Female Artists Celebrate Life’s Challenges With Self Portraits

Sometimes a self-portrait isn’t exactly a self-portrait, but it still is a self-portrait. An exhibit currently at the Sumner McKnight Crosby Gallery in New Haven features self-portraits by artists that focus not on their faces but on the challenges life has put in their way.

“It’s symbolic self-portraiture,” said Marissa Rozanski, one of the artists, and the curator, of “More Than a Face. “It’s not physical representation.”

The nine artists — seven women and two men, all living in Connecticut — contribute 23 pieces to the show.

The most intriguing are black-and-white artworks by Anne Doris-Eisner, which represent her family issues in the form of natural forms twisted and distorted, with many little clues hidden in the swirling patterns made from acrylics, gouache, graphite and oil inks. “By using unique geological structures and forms in nature, I draw parallels between the human experience and the natural world,” she writes in her statement.

Rozanski’s work, inspired by a talk by Agnes Martin “On the Perfection Underlying Life,” examines her life comfort level. “I have spent far too much time planning and striving for perfection, thinking that hard work and discipline would take me on a linear journey to a successful life,” Rozanski states in her statement.

Irene K. Miller’s work take on issues with her eyesight. Corina Alvarezdelugo’s discuss her food allergies. Jessica Cuni offers a pencil drawing of a brain scan, and Barbara Hocker’s artworks are made to resemble spinal columns. Oi Fortin is inspired by yoga and meditation; her artworks remind her to be more patient.

Fethi Meghelli, a native of Nigeria, tells stories with “Flying Away” and “Lost in the Woods.” Similarly, Thuan Vu, a native of Vietnam, presents his “New World” series.

Florence Griswold Museum

Three other female artists from Connecticut telling their stories through art are the focus of an exhibit at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. Curators at the FloGris were working on three separate shows, but they couldn’t help noticing a unifying theme, similar to the theme at the New Haven gallery: biography.

“The commonalities were about the challenges they all faced,” said curator Amy Kurtz Lansing.

So the exhibits were combined into one, of paintings and drawings by Hartford native Mary Rogers Williams (1857-1907), sculpture by Mary Knollenberg of Chester (1904-1992) and glasswork by Kari Russell-Pool. formerly of Essex, who now lives in Ohio.

The works by Williams focus on her fondness for Connecticut landscapes, Italian vistas and her own friends. She was influenced by James A. McNeil Whistler as well as the tonalists. “She was one of the only women in America described as a tonalist,” said Lansing, who curated the exhibit. “Mary’s work was applauded at the time for the punch she could get out of a very narrow selection of colors.”

Williams used her pastels to depict her surroundings, but Lansing said she “tried not to make her art about her inner life,” because women didn’t do that in the 1800s. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it was more accepted. This can be seen in the exhibit by Knollenberg, which Lansing also curated.

Knollenberg’s work includes horses, busts and faces of her friends and acquaintances, but is dominated by nude female figures in various contemplative poses and stages of joy and sorrow: laying on her back, rising out of the earth, hitting her head against the wall. Her “Madonna and Child” is unusually lively for that subject, with the standing mother hoisting her baby on her shoulders. Her hammered-lead depiction of the “Ondine” lets the cascade of water surround the headless water goddess.

“Mary Knollenberg used art as a means to comes to terms with who she was as a woman,” Lansing said. “Her work is a quest for self-definition.”

The work by Russell-Pool — made from slender strands of glass — also is autobiographical, and comments on modern society. Her “Safety Mom Series” was inspired by post-Sept. 11 ideas of keeping a family safe. “A family member bought a handgun. She’s examining what has a person bringing a gun into a home and how it invades the domestic space,” said Ben Colman, who curated Russell-Pool’s exhibit. That series, in incongruously cheerful colors, is dominated by images of guns and keys, and the delicate glasswork is patterned to look like traditional sampler which kept women’s hands busy in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Russell-Pool’s “trophy series,” a strikingly delicate and extremely fragile set of “trophies,” was inspired by an NPR interview with a trophy maker, who stated that frequently people commission trophies to be made for themselves. “She was suffering from self-doubt,” Colman said. “These are personal monuments and personal celebrations.”

The most dazzling of Russell-Pool’s pieces are several “banded vessels” — vases cut in half horizontally and filled with a remarkable array of birds and flowers — and her series of birds in cages. “This is really about the metaphor of the birdcage,” Colman said. “On the one side, it’s a domestic house. On the other side, it’s a beautiful prison.”

“MORE THAN A FACE” will be at the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery, 70 Audubon St., second floor, in New Haven, until Jan. 2. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Details: www.newhavenarts.org.

“LIFE STORIES IN ART” will be at the Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St. in Old Lyme, until Jan. 25. Details: www.flogris.org.