Women In Art ~ Herstories
February 26 – March 27, 2015
Opening Reception: February 26th 5 – 7p.m.

The LH Horton Jr Gallery exhibition, Women In Art ~ Herstorie, is part of the 2015 San Joaquin Delta College Women's History Month Events. The exhibition presents seven women artists whose work illustrates recognizable stories from women’s history, socio-culture perspectives, and themes relating to the female identity, and is curated by Jan Marlese, LH Horton Jr Gallery Director.

Exhibiting Artists

Judith F. Baca is a world-renowned painter and muralist, community arts pioneer, scholar and educator. She has been teaching art in the UC system for over 28 years (15 years at UCLA Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies). She was the founder of the first City of Los Angeles Mural Program in 1974, which evolved into a community arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) which was has been creating sites of public memory since 1976. She continues to serve as its Artistic Director and focuses her creative energy in the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab, employing digital technology to co-create collaborative mural designs. She is also the Artistic Director/Initiator of Neighborhood Pride Great Walls Unlimited Mural Program (1981-present), and is responsible for the production of over 105 murals citywide.

SPARC website states, “Baca is at the top of a distinguished list of artist creators. What sets her apart from many other artists is an inspired ability to teach, and a creative pursuit of relevancy in developing educational and community based art methodologies. Through a lifetime of achievement, Baca has stood for art in service of equity for all people. She is a lesson for us on the integration of one’s ethics with creative expression, never compromising and never flagging in her devotion to a practice that is committed to public education for all and to pedagogical process for its participants.”

The LH Horton Jr Gallery is honored to present three of her mural projects for exhibition:

THE GREAT WALL OF LOS ANGELES 1976-1981
The original mural is acrylic on cast concrete, half-mile in length (2,754 ft), and located in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. SPARC’s first public art project and its true signature piece, the Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s, conceived by SPARC’S artistic director and founder Judith F. Baca. Begun in 1976 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.

Judith F. Baca
“Farewell to Rosie the Riveter” 1976
Drawing detail from the 1950’s section of The Great Wall mural (8ft x 15ft)

“UPRISING OF THE MUJERES” 1979
A portable mural exploring the empowerment and leadership of women. Created in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1979 at El Taller Siqueiros, a workshop for training muralists established by one of the great Mexican muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros. “Uprising of the Mujeres” is a statement of political struggle led by women. While at the workshop, Judy Baca’s team consisting entirely of men, proposed the subject of ‘the women’s question’ as a theme for the mural they would design and then paint. The team argued that women are the primary conduits through which consumerism and hence capitalism is supported, concluding that political struggle is also a struggle against women’s tendencies toward consumerism. The resulting design presented a woman with her arms and legs spread, her head turned upright, a funnel in her throat and goods being forced down the funnel. In order to counteract the rape image that had been designed, Judy Baca placed an indigenous woman at the forefront of political struggle against the prioritization of military spending, the formation of a police state at the expense of social welfare and the exploitation of workers to further capitalism.


Judith F. Baca
Original Drawing of full Mural, "Uprising of the Mujeres"
Pencil on paper (8” x 24”)



Judith F. Baca
"Uprising of the Mujeres Figure Study"
Framed pastel on paper (27.5” x 30.5”)


HITTING THE WALL: WOMEN IN THE MARATHON 1984
Acrylic on cast concrete, the 20ft x 100ft mural is located at the 4th Street off-ramp of the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles. The project was sponsored by the Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympics. The mural features a woman breaking barriers and crossing the finish line. 1984 was the first year a women's marathon had been held at the Olympics.

Judith F. Baca
Final Coloration Drawing
Pastel and Prismacolor on Paper (22” x 73.75”)


GUADALUPE MURAL PROJECT 1988
The project comprised of a four panel mural, each 8’ x 7’, acrylic on plywood, and is located in Guadalupe City Hall. The murals explore the history and future of Guadalupe, California. It was commissioned by the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission, and developed with local participants of the farm-working town of Guadalupe, California. The four mural titles are: “The Founders of Guadalupe”, “Ethnic Contributions”, “The Farm Workers of Guadalupe”, and “The Future of Guadalupe.”


Judith F. Baca
Farm Worker Figure Study, Lupe de Guadalupe II
Pastel on paper (18” x 26.5”)

Kesha Bruce creates richly textured and visually complex artworks that explore the connections between memory, personal mythology, and magical-spiritual belief. She is both an artist and curator. Her collage work below speaks to the unknown history of her African ancestors. Kesha completed her MFA in painting from Hunter College in New York City. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), The Vermont Studio Center, The CAMAC Foundation, and received a Puffin Foundation Grant for her work with Artist’s Books. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, The Amistad Center for Art and Culture, The University of Iowa Women's Center, The En Foco Photography Collection, and The Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection. In addition to her studio work, Kesha Bruce is an independent curator and founding Director of Baang and Burne Contemporary Art in New York City, having produced 8 exhibitions in the United States and France since 2008.


