Thursday, August 1, 2024
My provocative watercolor painting, Inside Out, has been accepted into a juried show at a leading Chicago gallery.
The show is called Invisibility: Existing On The Periphery. It’s a virtual exhibit that runs online at Woman Made Gallery from Saturday, August 3, through Saturday, August 31.
Show Is Up Online: See It Now
The show already is up online, so you can enjoy it now. See my painting at: https://womanmade.org/artwork/anne-nordhaus-bike-14/
To check out the rest of the show featuring all 37 artists, go to: https://womanmade.org/invisibility/
About Inside Out
I painted Inside Out in the late 1990s, when I focused strongly on subjects including bones, skulls, X rays, and skeletons. (My husband even bought me a full size replica of a human skeleton at the time.)
I wanted to show hidden aspects of women and decided to create a “half and half” portrait that showed one woman in the full bloom of life but with one side of her head and body shown as if you had X ray eyes and could see right through to her skull and bones.
In part, the work reminds us that we all must pass out of material existence, and when that happens our bodies decompose and leave only the bones. I found it fascinating that bones outlive us. by many, many millennia. So even in death, we have a kind of immortality.
The painting also shows women’s tremendous strength: supported by bones, with a complex skeleton that makes daily life and movement possible, they get up every day and get the work of life accomplished. It’s what’s unseen when we’re alive that contributes the greatest power and strength.
More About The Show
Invisibility: Existing On The Periphery presents art in many media that explore the experience of invisibility, a condition society’s norms often imposes and which people sometimes embrace as a form of self-preservation.
The show looks at social invisibility as a state of being and a social condition that affects various groups and individuals whom society systematically overlooks. For some, feeling or being invisible can become disempowering, while for others it can be a form of safety. This show’s artworks explore social invisibility’s many dimensions and its emotional and practical consequences.
Juror Anne-Marie Kovacs noted that she chose the topic of invisibility “because of my own experience of feeling invisible, a bittersweet effect of aging shared by so many women…I wanted to learn – through the vocabulary of art – how others suffer, by circumstances or necessity, through the many facets of invisibility.”
Kovacs found the artists’ entries impressive, adding that “When you look at each selection, also listen… you can almost hear the stories of how the invisible manifests or is experienced.”
See The Show
See the show online now at: https://womanmade.org/artwork/anne-nordhaus-bike-14/
About Woman Made Gallery
Woman Made Gallery is located at 1332 S Halsted St., Chicago. It supports, cultivates, and promotes the diverse contributions of women and nonbinary artists through exhibitions, membership, and community dialogue programs.
Since its founding in 1992, the gallery has shown work by more than 10,000 women and non-binary artists in 475 exhibitions.
To contact Woman Made Gallery, got to http://womanmade.org, call 312-738-0400, or email general@womanmade.org.
About Anne Nordhaus-Bike
Award-winning artist Anne Nordhaus-Bike paints colorful, calming watercolors inspired by nature.
Anne’s art has appeared in numerous solo and group shows as well as many arts programs, presentations, and performances. Her work has been published in periodicals and books; covered in numerous print publications; and featured in broadcast media, both on television and feature films.
She received a degree in art history, with honors, from the University of Chicago and went on to launch a fine arts column that ran for two decades in the Gazette Chicago newspaper, where she has served in various capacities since the newspaper’s founding in 1983. She joined Gazette Chicago’s board of directors in 2004. She founded her multimedia arts firm, ANB Communications, in 1993.
A member of the prestigious Woman Made Gallery in Chicago since 1998, she launched her book, Follow The Sun, with a book signing at Woman Made in 2012; the book includes more than a dozen of her original watercolors. Among her many awards and honors, she was named to the National Women’s Hall of Fame’s Wall of Fame.
Anne lives with her husband Bill and cat Sterling in Chicago, where she makes art and enjoys cooking, tai chi, and time in nature.
For more information about Nordhaus-Bike, log on to https://artistanne.com/