NASTY WOMEN / NOISY WOMEN / NAKED WOMEN / KNITTING WOMEN
Join us at Fine Art Complex 1101 for our contribution to the Nasty Women exhibitions happening across the nation when we host Nasty, Noisy, Knitting, Naked Women on inauguration day, January 20th from 6-10pm. This all women line-up of experimental sound artists goes well beyond industrial, aggrotech, EBM, power noize, rhythmic noize, punk, metal and goth to create soundscapes that are unlike anything you’ve heard before. The mix of video artists included in the show are among the most challenging and provocative artists working in the Valley today. The selection of photographic works from the founding members of the arts magazine Femme Fotale are showing pieces that are inspired by their newest issue about the nude, entitled Leafless. All of the groups are supported by the performative knitting action of members from the Fiber Arts Network which has come together to collaborate on the women's initative to knit pussy hats for the inauguration protests as well as our happens here at Fine Art Complex 1101.
Running counter to the all-too-predictable noise of Republican rhetoric, this sister show to exhibitions being held across the nation seeks to make the unheard heard, to upend all conservative expectations, and stand out against the background of silence that has accompanied many of the egregious statements made about women this past election cycle. While experimental sound art is known for being a bit of boys club, the sound artists in this show embrace an open politic to the shared interaction of sound, space and the affective capacities of the body. By contrast, the video works included in the show examine the cultural biases, expectations, and the implications of what it means to be a "women" in the early twenty-first century. The photographic exhibition in the main gallery provides another point of access for thinking about issues related to the female body, beauty, nature, strength and vulnerabilty. Between the two sound stages there will be a listenting lounge where kniting and works from an open call by PHX SUX will be on view.
In the spirit of equality all the artists in the show will be given equal time and space to perform, and all donations for the evening will go to Planned Parenthood to help support the fight for women’s reproductive and health rights across the nation.
Artists in the show: (Nasty Women) Ashley Czajkowski, A. J. McClenon, Kristen Schneider, Hannah Irene Walsh, Malena Barnhart, Regan Henley, Sammie Aasen, TBA, (Noisy Women) Aesthetically Sound, Althea Pergakis, Chelsea Claire, DJ [Sin]Aptik, Jessica Dzielinski, Elizabeth Parsons, Erika Lynne, Gabbie Washinton, Lana del Rabies, (Knitting Women) Audra Carlisle, Chelsea Lyles, Emily Longbrake, Molly Koehn, Shannon Ludington, Stacey Kampe, Shannon Ludington, and Chelsea Lyles, (Naked Women) Briana Noonan, Charissa Lucille, Kit Abate and Sirrena Griego.
#NASTY WOMEN
Artists in the show: Ashley Czajkowski, A. J. McClenon, Kristen Schneider, Hannah Irene Walsh, Malena Barnhart, Regan Henley, and Sammie Aasen,
Ashley Czajkowski is a photography-based artist working in a number of interdisciplinary methods including alternative process, video and installation. Driven by personal history, her research explores social constructions related to childhood, femininity, and the psychological manifestation of and the human-animal.
Czajkowski achieved her Bachelor’s of Fine Art in 2009 from Emporia State University in Kansas, and earned her Master’s of Fine Art in photography in 2015 from Arizona State University. Czajkowski’s work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally. Most recently, her work was shown at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, The Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado, and CICA Museum in South Korea. She currently resides in Tempe, Arizona where she teaches photography courses, works as the sound technician and story editor for the Creative Push Project, and is a member and current President of Eye Lounge Gallery and artist collective in downtown Phoenix.
A. J. McClenon
A.J. McClenon is a writer, performer and interdisciplinary visual artist based in Chicago. A.J. McClenon’s work sets personal narratives alongside empirical data, leveling hierarchies of truth.
McClenon works across mediums incorporating aspects of sound, film, video, drawing, animation and collage throughout their work.
McClenon holds a Masters in Fine Arts with an emphasis in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. McClenon received a Bachelor of Arts with a minor in creative writing from the University of Maryland College Park. McClenon has also studied at Eugene Lang College.
