Nancy Azara, 'Maxi's Wall', 2006
Barbara Roux, 'Sycamore Entrance,' 2006
'Ice Cream', 2007
Lauren Simkin Berke
"An altar to the experience of coming into the world, that kind of freshness and newness - in this case the experience of one little girl," is how Nancy Azara describes the monumental feature work of her new solo show Maxi's Wall at A.I.R. Gallery Chelsea. Long known for her totemic forms, ritualistic in carved wood painted golden and gashed in reds, this artist documents her journeys both spiritual and physical through her many travels and experiences, in this case colorful splendor and fierce markings notate large the momentous birth of her granddaughter.
A.I.R. Gallery founded in 1972 as the first artist-run, not-for-profit gallery for women artists in the United States, includes this exhibition as part of the year-long calendar of events coinciding with theFeministArtProject, of which A.I.R. Gallery is a Founding Partner. Ms Azara herself in 1979 was a Founder and Director of the New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI) where she also taught. The solo shows in the two gallery spaces on either side of this individual artist's exploration document journeys into countryside and cityscape with equal fervor and attention to personal detail.
Barbara Roux's Under Cover of Trees, notates her world of attachments to Nature in place and sensibility near her home in the Connecticut woods. Sculptural interventions, built in petals, or carved into bark, left behind to wither, or saved in plastic packs pinned listlessly to the gallery walls, in tacked up odes of text or photography or cut off bits of branches, Ms. Roux's view is encompassing but ephemeral and takes us - with deft warnings - wandering from side to side in the gallery space that holds the small gleanings of her vast pilgrimage. Her walls are emblems not of what is being born, but what is dieing, and on this journey you can feel the hand of the artist, serious and saddened.
The walls of the third showing space which features the first solo show of Lauren Simkin Berke, one of the current Fellowship Recipients of A.I.R., document the journey of this artist into her personal sketchbooks and family photographs, with forays into the discrete images of others which she has found. This artist's journey titled A text, a fiction, a fissured envelope is both a professional's document of the beginnings of her career, and a young woman's journal of the details of her individual experiences, told plainly with sincerity and skill. Ms. Berke starts the long walk of a life in the arts one foot in front of the other, and it's clear from her daily drawings that she is unafraid of the unknown, each page a welcome surprise.
A.I.R., with its famous history, continues as an ongoing nexus site for Feminist events and projects, and personal journeys in work as varied as the women that create here, in popular evening meetings where women share their work in the arts and critique each other, a book club, lectures, workshops, movie screenings, music presentations, as well as gallery showings, all free and open to the public. There is a well established Internship, and a coveted 18 month Fellowship last year juried by Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail and NYU/Tisch where recipients are mentored, given a solo show, and sponsored in a public event. What matters here is not any one line to stride, but taking that long walk on a personal journey - so clearly traveled in this month's A.I.R. gallery showings.
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig
Barbara Roux, Nancy Azara, Lauren Simkin Berke
Until 2 February
A.I.R. Gallery
511 West 25th Street
Suite 301
New York
T +1 212-255-6651
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig, BA BArch AOCAD MFA(Chelsea, LInst) has worked as a book, film, architecture and art critic in London, New York, and Toronto, and currently writes, makes videos, teaches, builds, and paints
where she lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can email her directly with your comments at katherine.dolgy@utoronto.ca and/or post your views on the Saatchi Online public blog, making sure to put the title of this article as your header.
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