Matrix Gallery

Sacramento, California

April 28 – May 28, 1999

Sacramento Bee

Victoria Dalkey

May 16, 1999

Four women artists offer provocative views of motherhood and femininity in a strong show at the Matrix Gallery.

Julia Alvarado forces us to confront our feelings about aging and sexuality in a series of portraits of older women in a variety of poses, some of which are blatantly erotic. Alvarado unflinchingly depicts every wrinkle and globule of sagging flesh in these meticulous renderings of mature, full-bodied women.

In “Judith’s Kitchen,” a woman in a frou-frou red negligee carries a polished silver tray that reflects her hammy arm like a piece of raw meat.  “After” presents the head and naked shoulders of a woman on a bank of flowered pillows, exhausted presumably by passion. In “A Moment of Clarity,” a well-worn woman poses provocatively in black panties and bra, donning the role of sex object.

A sense of morbidity and grotesquerie, enhanced by garishly ornate frames, pervades Alvarado’s images. And yet, they are so closely, even lovingly, looked at that they achieve a kind of beauty born of their exploration of vulnerability, pain and longing. Her installation is aptly titled “Between Love and Terror.”

Cheryl Coon uses sewing to pay nostalgic tribute to her female relatives in “My Mother’s Mothers,” a series of suspended sewn panels containing photos of women in her family, juxtaposed with love letters she found at a flea market. In “Queen’s Tea/Kid Gloves,” she humorously juxtaposes a pair of tea-stained gloves and round tea bags edged with lace with a letter her mother received from Queen Elizabeth’s secretary, thanking her for an invitation to tea and sending the Queen’s regrets. “Scheherazade,” a giant book made of sheer fabric enclosing pages of text from “A Thousand and One Nights,” pays homage to a legendary female storyteller.

In other works, Coon explores women’s roles as mid-wives and healers in pre-modern times by enclosing oil and animal and vegetable materials in glass containers labeled “Snake Oil Tincture” and “Elixir Vitae.” In “Hair Oil,” she inscribes a poetic text on hair by Charles Baudelaire on a bottle of Indian hair oil. In “Oil Lamp,” she offers a moving passage from essayist Annie Dillard’s “Holy the Firm,” about a moth that catches flame.

Tracy Ginsberg’s exuberant combinations of painting and assemblage mix fabric, faux fur and found objects with graffiti-like imagery drawn from such diverse sources as mythology and women’s literature. In the rambunctious, chaotically composed “Wicked Virgin,” she appends a pair of red high heels and a giant wooden fork to a splashy canvas that contains images from India, Indonesia and Bali, including Durga, the Hindu goddess of war and Tara, the Tibetan goddess of life and sustenance.

In “V,” the words “vulva,” “vixen” and “vagina” emerge from a silvery soup of pale pigments interspersed with rich fabrics and a string of crystals. Images of bulls, a symbol of the balance between men and women in matriarchal cultures, pervade the brash, brightly colored “Bulls Outnumber Every Other Animal,” which sports a pair of zebra-striped shoes and tufts of pink feathers.

Constance Estep Wells’ paintings in oil and gold leaf on wood are the most mysterious pieces in the show. In them, she juxtaposes circus figures – trapeze artists, jugglers, rope dancers – with decorative motifs of ribbons and foliage. There is a sense of nostalgia and fragility to these small figures engaged in delicate balancing acts that may serve as a metaphor for the human condition.