A.J. McClenon is currently an educator at the Montessori Academy of Chicago and is co-organizer of Beauty Breaks, an intergenerational beauty and wellness workshop series for black people along the spectrum of femininity.
A.J. McClenon has received numerous awards for their writing and art works. McClenon received the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (SAIC) MFA Writing Fellowship award in 2014 and SAIC’s MFAW small grant in 2012. McClenon also is also a recipient of the Paula Santan Scholarhip for Art and Stephanie E. Pogue Memorial Award. A.J. McClenon’s writing has been published widely, most recently their works have been published in the South Side Community Art Center Anniversary publication, 3rd Language and Stylus Literary Magazine.
Dressler Parsons
Dressler Parsons is an artist and writer based in Tempe, AZ. She grew up in the Sonoran desert, in an adobe house her father built. She believes wholeheartedly in the individual and collective powers of words, food, and collaborative making. She has newly-minted undergraduate degrees in Intermedia (BFA) and Marketing (BS) from Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University.
Charis Elliot
Charis Elliott is a graduate student in Arts, Media + Engineering at Arizona State University, Research Coordinator and Research Assistant at LAboratoru for Critical Technics, Co-Director of Post-Human Network, and founder/designer for Mother of Gideon. Charis holds a dynamic set of experiences in design of the physical, conceptual and abstract resulting in the design and creation of businesses, nonprofit social enterprises and programs that create new formations in the ruble of modern specialization. Artifacts of this social design work can be found in objects including jewelry, clothing, audio, film, graphics, and sculpture. Charis’ current graduate studies are a continuation of exploration and experimentation in understanding complexities and connectedness from the self to the world while developing a lexicon of both word and creation to communicate and explore this abstract terrain. Her ambition is to vision out and create new paths leading to understanding our shared world through both the alien of nonhuman and other, and the familiar abstracts of self and each other.
Hannah Irene Walsh
Hannah Irene Walsh was born and lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and is a multimedia artist and writer. Her visual narratives of invented mythologies interweave with representations of herself and other empowered female bodies and their animal alter-egos. Her drawings explore the shameless sensuality and primal aspect of womanhood, lavished with hand-carved frames, altar constructions, video installation, and sculptures made from natural and man-made items. Images and objects, imbued with the artist-magician's touch, come together in a ritual space that serves as a stage for her creative and meditative processes. She is currently a third-year Drawing/Painting MFA candidate at Arizona State University. Her graduate thesis exhibition, Altar Spaces/ Alter Egos, will be at the Harry Wood Gallery from April 3-7, 2017.
Kristen Schneider
Kristen Schneider is an Arizona based, Illinois displaced artist whose focus primarily lies in the themes of intimacy, vulnerability and dependency on human relationships. After struggling to sustain prolonged emotional connections with others, Kristen Schneider turned to using physical intimacy as an outlet for self-expression and communication. Her previous artworks include performances that are gritty, often dealing with sensitive subject matter, and leave her ripped open, with real emotions and experience exposed to her audience. While making use of her own body and femininity, her content looks into private and personal moments between partners, which are recorded through photographs, videos, performance and audio recordings. Occasionally these moments are recreated and represented through sculpture and multimedia.
Currently Kristen Schneider is assembling a body of work for her Solo Exhibition at Arizona State University’s Harry Wood Gallery in Downtown Phoenix titles, Intimacy. She is investigating human connections through physical contact, and forces her audience to directly acknowledge intimate moments with the goal of pushing her audience out of their comfort zones.
Malena Barnhart
Malena Barnhartis a photo-based artist living in Tempe, Arizona. Originally from Maryland, she holds an undergraduate degree in studio art from the University of Maryland and earned an MFA degree in photography from Arizona State University in 2013. Through repurposing mass-culture materials including YouTube videos, children’s stickers, sex toys and party decorations, her work examines the role enculturation plays in the marginalization of women. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Arizona,) the Israeli Cinema Museum, Morrison Gallery (University of Minnesota,) Salisbury University Gallery (Maryland,) the Hartman Center Gallery (Bradley University, Peoria,) Whitdel Arts (Detroit.) She was a recipient of the Student Award for the Society for Photographic Education, the Juror's merit award for Heat Wave: Desert Photography, and the Sadat Art for Peace award, among many other honors. Her work is in the personal collection of Madeleine Albright, the permanent collection of Northlight Gallery and the special collections at Columbia University.
