Women, Trauma & Visual Expression

October 17 - November 13, 2003

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Trauma encompasses many types of experiences and cannot be placed in order of intensity. One experience found to be "traumatic" for one individual may not be traumatic for another. All art, no matter the media or content, contains artists' life experiences. For artists whose life experiences include trauma, these events and their after-effects may enter the artists' work intentionally or unintentionally. Judith Lewis Herman, in her pioneering 1997 book Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror , arbitrarily places all experiences of trauma across a continuum from war to rape. She attests that when trauma occurs, the victim is helplessly overwhelmed and that the response to the experience is complex, "encompassing both body and mind." For some visual artists who have experienced trauma, the process of creating imagery may be a conscious or unconscious part of coping with or healing from trauma--a type of release. --Amy Stacey Curtis

Artists Represented:

Catana Barnes, Joy Bertinuson, Sharon Bourke, Peggy Brace, Sue Camm, Karen Clinton, Terry A. deBardelaben, Jo Fitsell Coffin, Laurie A. Cox, Yvette L. Cummings, Peggy Dee, Nancie Eichengreen-Reyes, Eve Faulkes, Blair Anne Folts, Karen Frostig, Shelley Gilchrist, P. Hanson, Ellen Heavner, Wei Hsueh, Candace Hunter, Elizabeth Ingraham, Michele Jaquis, Kia Johnson, Sarah Kaiser, Naomi Kasumi, Jessica M. Kaufman, Mary King, Talicia Lerfald, Rachael McCampbell, Barbara R. Molloy, Tina Newlove, Jane Orleman, Deborah Orloff, Christine Shank, Cynthia Joy Sitton, Samantha Stengel-Göetz, Mary J. Tafoya, Melanie Weaver, Andrea Weese, Serena Weits, Lin White, Marian Yap, Greta Young.

Juror(s): Amy Stacey Curtis
Amy Stacey Curtis is an installation artist and writer from Gray, Maine. Curtis is self-publishing a book entitled "Women, Trauma, and Visual Expression" to be available in 2004. She received her Master's in Art and Psychology from Vermont College in April 2000.