International Women’s Day is meant to celebrate and encourage women to achieve their ambitions, call for gender-balanced leadership, to value differences, and to develop more inclusion and flexibility across the globe. In short, it’s meant to create room for more women to create their own kind of beauty in the world. That’s why we thought it would be inspiring to have Chelsea Neman, of LA’s Tappan Collective (which recently opened in Platform in Culver City), share her thoughts on a few women who are doing just that.
Aiming to change the way emerging artists connect with their collectors, Chelsea co-founded Tappan to support emerging artists by sharing their work through e-commerce, crafting digital contexts, and a recently-opened physical space in Los Angeles. Chelsea believes that, “artists can show people something they otherwise may never see. They have the ability to change the way we think about our lives and the world we live in. Being an artist is a brave venture, and it gives me great joy to be able to support their careers.”
Who are a few of these female artists you should know? Read on to find out.
1. Satsuki Shibuya
Satsuki Shibuya is a painter, artist and spiritual thinker, living and working in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Her work is based upon intuition, energy and spirit, exploring the realms of the unknown to bridge the gaps between the traditionally tangible and the unseen. Each piece created embarks the observer on a unique and personal journey into their own soul, in hopes that they emerge not only inspired about peace and harmony, but also with enlightened appreciations for this world in which we all live and share.
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2. Claire Oswalt
Claire is an Austin based artist whose work spans various disciplines including drawing, painting, and sculpture. Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, Austin, Marfa, and New York. Oswalt’s watercolor collage is a very personal, meditative response to today’s over-stimulated environment. Driven by a fear of the loss of memories and not mentally recording the moments of tomorrow, Oswalt made daily attempts to subvert her older, hyper-realistic work. The artist moved antithetically against the notion of order with loose paint strokes, then cutting and arranging with little thought or purpose. Behind each collage is an otherwise organized mind’s intimate, unsystematic struggle for pure, uncluttered space.
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3. Cheryl Humphreys
Humphreys is an emerging contemporary artist based in LA whose education and career as a designer have played an integral role in her ability to communicate through the medium of paper. Cheryl challenges the conforms of the two dimensional and it is ultimately elevated for her intricate and subtle use of blind and inked embossing combined with her playful insights and intimate interactions with the viewer. Informed by the nature of printmaking and the digital tools used to create her prints, the act of repetition has become an integral part of Cheryl Humphreys’ creating process. “I have taken to experimenting with the prints’ surfaces to evolve them and push the boundaries of traditional printmaking and traditional edition making. For example, is it still an edition if each print within the edition is hand-dyed, painted or gold-leafed? Do these hand-processes intercept the edition, making each one their own?”
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4. Alice Lancaster
Alice Lancaster is a painter originally from St. Louis, Missouri. She is known for her humorous and colorful works which explore issues of the female body, mind, and sexuality. She has been featured in I-D, Paper and Wonderland Magazine as well as Vogue, Time and the Huffington Post. She currently lives and works in New York City. Lancaster is always experimenting with shape and color, often pushing her figures into complete abstraction and forcing the viewer to search for the figure in a sea of lines.
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5. Lola Rose Thompson
Lola Rose Thompson works in drawing, sculpture, and mixed media installations. Her works are often accompanied by text; lengthy, prose-like titles that imply or describe the multiple connotative potentials of objects and words, which have previously been veiled by their exhaustive utility. “I am influenced by investigative journalism, headlines, the editorializing of popular culture, magic, medicine, science, and the new age.” Employing an investigative approach, Thompson’s use of metaphor, simile, metonymy, and other literary devices throughout her works create conceptual proximity between disparate things, and re-contextualize the objects she makes or finds. “Lately I’ve been thinking about groups of people, clubs, fraternities, gatherings, secret societies. I like to image that through these paintings I can delve inside territory that is exclusive and make it inclusive by allowing the viewer to identify with the subjects of the painting. The painting is the invitation to the party.”
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6. Lani Trock
Lani Trock is a Los Angeles based multi-disciplinary artist. Her work investigates the human relationship to nature through photography, sculpture and immersive, environmental installations. Her artistic practice is informed by a childhood spent freely exploring the wilderness of Hawaii and California and a nontraditional trajectory into art making. Having worked as a designer, programmer & photographer, her process consistently inhabits the place in which technology and art meet. Deeply interested in the potential multi-functionality of spaces, her work seeks to create environments that are both beautiful and useful; creating educational spaces through the implementation of best new technological practices, and which are built utilizing found, repurposed or readily available materials.
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7. Heather Day
Heather Day is an artist living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Day’s art is a form of visual storytelling interested in conveying moments of interactions. Her rich background in travel and culture encouraged her to see more of the world, where she discovered a connection to nature—her main source of inspiration. She travels seeking stories of all kinds—stories behind people, places, sound, and nature, and communicates these interpretations through layers of overlapping paint, expressing moments at every seam, edge, and line. Each mark represents her language of dynamic motion, allowing compositions to read like handwriting—from one side to another.
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Who are some of your favorite female artists?
Top image via Monica Outcalt
1 comment
my favorite artist is a rare breed. she creates from this deep place that many long to touch and understand. she invites you in but refuses to water it down. her works bring enlightenment and touch a part of your soul that longs for raw and unexplained beauty.
see her work here: http://marygracestudio.com/about/