Three exhibitions showcase work of female artists

The work of female artists is on display in three exhibitions opening this weekend at the UB Art Galleries.

“Take Five,” “WOMEN in ABSTRACTION” and “Pam Glick: Dream House: Niagara—USA—Canada” open on Sept. 14 with a public reception from 6-8 p.m. in the UB Anderson Gallery.

“Extensions” of the “Take Five” and “Pam Glick: Dream House” exhibitions also will be housed in the Center for the Arts. While the main installation of “Take Five,” curated by Robert Scalise, director of the UB Art Galleries, will be in the UB Anderson Gallery, some work also will be displayed in the second-floor gallery of the UB Art Gallery in the CFA. Four large abstract paintings by Pam Glick will be installed in the atrium of the Anderson Gallery, with a separate installation of large paintings on tarps featured in the CFA atrium.

The extension exhibitions in the CFA will open on Sept. 15 with a public reception from noon to 2 p.m. in the UB Art Gallery.

“Take Five” is a group exhibition featuring the work of contemporary artists Meghan Brady, Adriane Colburn, Melissa Dadourian, Tricia Keightley and Meg Lipke. These women use fiber-stuffed sculpture, sewn serger thread and yarn, oversized paper collage, wood sculpture and painted canvases to reinterpret traditional abstract painting. They are countering a once male-dominated art form by working outside the rectangle in an expanded field.

Calling for a more challenging abstraction, Brady creates enormous paper-collaged pieces that indirectly reference the human body. Colburn conjures bent wood sculptural installations that she extracts from research into global systems and data that is collected. Dadourian assembles textile-based wall installations made of materials she has sewn, dyed or knit. Keightley works within a stretched canvas, but eliminates the rectangle by floating her imagined mechanical abstractions on a pool of flat color. Rather than wrapping her canvas on a traditional rectangular stretcher, Lipke paints on cloth, which she sews and stuffs to create organic shapes that rest against the wall or on the floor.

In bringing these artists with such diverse practices together, the exhibition aims to showcase how women artists today are creating their own language and stepping out from traditional abstraction.

“Take Five” will be on view in the UB Anderson Gallery through Jan. 12, while the UB Art Gallery, CFA installation will close on Dec. 14.

“WOMEN in ABSTRACTION” is a concurrent exhibition highlighting artwork from the UB Art Galleries’ Permanent Collection. It features artwork spanning half a century by women artists, many of whom were supported and represented by the Martha Jackson Gallery, including Louise Nevelson, Grace Hartigan and Joan Mitchell, as well as contemporary works by regional and national artists.

“WOMEN in ABSTRACTION” is on view through Jan. 5.

“Pam Glick: Dream House: Niagara—USA—Canada” continues an ongoing series of interpretations of Niagara Falls by Glick, who received her MFA from UB earlier this year.

She paints on stretched canvases, and through mark-making and improvisational brush strokes, patterns surface rendering shapes that emulate mist and the motion of water flowing from the falls. These references are abstract and intuitive. Instinctually, these works stimulate our senses of smell, touch and sound, recalling past visits to Niagara Falls or notions of what it might be like.

“There is the palpable sublime as the beauty takes everyone by surprise even if you’ve seen it before,” Glick says of the falls. “The hypnotic pull of the falls, especially the element of danger in its enormity, is obvious.”

“Pam Glick: Dream House: Niagara—USA—Canada” is on view at both locations through Jan. 5. The CFA atrium showing is part of the “Art in the Open” series in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences' Arts Collaboratory.