Slab and hand built clay masks drying, white clay by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals, red clay by Tammy Vitale and Dianne Mayne-Forche working together.

There wasn’t a theme until I opened Art Daily this morning and ran across an article on feminism – its disempowerment, the backlash against it, its depiction in art.  I wish I could copy from Art Daily but it messes up the whole post, so I’ll just link here to Cooling Out – On the Paradox of Feminism.  It notes that young women eschew the descriptor feminism.  As someone who has been in the middle of the fight since the ’70s, this breaks my heart.  They don’t remember when getting a credit card in your own married female name was next to impossible.  In the 1970s.  A mere 30 years ago (hardly ancient history – or maybe it is to younger women).

Then I read Shan’s post at Thick Paint, "’Good’ Art and Power," – more on gender, art and power and a reference to Ed Winkleman (who I couldn’t find in the side bar like she said, but who she’s mentioned before and I found a link in another of my posts here).  His post, "Galleries Please Note, of September 25, 2006, speaks to under-representation of women in New York galleries, which took me back to my Monday talk at UMBC Women’s Center where that actual discussion came up.

Aside:  As I note elsewhere, if you click onto Ed’s site and are of a certain political persuasion, you’ll stay awhile.  He’s an excellent writer and makes succintly excellent points in his posts.

So off I went to find other discussions here of women, art and gender to get references so you you can click instead of hunt.    See: June 4, What is Art Anyways, June 1,  Art, Gender, Patriarchy, and May 25, The Gender Knot for some of my past discussions on these subject.

And if that doesn’t give you enought to do, check out the latest work (including the masks above) from my studio.  I only made one torso and 2 masks yesterday.  I am slow on the masks right now as I learn/relearn how to make faces and await my amazing tools….but it’ll get faster as I practice.  I haven’t made masks in an age and now, with all my bread and butter work well stocked, can get back to doing what I want to do.  The torso and mask (above) are raku, the mask on the right is regular white low-fire clay.  As soon as these dry I have a full kiln to fire and a date for raku next Thursday, Oct 5.

I also put together an entire schedule of clay classes for January and February here in my studio and mailed them out twice to Calvert Artists’ Guild members – both times the kiln imps scrambled them…some wrote back and I resent as an attachment….dare I resent again to others who haven’t responded? (maybe closer to the actual dates as reminders).

thought for the day:  Our culture has been deeply penetrated [ed:  I think she chose this word well – what do you think?] by the notion that "man" – not woman – is created in the image of God.  This notion persists, despite the likelihood that the creation goes in the other direction:  that God is a human projection of the image of man.  No known religion, past or present, ever succeeded in establishing a completely sexless deity.  Worship was always accorded either a female or a male, occasionally a sexually united couple or an androgynous symbol of them; but deities had a sex just as people have a sex.  The ancient Greeks and others whose culture accepted homosexuality naturally worshipped homosexual gods (see Hermes)……Though Catholics still worship the Goddess under some of her old pagan titles, such as Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Blessed Virgin and so on, their theologians refuse to admit that she is the old Goddess in a new disguise, and paradoxically insist on her non-divinity.  (See Mary).  Barbara G. Walker, The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets