So we had our first two public screenings and they were a great success! It was very gratifying. The audience was extremely moved, expressed its enthusiasm and even laughed in more places than we ever imagined. A wonderful weekend, and we are so grateful to Kelley and Lauren and John and especially Elissa and everyone else at BIFF for making it possible!
This morning I was scouring the internet for blogs in NYC with women and art as their subject - (we're looking for people to invite to a preview screening of our film "a woman like that") and came upon this blog listing an exhibition that is opening May 8th, “Remember the Ladies: Women Artists of the Hudson River School”, believed to be the first exhibition ever to focus solely on women artists associated with the 19th century landscape painting movement.
"Remember the Ladies" wow, that resounds for me. I think about Artemisia and all the "ladies" who have been forgotten in history, and how in our film "a woman like that" many people reflect on what this historical forgetting and then this finding of Artemisia, her life and her art mean for them.
So here is this other group of women - and again like Artemisia, many had fathers, brothers, other family members who were/are famous artists. And while the museum notice states, "They produced magnificent works of art, and they were inspired by the landscape just as Thomas Cole and Asher Durand were.", - I immediately ponder this comparison to Cole and Durand - the more famous men. And my mind streams, from that spectacular landscape to those forgotten women and, to all those others who have been and are inspired to make art who we never hear of .. and then I leap to this unknowable void - all this unseen art. And I remember the women we met at CAA who showed us images of their art, really good art, original, provocative, beautifully wrought art that they couldn't get shown and that we may never see.
So this is what I hope/imagine will happen during our upcoming travels to show "a woman like that" - women will share their work with us, with you, on our blog,on our facebook page and we will, in our little way "remember" that women make art - every day.
P.S. The announcement says "The title is taken from a letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams in 1776: “I desire you would Remember the Ladies… if particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion.” Now Abigail Adams was one cool "lady".
So we are almost finished with the post production on our film "a woman like that". We started almost 8 years ago - at the time of the 2002 Orazio/Artemisia exhibition that traveled from Rome, to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and then on to SLAM, the St. Louis Art Museum. It's been a "long strange trip" filled with many ups and downs, and many wonderful people.
And now we're on to the next challenge, getting the film out there to all those people who love Artemisia and want to know more.
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