Main Gallery: Home is Where the Art Is

BETSY ANDERSON

APR 08, 2021 – MAY 09, 2021
Opening Reception – Friday, APR 9 [6:30-9 PM]

EXHIBIT OPENING TICKETS: To insure the safety of our guests, timed tickets will be needed for the Exhibit Opening on April 9th.
APRIL 9- Home is Where the Art Is/Skyline VPA/Month of Poetry Exhibit Opening Tickets, Multiple Dates | Eventbrite

With the multitude of narrative objects presented in this exhibit, Anderson centers the presence and perspective of women: through words, birds, and other allegorical imagery. While her figures call to mind the line and color work of Egon Schiele and various 20th century works influenced by ancient cave paintings and Jungian archetypes, their charm and strength lies in their particularly feminist perspective. Sometimes overt, as when she incorporates quotes and phrases by women writers. Or in the presentation of the whole space as a collection of softness and reflection, defying categorization. 

Anderson is prolific: creating paintings, embroidered works, pillowcases and fabric displays. The exhibit also features vintage aprons and bras elaborately or simply altered in a reflection of their purpose and incorporating vibrant colors and textures. She uses vintage or heirloom fabrics, then indigo and rust dyes them before working in embroidery details and drawings. Her process is intuitive but engages with particular repeating themes.

Betsy Anderson grew up in Rockford, Illinois. She graduated with a BFA from Northern Illinois University in 1982. After graduation she and her new husband settled in Stillwater, Minnesota. In the twenty years she lived there her paintings were exhibited in several Twin Cities galleries, also during this time she created large hand-painted silk scarves which were carried by a few wearable art boutiques in the upper Midwest. Life changing circumstances found her and her husband and daughter moving to Longmont in 2004. Although continuing to produce paintings and returning to her interests in embroidery and fiber arts, her first decade in Colorado was occupied mainly with a full-time job and getting her daughter through high school and college. Over the past several years she has gotten involved with the local artist community and through which has developed an interest in fabric dyeing, incorporating found objects in her work and, perhaps most significantly, becoming socially and politically outspoken. Her recent work has been seen at individual and collaborative exhibits at Still Cellars Distillery and Art House in Longmont.

Curator’s Statement: “In creating these pieces and staging them within a set environment, I’m reminded of the vast history of collecting objects as a method of storytelling. Birds and feathers, exotic materials, presented in the Wunderkammer style of little context: knowing each work’s full detail and biography is engaging and rewarding, but less the point than gazing at the wonder and weirdness as they form part of a whole. In re-framing her collection of vintage fabrics by engaging with the effects of organic dyes and adding her own embroidery, images and writing, presenting a stream-of-consciousness response to male and female figures, expressive paintings, etc; the work could not be a more stark contrast to the historical presentation of objects in a collection as a statement of pride for the owner. In surrounding ourselves with objects of fascination and wonder, there’s a sense of comfort and embrace: a strong contrast to the ordered display boxes of specimen collection more historically used in a curiosity cabinet. 

How different would our sense of the world and its participants be, if the hundreds of years of collecting and object presentation were rooted in empathy and collaboration rather than a conqueror’s treasure chest?”