Kesha Bruce
“That They Might Be Lovely”
archival pigment print, edition of 15 (12" x 9")

Shenny Cruces is a ceramic artist presenting works that expose underlying issues of class, sexual identity, memory and the meaning of objects in our lives. Shenny attended Cal State San Bernardino and Sonoma State University, completing a BA in English, and a BA in Ceramics from Illinois State University in 2008, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics from San Francisco State University in 2011. Her work has appeared in juried shows throughout California and the United States, including 2013 NCECA Biennial, A Gilded Age at the Northern Clay Center and the Community Heirloom Project at the Palo Alto Art Center. Her work has received numerous awards including a Murphy Cadogan Fellowship, and a Kiln God Award Residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine.


Shenny Phillips Cruces
“220 Days” (44.5" x 22.5" x 5")

Ijeoma D. Iheanacho presents her “Re-Imagining” series of triptych photographs, in which the women pictured are asked to answer three questions: — How do you think the world sees you? – How do you see yourself? – How do you want the world to see you? Ijeoma attended Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, as well as photography courses. Upon completing her degree, she relocated to New York City and began parallel careers as an architect and visual artist. She has exhibited nationally and throughout New York City in spaces like Art for Change Gallery, Local Project, the Bronx River Arts Center, Bronx Art Space, and La Vuelta. Her images have been used in the independent film Afropunk, as well as in a four part photo series for the Afropunk.com website. Her early series, Cloth, has been accepted into the Photographs and Prints Collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is currently producing her largest installation to date, the reimagining, which was awarded fiscal sponsorship by the New York Foundation for the Arts, with two images on view for the Women In Art exhibition.


Ijeoma D. Iheanacho
”Re-Imagining” Model #22
Triptych color photograph (47" x 24")

Leslie Nichols will exhibit her works created on a manual typewriter from text by historical women activists and authors. Four of these portraits are on exhibit with text by: Alice Paul from the Equal Rights Amendment of 1923; Anna Garlin Spencer from “Woman’s Share in Social Culture,” 1912; Gloria Anzaldúa from “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness,” 1987; and Sojourner Truth from “Ain’t I a Woman,” 1851.

These and similar works are included in the book,Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology, published by Laurence King, and will be included in Thames & Hudson’s The Art of Typewriting in 2015. She has exhibited throughout the United States including the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Carnegie Center for Visual and Performing Arts, and the A.D Gallery at University of North Carolina Pembroke. Her work can be found in the following selected public collections: the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Visual Poetry, in Miami, Florida; Harlaxton College in Harlaxton, England; and Liquitex, in Piscataway, New Jersey. Her work became a part of Arkansas State University’s permanent collection when David W. Kiehl, Curator of Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art, awarded her piece, Identity, the President’s Purchase Award at the “2010 Delta National Small Print Exhibition.”


Leslie Nichols
“Kaitlin (Alice Paul 1923)”
Typwritten Ink on paper (9.5" x 9.5")


Pallavi Sharma uses beautiful fabrics from India to provide form and lair for video installation sculptures that explore the complexities of gender in a patriarchal society. Pallavi states, " In this work, I have constructed a bed of green barley grass and pillows embedded with two DVD players simultaneously displaying two different video images of the same person on the same bed in the same time frame. The two minute video symbolically speaks of bed as a breeding ground for my inner desire and creative energy. In this particular work, I enter the world that is forbidden to me due to my gender and culturally constructed status.  I have tried to reclaim the female subjectivity, the unseen desire that is traditionally suppressed or ignored."

Pavalli Sharma was born and raised in India and immigrated to United States in 1997. She received her BFA and MFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda, India and received her Ph.D. in Art History from India's National Museum Institute of History of Art and Conservation, New Delhi, India. Pallavi's work has been exhibited widely at venues including the Queens Museum of Art, Exit Art, Art Asia Pacific, and Bishop Museum . At present, she is a board member of Asian American Women Artist Association (AAWAA) and Director of ‘Inner Eye Art’ an Art Consulting Firm specializing in South Asian Art.


Pallavi Sharma
“Embedded”
Video Installation: 2 video monitors, twin box spring, barley grass, Indian Saris

Linda Stein brings back images of our favorite heroine, Wonder Women, with large-scale, androgynous body-sculpture. Linda is an artist-activist, lecturer, performer, video-artist, with an MFA from Pratt Institute, and BA from Queens College, New York. She also studied at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her series, Fluidity of Gender, is traveling to more than twenty-four United States museums and universities through 2017, under the umbrella of Have Art: Will Travel! Inc., a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation with a mission of diversity and anti-bullying. Stein is represented by Flomenhaft Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan and her archives are at Smith College. “My goal as an artist,” Stein says, “is to use my art to transform social consciousness and promote activism for gender justice.


Linda Stein
“Heroic Compassion”
wood, metal acrylicized paper, mixed media (47" x 17" x 12")


Joyce Zipperer is a sculptor focused on the design and construction women's undergarments, shoes and adornments through metal materials, underscoring an uncomfortable fit of an alluring or humorous style. She is concerned with how women throughout history have been influenced by trends in fashion, often discounting comfort. Joyce has shown her work in national and international exhibitions, including the Washington D.C. Botanic Gardens, Brooklyn Museum, New York; Vasteras Museum of Art, Vasteras, Sweden. In 2003, Joyce was inducted into the National Association of Women in the Arts, for sculpture, in New York City. Her work is featured in the book "100 Artists of the Mid Atlantic", by E. Ashley Rooney.


“Hell on Wheels”
aluminum (hand shaped), steel wheels, glass beads, ribbon (16" x 5.5" x 11")