Sister Space

Here’s a couple of slices from the Fuse Box Collaboration Project at Big Medium Gallery from last Saturday night, featuring the work of our own Lisa Choinacky (Women & Their Work’s Operations Manager) and NYC artist Jake Borndal. The Fuse Box collaboration pairs five different Austin-based artists with artists from different locations and media for two exhibitions: Double Reality, in which the artists show their solo work side by side, and Double Fantasy, the tag-team work of the paired artists. These pics are taken from the Double Fantasy collab. See that little radio there? It only plays the weather station.

The words on the shower curtain are taken verbatim from a mysterious text message Jake received while they were conceptualizing their work. True story!

Oh, how I could generate volumes about the work of Lisa Choinacky in general, but Nat Russell already beat me to the punch.

Women & Their Work is celebrating 30 years of helping women artists, and for the month of May, the GiftShop will offer 30% off many gifts. It’s a great place to get the perfect Mother’s Day gift. Don’t forget, Mother’s Day is May 11.

Look for the pink dots!

As you may already know, Katy Heinlein’s W&TW show Unknown Pleasures aroused much curiosity. Maybe this chat with the artist recorded by Los Outsiders will dispel some of the mystery. Check it:

http://losoutsiders.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/artist-katy-heinlein/

TONIGHT TONIGHT TONIGHT!Tonight, everyone’s favorite power dance trio Little Stolen Moments perform three new dances inspired by Yoon Cho’s exhibit Nothing Lasts Forever, currently on view at Women & Their Work. If you like epic sexy spirit dancing at all you’ll hate yourself if you miss this! LSM + NLF is a must! Post-dance, LSM’s own Stanley Roy will be performing a few songs. Hugs afterward. It all starts tonight at 7pm at Women & Their Work.
P.S. It’s FREE.

A 2001 study by the artist Eleanor Dickinson found that although the population of artists in the United States was roughly equal (fifty-three percent men and forty-seven percent women) the number invited to have their work exhibited were still startlingly uneven with eighty-one percent men and only nineteen percent women. WATW has paved the way toward improving those numbers with its continued success. It was the first organization in Texas to receive a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in the early eighties; it has been voted “Best Gallery” by The Austin Chronicle five times in the last seven years including 2006 and 2007; and it has been given a grant by the Warhol Foundation to insure stability and growth for the future. With blurbs in The New York Times, Art in America magazine and NPR, WATW has helped put Texas and its women artists on the map.

–From an Arts Feature article in the April issue of The Good Life magazine, in which writer Bonnie Neel offers a great, concise overview of the history of Women & Their Work.

Last month’s exhibit at W&TW, Unknown Pleasures, featured the enigmatic sculptural work of Katy Heinlein.

Maybe it was the title of the show, or maybe people were titillated by the jolts of pink fabric skimming some of the pieces…

…or maybe it was the suggestive shapes poking up through the fabric. But public curiosity was piqued! Everybody was all, “What’s under that cloth?”

Obviously, we couldn’t let everybody peek under the cloth while the exhibit was still up. But we don’t want to leave anybody lying awake at night wondering what was hiding under there. So, just between us friends, here’s the big reveal from the breakdown of the show:

And there you have it–in the expert hands of Katy Heinlein, the humblest of dowels are magically transformed into sexy mystery shapes. Do check out more pictures from the exhibition at our Flickr page!

Images courtesy of Neesha Thakkar.