 1965, Hartigan has been the Director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and has led the program to national prominence, with many noted graduates. A seminal figure in painting, her work has exhibited widely worldwide, and is represented in significant museum and private collections worldwide. She is represented by the Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, MD.

Mina Cheon:

Mina Cheon is known by her artist’s name, MINALIZA1000, and is a Korean-American artist residing in Baltimore, Maryland. She has exhibited widely in New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Arlington, Italy, and Korea, with work ranging from video, performance and interactive media installation. She is also a writer for the NY Arts Magazine. In 2002, her solo exhibition GROUNDLESS was on view at the Lance Fung Gallery in New York City, and in 2003, she exhibited her work at the Kaohsiung Museum of Art in Taiwan. Recently, Cheon was awarded an honorarium and solo exhibition at the Korean Culture and Arts Foundation (KCAF) of Seoul, Korea. In 1996, Cheon received a BFA from Ewha Women's University in Seoul, Korea. She received her first MFA degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1999, studying with Grace Hartigan in Hoffberger School of Painting, and subsequently received a second MFA in 2001 from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the Imaging and Digital Arts Department. Having entered as a Doctoral Fellow at the Maryland Institute of Technology for Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park, Mina Cheon is now working on her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies. She also teaches full-time at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the Foundation Department, and directs that institution’s Summer Study Abroad Program in South Korea.

Jessica C. Damen:

Jessica Damen was born in northern New Jersey, though her formative years were spent in the borough of Queens in New York City.  After a relatively brief, yet intense career as a Pediatric nurse working at several New York metropolitan hospitals, she graduated from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art in 2001. Damen was selected by Elizabeth Turner, Senior Curator at the Phillips Collection for MICA’s Resident Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in Provincetown, MA. Since receiving her MFA, Damen moved from Washington, DC, set up a studio in the Fell’s Point area of Baltimore, and has had several solo shows, most recently at Verde Gallery, Champaign Illinois, Vision to Verse – Verse to Vision: A Visual and Poetic Dialogue. This exhibition featured Damen’s paintings and Maj Ragain’s poems, an Ohio poet fellow who Damen met at the FAWC.

Recently, Damen’s work was recognized by several Juror’s Choice awards from Jay Fisher (Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Prints at the Baltimore Museum of Art) and George Ciscle (Curator-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art.) Additionally, Damen’s work has been included in juried shows organized by nationally recognized artists and curators, and acquired by private and corporate collections, including: the United States Department of State, Art in Embassies in 1990-1994; GRE Insurance, NY; ITT Research Institute, Fairfax, VA and Chicago, IL and Sunwest Communications in Dallas, TX.

Espi Frazier:

Frazier received a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she received the Hoffberger Painting Award, with a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her work widely in the east coast and Midwest, with exhibitions at the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, DC; in the exhibition Spirituality in African American Art, curated by Deborah Willis, at the Smithsonian Anacotia Museum in Washington, DC, and many more venues. Frazier’s early work was based in fashion illustration, and she expanded on work in wood while studying with Grace Hartigan. A central theme of her work is to represent the female as Goddess and Life Giver, while celebrating the integral sense of beauty of African American woman while emphasizing the universal beauty of all humanity. In a review of her work, John Dorsey wrote in the Baltimore Sun, "Espi Frazier's painted relief carvings at their best use African American figures in the context of universal symbolism. The central figure in Mother of Us All may be God as a woman, the life force, or Mother Nature, and it has enough presence to be all three."

Tonya Ingersol:

Born in Poughkeepsie, NY, Ingersol received her undergraduate degrees in music composition and mathematics (Phi Beta Kappa) from Oberlin College and Conservatory, and a MBA from the Harvard Business School. She subsequently received a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Hoffberger School of Painting, studying under and serving as Director’s Assistant to the Department Director, Grace Hartigan. Ingersol studied the human figure in Florence, Italy in the summer of 2001, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2002. She is active in the arts community and has exhibited her work in competitions in Texas, juried by James Surls and Ben Woitena, and in exhibitions in Maryland. Looking Glass View at the Galerie Françoise, her first solo exhibition, sold out in 2003. Ingersol’s dramatically large paintings focus on issues surrounding race and class, and explore the use of metaphor and metonym, while moving both within and beyond the tradition of White European art.

Allyson Smith:

Allyson Smith has always been a story teller. After studying film and video first at Rhode Island School of Design and then at New York University (where she received her BFA,) Allyson worked on award winning independent documentaries l (Rate It X and El Salvador: Another Vietnam?) and worked as a freelance photographer. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 Smith traveled through Eastern Europe and produced a photo documentary on the  lives of Romanian women. A Journey Through Romania was published in the Journal of Women's History. In 1994, Smith won the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Screenwriting and moved to Los Angeles where she wrote film scripts and designed web pages. Smith returned to painting to explore a more emotional and less logic-driven approach to narrative structure. Her work has been exhibited in Washington, DC at Artoconnecto and Signal 66; and in Philadelphia at the Painted Bride. Smith received a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Hoffberger School of Painting in 2004.

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Maryland Art Place (MAP) is a non-profit center for contemporary art established in 1981 to: develop and maintain a dynamic environment for regional artists to exhibit their work, nurture and promote new ideas and new forms, and facilitate rewarding exchanges between artists and the public through educational leadership. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm. There is no admission charge to enter the gallery.  For more details, please contact MAP’s Director of Programs, Lisa Lewenz at 410.962.8565 or llewenz@mdartplace.org