By Melonie Magruder
Lookout Staff

February 13, 2012 -- No one ever said motherhood was easy. But, as presented in “Breaking in Two: A Provocative Vision of Motherhood” at the Arena 1 Gallery, it can be a time of explosive creativity borne of conflict, love and elemental instinct.

The gallery, one of the participating entities in the ongoing Pacific Standard Time exhibit, has given over its space to visions of women artists who mostly came of age in the 70s and 80s, when motherhood was frowned upon in artistic circles.

“Women artists back then were warned not to tell anyone they were mothers," said curator Bruria Finkel said. "They wouldn’t be taken seriously.”

Accordingly, this show sets out to prove that not only must one take women/mother/artists seriously, their imagery give a visceral power to art that is mature, profound, funny and, ultimately, triumphant. These are voices that capture the zeitgeist of our culture and describe it in their own, unapologetic terms.

Finkel, an artist and original founder of the City’s Arts Commission, agreed to curate the show featuring 93 works from 36 artists after being approached by documentary filmmaker Sabine Sighicelli, who is working on a movie of the same title.

“Sabine’s title is good because it describes the conflict a woman artist has with having children,” Finkel said. “There’s your world of nurturing and the world of your work. One can’t help but affect the other.”

Finkel, long active in the Southern California art scene, was able to tap her friendships with a number of local artists who also happen to be mothers. Their works range from straight-forward photography to conceptual installations.

Elena Mary Siff set the tone with a mixed media piece that combined her own struggle to find a voice with the angst of nurturing a child with autism.

Her miniature diorama, titled “The Museum of My Natural History,” is a collaboration with her son, artist Noah Erenberg. The tiny story features scenes from a life still searching for identity.

“Running” is an installation created by Mother Art, a collective of women artists who bonded together over social-political art almost 40 years ago. It features a clock surrounded with high heels, printed dance diagrams and more than a passing reference to the many fancy steps a mother must perform, as well as the timeline on which she must do it. A mother of any age will sympathize.

Some of Southern California’s most revered artists are represented. Lita Albuquerque took a break from her installation performances for Pacific Standard Time to dig out some 1977 paintings from a series called “Desire and Memory.”

And there are two pieces of the late, legendary lithographer June Wayne, including a riveting piece from the “Dorothy series,” a tribute to her own mother, and one of the last pieces Wayne created, “Rue Cassette.”

Tributes to mothers were generous, with Sylvia Sher’s 1970 works introduced by her daughter, Abby Sher, who said, “At 98, Mom can’t compose her own statement, so I’m writing for her.”

Her linoleum print (“Gossip”) and metal wire sculpture (“Untitled”) are maelstroms of connective communication.

Some of the works were frankly provocative: Tierney Gearon’s photo of a child in a green field with a death-masked female immediately draws maternal feelings of alarm.
While Cheri Gaulke’s photo and video installation of “Marriage Matters,” carries an even greater wallop following last week’s decision by the 9th Circuit Court to strike down Proposition 8.

Judithe Hernandez’s pastel on paper, titled “Ni Una Mas” (Not One More), features a woman weeping tears of blood, an outraged wail of agony for the dozens of young women murdered in Juarez in recent years.

Two pieces bookend the exhibit in a symbolic metaphor for all that represents motherhood, art and the resilience of fundamental womanhood.

Marylinda Moss cast pregnant women’s bellies in a variety of multi media techniques and presents them as a sort of garden of fecundity, or nest of giant eggs.

“My work tends to be of the body, sure,” Moss said. “But it’s also about our connection to the earth.”

On the other end of the scale is a large project by Kim Abeles, which she did in collaboration with the organization “A Window Between Worlds” and 800 survivors of the domestic violence the nonprofit seeks to heal through art.

The piece, titled “Pearls of Wisdom: End the Violence” uses spherical pearls created by the workshop participants, bright ribbons braided into colorful and cohesive armor and a lot of estrogen as a declaration about survival and hope.

Taken all together, “Breaking in Two” is a powerful statement of art that can be inspired by -- and sometimes despite -- an elemental identity of women. Motherhood in all its glory and pain.

“Breaking in Two: A Provocative Vision of Motherhood” runs at Arena 1 Gallery, 3026 Airport Avenue, through April 14. More information may be found at www.santamonicaartstudios.com.