The Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana opened a new exhibition as a part of its 2024 Artist Curation Project Aug. 24. This exhibition features shows from three curators and will remain open until Sept. 25 at ARTSWIN’s gallery on 212 Main Street, Evansville.

This exhibition features two and three-dimensional artworks as well as artworks in a variety of mediums, including ceramics, wood and textiles.

“I Don’t Feel Like Myself”

This show was curated by Violet Thomas-Cummings, senior studio art and art history double major, and features artwork from senior studio art students Alyssa Harlow, Hannah Rasche and Terry Stuckey. 

Thomas-Cummings has interned with Susan Sauls, director of University Art Collections, and at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art with Audra Lambert. She currently works at the Kenneth P. McCutchan Art Center/Palmina F. and Stephen S. Pace Galleries.

Thomas-Cummings said her interest in art and concern about finding work as an artist led her to curation. 

“The pressure wasn’t on my own artwork, but I still got to carve out a space for myself in the art world, and I didn’t have to do freelance, which is really intimidating for me,” she said. 

When explaining what she likes about curating shows, she added, “This allows me to be surrounded by art but also to keep art as a hobby.”

When Thomas-Cummings was designing this show, she first chose the artists who would be in it. Being around these artists frequently, she said she was familiar with their work and felt that “their work corresponds with each other very well.”

Then, they came up with their theme.

“We were all brainstorming together what would encapsulate their work as a whole, and we felt that feelings of not being in the right place matched with theirs to an extent,” Thomas-Cummings said. Note, that while the curator titled the show, “I Don’t Feel Like Myself” it is labeled as “Out of Place” in the gallery.

Although these artists use different techniques and their artworks have different meanings, Thomas-Cummings said she felt they generated the same feeling in the viewer, and viewers could relate to the show’s message. 

Currently, Thomas-Cummings is working on another show in collaboration with Candid Magazine, which is expected to open at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art in January.

“Strong Women”

“Strong Women” is a show curated by Frederica Diane Huff. The artists behind this show are Maureen C. Berry, Catron Burdette, Gloria Carrico, Leeza Dukes and Enid Roach.

Huff graduated from Western Kentucky University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts degree. She was a graduate teaching assistant to Judy Chicago, a pioneer of feminist art in America. Currently, she teaches art classes and is a curator for the Owensboro Convention Center.

When creating this exhibition, Huff drew on her experience being a female artist in the ’70s to ’90s. 

Early in her education, she saw few women being represented in her textbooks. Although this gap was debated, debates focused on whether talented female artists even existed. She said that this was a deliberate misrepresentation of the issue at hand.

Huff recalled experiencing gender discrimination in the ’80s and ’90s.

“I was left out of an exhibit organized by fellow male art professors to celebrate Women’s History Month despite the fact that they shared studio classroom space with me every day teaching KinderArt, a program I had written,” she said. “Their reasoning: ‘We didn’t know you did serious art; we thought you just taught art to children.’ Again the message was that being a woman, pursuing traditional women’s work or women’s subjects wouldn’t be taken seriously.”

In recent years, Huff has organized several exhibitions featuring female artists. One of these shows, “A Woman’s Perspective,” played a critical role in her current exhibition.

There, she met the women who would go on to inspire and take part in “Strong Women.” 

“These women weren’t just doing their art in spite of their overwhelming physical and emotional suffering and grief,” she said. “Some were doing their art because of it.” 

Huff wanted to give these women an opportunity to share their experiences. 

“Grief and death is a universal condition and should be worthy of serious consideration,” she said. 

“I was drawn to these women because of their strength and courage to speak out and to try to use their positivity and their art-making to personally cope and to make it easier for others to interact with them,” Huff said. “They were quite simply ‘Strong Women.’”

The Bee Show

Curated by Lori Rivera, this show contains artwork created by Matt Fitzpatrick, former USI professor Rob Millard-Mendez, Lesley Nelson, Jesse Ross and Tom Wintczak.

Lori Rivera, a local artist, said she has always had an interest in curation and that she chose to do a theme that she did not see other curators doing. 

“I wanted something impactful and something that would interest both adults and children,” she said.

In the past, Rivera worked at the Peace Zone Recovery Center,

where she helped curate its annual Art of Recovery fundraiser and organize art classes. 

“I think as individuals we have a style of artwork that we like to look at, that we enjoy and so I tried to think of artists that I really admire,” Rivera said. “I wanted strong artists.”

Once the artwork was ready, Rivera installed it with the assistance of Nelson. 

“It was just breathtaking to see everything I chose come together like that,” she said. “It was an amazing experience. Anybody interested in doing that, I highly encourage you to apply.”