Regan Henley
Regan Henley is multimedia artist and undergraduate Intermedia student at Arizona State University. She is a founding collaborator of the snapchat-based performance art platform SNAP UP ART. She has shown work at the Shemer Art Center, the Icehouse in Phoenix and performed and collaborated with Sanford Biggers’ Moon Medicine at ASU Gammage. In 2016 she debuted her first solo show C@tharsis, exploring the use of digital technologies in the mourning and grieving process, which included several video installations as well as experimental web-based media.
Samantha Lyn Aasen
Samantha Lyn Aasen is an artist adapting to the southwest, as she holds on to her Midwestern mentalities. As a child she had dreams of becoming a writer, as she was an avid read and creator of an active blog at the age of 12. A car accident left her with a traumatic brain injury when she was fourteen. This led her to take creative arts classes, which she found helped her communicate her ideas and thoughts in visual representations.
Her suburban upbringing has her questioning female relationships and societal standards. Samantha identifies herself as a feminist artist. She uses her art as an exploration of her ambivalence of pop culture and desire to protect young girls from facing negative attitudes about themselves or from others.
Often she uses lens based media to form her artwork. Her ongoing body, titled Sparkle Baby, is constructed with photographs and video, using herself as the subject of the imagery she creates. Samantha also works in embroidery, beading, performance, web processes, and found objects. The idea or intent of the work drives the outcome of material.
Samantha Lyn Aasen has had exhibitions in Indiana, Arizona, Illinois, Nebraska, Maryland, and recently the UK. She holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Photography from Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University and a Studio Art MFA with an emphasis in Intermedia from Arizona State University. Currently she teaches at the Maricopa Community Colleges, and volunteers with Girls Rock! Phoenix.
#NOISY WOMEN
PERFORMANCES OPENING NIGHT BY:
Aesthetically Sound
From opening for blockhead to after parties for producers like eastghost, to playing Beat shows all over Arizona at venues like last exit live, Tempe tavern, thirdspace etc, Aesthetically Sound is a DJ, producer, and artist on the come up and has been doing it for only about a year. Ranging from original ambient tracks to twerk, to moombah, to deep house, the range of sounds and feels is broad enough to vibe out for awhile.
Althea Pergakis
Althea Pergakis and Jennifer Anderson both hold BAs in a made-up subject from a local university. They like making weird shit, preferably in exchange for money.
Chelsea Claire
Chelsea Claire is an Arizona-based Actor, Model, Punk Singer and Noise Musician. She is currently a part of two music projects, Kill Follins and Fugly Chuds, and she enjoys collaborating with artists in as many mediums as possible, as well as supporting the art community.
DJ [Sin]aptik
DJ [Sin]aptik spins for fetish, industrial, aggrotech, EBM, power noize, rhythmic noize, punk, metal and goth events for night clubs, radio stations and online stations since 1997, and is the promoter behind Dark Ceremony Entertainment.
E Alo
E Alo composes melodic, rhythmic, instrumental, stories from scratch. Music has always had a deep emotional effect on her, and she hopes to inspire positive feelings in those who take in her sonic expression. She wants to warm hearts, touch souls, and move feets!
Elizabeth Parsons
Erika Lynne
Gabbie Washington
Jessica Dzielinski
Jessica Dzielinski is a Phoenix based art and music maker who draws inspiration from colors, patterns, textures, and found oddities, both natural and human-derived.
Lana del Rabies
Lana del Rabies is the solo electronic project of media artist Sam An. She creates rhythmic chaos from digital and analog sources. She has work on Deathbomb Arc records and Records Ad Nauseam.
