January 2021
Helen Redman
My little miracle:
these 1962 pen and ink drawings of my 1st pregnancy and baby Paula are now part of the permanent collection of the Frost Art Museum, Florida International University in Miami.
Helen:
Chief Curator, Amy Galpin and I chose this grouping from a series of 25 sketches that I kept in storage for 58 years. However, it was Alessandra Moctezuma who when she curated my Lifelines exhibitions, displayed these drawings for the first time at San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery, (March 10-April 14, 2015) and then at the Women’s Museum of California, San Diego, California (April 23-May 31 2015).
Turns out that my personal exploration of maternal identity and experience was rare for the era. Few women art professionals depicted their own child bearing during the 60s and 70s.
Life drawing and painting were crucial to my development as an artist. My children have been central subjects in my work since the beginning. These sketches of my first pregnancy and of my daughter Paula Barchilon (August 23, 1962 – May 16, 1964) were done while I was a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder (two years earlier, I had obtained my B. A. from the University of Miami). With this gifting, some of my art now becomes part of Miami culture (where I was born and spent the first 20 years of my
life).
One of the largest academic art museums in South Florida, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum provides transformative experiences through art as they collect, exhibit, and interpret art across cultures. I am honored that four drawings of “Baby Paula” and one self-portrait of me, “Helen Pregnant with Paula,” became part of their exciting collection this December, 2020!
FIG Represented
a showcase for FIG art
At our January 8 FIG Zoom meeting, we discussed the idea of using FIG’s Facebook page. You’ve seen email about this as we’ve continued our discussion since then. The votes are in, and this show will be called “FIG Represented.” If you’d like to post your work to the FIG Facebook page, here are the steps to follow:
1. Choose up to 5 images of your work.
2. Enter the information required into the FIG FB Submissions form (see p.5 for details).
3. Kathy Nida will post the information weekly to the FIG page in the order received, scheduled in sequence if more than one artist’s work is submitted each week.
4. All the required information must be included in the Google Form.
5. The image files must be 72dpi, low resolution images.
6. Keeping your associated text brief helps viewers focus on the work.
7. More than 5 photos won’t be displayed, since viewers would need to click through to see them, thus the limit to five.
8. Once the images have been uploaded to FB, they’ll be deleted from Kathy’s GoogleDrive to save space.
9. Tell all your FB friends to ‘like’ the FIG page and look at your work!!
NOTE:
We’ll see how the FIG Represented show flies, and may want to expand the FB exhibiting space to include links to YouTube videos.
The Patchwork Healing Blanket is a global project Mariettta Bernstorff is coordinating from Mexico. Alessandra drew our attention to it a couple of years ago now. We in FIG have talked about becoming involved as a group, but in CovidTimes, the gathering together is difficult, if not impossible.
You may have already seen the video or article that describe the project and inspire us to action. More to come on this wonderful work in support of making the world safe for women!