10-Year Retrospective Exhibition
"Celebrating the Genius of Women"
by Maria Guerrero, Founder & Exec. Director, Women in the Arts Inc.
Thank you for joining us during the presentation of this series, covering fifty-eight participants in the Retrospective exhibition. These artists went through a multi-layered process of selection and final jury in the year they participated.
It is my honor to have presented the continuing work of the artists featured in the physical and online exhibition, as we celebrate this milestone event in the history of Women in the Arts, Inc. I am thankful to the artists for their hard work, creativity, and inspiration in the midst of a pandemic we all hope to see come to an end soon.
Please stay tuned until the end of the exhibition this month, for more behind the scenes moments and quotes by the artists.
This final series includes works by Trayana Panayotova,Yambol, Bulgaria; Vicki Jones, Belle Isle, Florida; Zoraye Cyrus, Coconut Creek, Florida.
"Somewhere in Space I" is part of a series Trayana created in 2020 in her new studio in the village of Bolyarsko, where the artist lives and works during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These paintings mark an important departure for the artist in her journey. Looking at her natural surroundings, her search takes a new path. The "Somewhere in Space" series are experimental paintings, where the artist mixes paper, collage, and acrylics. The minimalist natural elements contain the essential characteristics of her environment and build a new composition, reaching for color.
"The Right Shoe"
For Vicki, this drawing of her great-niece donning a ballet shoe embodies innocence, beauty, and the growing-up process. The title whimsically refers to wearing a ballet slipper on either foot. The artist notes, Her shoe is always the "right" shoe.
Vicki is mostly self-taught as an artist. Her realistic and sometimes surreal, works vary in subject matter.
In her piece, "Convergence," Zoraye focuses on the identity of cultural displacement. The artist states: "Being an amalgamation of different cultural aspects, but still lacking connections to heritage, and people, removes you from your own community."
This artwork, part of a series, addresses the difficulty of first-generation immigrants trying to balance their traditional culture with American culture. The artist's process involves combining old family photos from her parents’ home, St. Vincent and the Grenadines islands, with photos of her new life starting in Brooklyn, New York. By overlapping these photos to different degrees, she conveys the level of integration that her siblings, cousins, and herself have experienced.
View the Digital Exhibition for more works by these artists, and all fifty-eight participants from Orlando and abroad.
A collection of works by twenty-two local artists is on view at the Orlando Public Library until April 23.
Enjoy the exhibition, connect with us and the artists on social media, and support us by sharing this message with your audience.
