PMA SHOW 3.15.19/New Shrines to Age Old Women
“a musical and visual performance celebrating women artists within the Museum's collection as well as her own creative reimagining of goddess archetypes”
For my multi-disciplinary show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art I projected works from the the museum’s collection by women and performed original music as reactionary work. I also projected paintings of Goddess Archetypes I made in tandem with songs about them that was an idea born out of reading the book Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen. Both efforts weaved in and out within the context of two sets of music for the Friday Night series within the Grand Staircase area at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I made this portal as a way to celebrate further the women whose pieces I chose for my March 15th show at the PMA. I included a different image of their work below than the one’s in the show and want to stoke enthusiasm to dig deeper into their bodies of work and life stories both before my performance and post.
A Sensual Suggestion, 1974
Kay Walking Stick
Kay WalkingStick, the Cherokee painter, focuses on the American Landscape and it’s metaphorical significances not only to Native Americans but also to all of our citizenry. The landscape sustains us physically and spiritually. It is our beautiful corner of the cosmos. The varied rendering of landscape in WalkingStick’s art is the thread that weaves together the many painterly directions her art has taken over the last 50 years. (from Kay Walking Stick’s website)
Self-Portrait, 1994
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the subconscious. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker.
Bedroom, 2013
Becky Suss
Becky Suss makes paintings of domestic interiors where memory, reality, and subjectivity converge. She currently resides and makes work in Philadelphia.
Abstract Motifs (masks), 1917
Sophie Tauber Arp
Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a leading figure in Zürich and Paris Dada. Taeuber-Arp pushed the limits of abstraction in paintings, sculpture, and textiles. She also danced and designed sets for Dada performances.
Manifest as Language, 1963
Sister Corita Scott Kent
Corita Kent was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. At age 18 she entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually heading up the art department at Immaculate Heart College. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986. She created almost 800 serigraph editions, thousands of watercolors, and innumerable public and private commissions.
Baxter Labs: Bus People, 1975
Barbara Crane
Barbara Crane is a pioneering internationally renowned art photographer and influential educator who has explored photography as a vehicle for creative expression for over sixty years. A forerunner in experimental and abstract photography, Crane has explored numerous photographic processes throughout her extensive career. The result has been an ongoing evolving body of conceptually consistent work, varied in approach and experimental in style. An early investigator of repetition and deconstruction of visual information, she has experimented extensively with sequences, grids, scrolls, and large modular murals.
From Mother Ann to Amy Reed, 1848
Sarah Bates
Shakers believed in the dual gender of God. The ethereal graphic works known as ''gift drawings,'' were the products of divinely inspired visions and Sarah Bates’ work were some of the ones that survived the times.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/19/arts/art-review-busy-shaker-hands-moved-by-the-spirit.html
Snow Reflections on Pond, 1973
ALMA THOMAS
Alma Thomas retired from her thirty-eight year career as an art teacher in the public schools of Washington, D.C. in 1960. In the years that followed she would come to be regarded as a major painter of the Washington Color Field School. She was the first ever to graduate from Howard University’s fine arts program.
Zig-Zag, 1970
Louise Nevelson
Nevelson's dramatic sculptures paved the way for the dialogues of the Feminist art movement of the 1970s by breaking the taboo that only men's artwork could be large-scale. Her works initiated an era in which women's life history became suitable subject matter for monumental artistic representation.
I was interviewed by Paula Paul of Germantown Artist’s Roundtable on Germantown Radio recently about the upcoming show. You can listen to it below!
I recently had a conversation with Maura McNamara of Unbroken Chain podcast about my upcoming PMA show, creativity, process, life, love, etc. etc. Check it out at this link! https://soundcloud.com/unbrokenchainpodcast/ep-22-birdie-busch
Thanks to NPR
for including us in All Things Considered! Check it out at this link! https://whyy.org/articles/women-artists-celebrated-in-song-at-philly-museum-of-art/
Thanks to The Key’s Izzy Lopez
for taking the time to interview me for WXPN’s local music blog. http://thekey.xpn.org/2019/03/13/birdie-busch-philadelphia-museum-of-art/