Weld exhibit shows art gallery’s feminine side

By Susie Chu


With dried flowers and colorful fabric used in her artwork, Alison Weld’s exhibit in the Art Gallery promotes feminism and raises eyebrows from the vivid yet eclectic details.
Alison Weld’s exhibit The Figurative Impulse in Abstraction is currently on display at the University’s Art Gallery. Weld spoke at her reception on Thursday, Sept. 21, about her unique paintings that contained bouquets of flowers, leopard material and rocks. These materials adorn enormous canvases or shower curtains along with passionate strokes of paint.

“I deliberately wanted to expand the meanings of my paintings so they did deal with identity and people,” said Weld. “I started to use mass-produced materials as my way of expanding personal identity of a painting. The flowers started off as memorials to 9/11 and just street memorials I saw all around me. But they were also memorials to my gender, to celebrations, to anniversaries, birthdays, weddings and were another gender-related material just like fabric.”

Gender was certainly a hot topic during the discussion, as was how her work reflects her identity. Though she admires the work of the male-dominated abstract expressionists, she hopes her edgy work can feminize art.

“I always tried to make works which looked the tradition but stretched tradition, were edgy in a contemporary way and could be somewhat controversial,” Weld explained. “I would never use the word controversial in regards to gender. But I think gender has always been a part of my work. I think my work is about body parts. It’s sexual and very physical.”

The materials she used are memories from her years of taking home economics, sewing and cooking classes. She embraces the use of feminine objects to show the inner portraits of a woman.

“I wanted to have my paintings not only talk about the soul or the personal stuff that paintings usually talks about,” Weld said. “But I wanted to talk about my gender, society and ethnicity. Certainly being a woman affected them.”

Her influences while creating her artwork range from her gender to jazz music. Her surroundings are her greatest influences as her time working at the Natural Museum of Art led to her floor pieces, such as “Portrait of the Skull,” which is a fossil on top of a bright red rug.

“I think my work is about the life force but from a feminine perspective,” said Weld. “I responded to the dinosaurs’ skeletons at the museums and visited the fossil museums as much as the fine arts museums. So I think there is a natural quality to my work.”

Professor Harry I. Naar, of the Fine Arts Department, brought Weld’s artwork to the University to show students work they have never seen before.

“I think one of the most important aspects of this exhibition space is not necessarily to show work that is all of my interest but to show work that is eclectic and can cover a wide range of styles,” explained Naar. “Because we’re in an educational institution, it’s important to expose the student body to a wide spectrum of styles.”

Students were impressed with the usage of colors and styles that stood out between all the rocks and prints in the paintings.

“I was most interested in the use of color, actually,” said junior Torie Kusel. “It was very vibrant, and being in art classes, I just love the blue against the orange. She uses a lot of complimentary colors which appeals to me personally.”

“It’s very abstract obviously,” said visitor Eric Escobar. “Each painting has something about it that distinguishes it from the other paintings, like some are painted on shower curtains or some are different sizes. It’s very vivid.”

The Alison Weld exhibition is open to students and the public through Oct. 20.