#NAKED WOMEN
Artists in the show:
Kit Abate was born into the fog of the northern California Bay Area. Shortly thereafter she moved to the radiant Valley of the Sun. In accordance with her passionate pursuit of the visual arts Kit received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Photography from Arizona State University. Kit is a Founder and contributor to Femme Fotale, which showcases the talents of women photographers. She is interested in the division between the public persona and the private self. Kit currently lives, works, and sits on her roof in Tempe Arizona.
Sirrena Griego is a visual artist residing in Mesa, Arizona. She received her B.F.A in Photography at Arizona State University in the year 2013. Her interest lie in her personal relationships, both intimate and platonic. Sirrena is one of four co-founders of Femme Fotale; a photographic book/zine made to represent women photographers.
Briana Noonan is located in Tempe, AZ and graduated with a BFA in Photography from ASU in May 2013. Her work is primarily based within her relationship ties and her own personal self reflection. This includes exploring her own depression, anxiety, and sexuality. Briana is one of the four co-founders of Femme Fotale, a photographic book/zine to empower women and push them to the forefront of the photographic world.
Charissa Lucille is a Phoenix, Arizona based photographer. She graduated from Arizona State University in 2014 with her Bachelor in Fine Arts. Charissa is primarily interested in photographing to critique the world around us and inspire change. She is one of the four co-founders and contributors to Femme Fotale. A photographic book/magazine promoting women in the arts from local to international communities.
Femme Fotale Mission Statement and Upcoming Projects:
Femme Fotale is a photographic project by women and for everyone. Responding to a lack of representation for women in the photographic community we countered by making our own spaces. Through the publication of photo books and presenting photographic shows we provide artistic platforms for women regardless of class, education or gender identity. Femme Fotale’s mission is to uplift women and drive their work to the forefront of the arts. Leafless, Volume IV, of Femme Fotale will be released on February 25th at local bar, Taste of Tops. Please visit our website in the upcoming month for further details.
#KNITTING WOMEN
Artists in the show: Audra Carlisle, Chelsea Lyles, Emily Longbrake, Molly Koehn, Shannon Ludington, Stacey Kampe, and Chelsea Lyles.
Audra Carlisle
Audra Carlisleis studying Digital Culture with an emphasis in Art at Arizona State University as part of the Art, Media, & Engineering department of the Herberger Institute of Design & The Arts. Her work is focused on the inclusion of technology as part of fibers work and interactive design, as well as incorporating illustration and visual work into the digital sphere.
Chelsea Lyles
Chelsea Lyles is an artist native to Phoenix, Arizona. Lyles graduated from Arizona State University with a concentration in fine art and specializes in hand-crafted textile work. Her current series, From Whence She Came, focuses on growth and unity, as well as intention while creating the larger piece. The body of work utilizes embroidery and hand-cut fabrics. She currently works alongside other local artists at Lagomm Studios based out of Tempe, Arizona.
Emily Longbrake
Emily Longbrakeis a born-and-raised Alaskan freelance artist who combines an omnivorous love of books and science with technology, ceramics, printmaking, and design. Her work often employs patterns and repetition mined from inner and outer landscapes.
Molly Koehn
Molly Koehn in an environmental artist based in Arizona. Melding a practice of embroidery, weaving, and sculptural installation, Koehn’s work examines natural systems, particularly the prevalence of “domination” in our dealings with the world around us. Koehn is currently pursuing an MFA at Arizona State University, with an emphasis in fiber arts, and her current bodies of work carry on the delicate, expressive qualities of her background and BFA in drawing.
Stacey Kampe
Stacey Kampe is a silk and fiber artist raised in Tempe, AZ, where she still resides with her husband and their 18-year-old son, the last of 6 children still living at home. In addition to recently receiving her BFA in Fibers/Textiles art at Arizona State, Kampe has created a line of clothing with a portion of the proceeds going to aid ocean conservation efforts.
Shannon Luddington
Shannon Ludington is in her second year at ASU as an MFA candidate in fibers. She uses textiles to investigate the commonalities of women's experience across different cultures and times. Her current work uses the form of bedspreads to reflect on the longing for place and belonging that her cross cultural and peripatetic life have given her.
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