Staying power Hera celebrates three decades of women’s work BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Walking into the Hera Gallery show at the AS220 Project Space/Rhode Island Foundation Gallery recently was like a homecoming for me, since I’ve lived for so many years in Wakefield, where Hera Gallery, one of the longest-lived women’s art galleries in the country, was founded in 1974. In a community heavily influenced by the presence of URI and in the midst of other ’70s-style cooperative ventures (food coops, babysitting coops, a cooperative elementary school), Hera found fertile ground.

Thus, it’s not so surprising that 10 women had the vision and the guts to turn an abandoned laundromat into a gallery where they could exhibit their work and that of other women. What is a surprise and a cause for celebration is that they and the gallery have survived and flourished, in a climate of ever-decreasing funding for the arts and in the face of an upswing in anti-woman and anti-feminist sentiment.

The current exhibition, "Hera Gallery: The First Thirty Years," spreads over two galleries, the Providence venue (through November 20) and the gallery in Wakefield (through November 13), with a discussion during Gallery Night Providence (October 21) at the AS220 Project Space on "Hera and the Women’s Art Movement," and a panel discussion on November 13 at Hera on "The Arts in South County."

Over its three decades, Hera has had 124 members and approximately 300 exhibits. There have also been scores of lectures, symposia, films, musical events, poetry readings, and even a site-specific dance performance. Many of these were tied to the subject of an exhibit, but some were simply linked to the gallery’s mission by their presentation of women’s art in medium other than visual art.

Hera Gallery has not only been an ongoing source of support for women’s art but for women’s issues expressed through art. That has included shows on domestic violence, sexuality, the female body, and motherhood and grieving (the latter not restricted to women, of course, but perhaps more openly talked about by them). The socio-political focus of exhibits has extended into the AIDS epidemic, homelessness, war-torn Nicaragua, racial identity, "making war" and, more recently, "the environment under siege" and "American democracy under siege."

In the current show, seven of the founding members have one or more pieces hanging in one or both galleries. The founders’ work includes Connie Greene Alexander’s large oil portraits, one of them a male nude straight-on, sitting on a stone wall with his dog ("John J."); Elena Jahn’s drawing of another founder, Bernadette Hackett, an evocative nude of a woman in all her curves and bulges, sitting on a bed, with only a mirror and a bare coat hanger on the wall behind her; Hackett’s own colored pencil drawing, "Scarred Landscape in Progress"; Mary Jane Christofferson’s humorous watercolors of flying cabbages; a haunting airbrush acrylic of a pond landscape by Fran Powers; Marlene Malik’s mixed-media sculpture, "Soho Glitter," whose angles are reminiscent of an ancient culture; and a geometrically-influenced etching by Roberta Richman enigmatically titled "Jan. 16, 1976."

Though the artwork at Hera throughout its 30 years has not always been overtly about women’s lives — indeed, the work of male artists has been seen in many exhibits, and John Kotula is currently a Hera member, with his recent "Self Portrait Grid" in this show — some of the most enduring images are commentaries on the female experience. Judy Gelles’s black-and-white photographs of her young sons (’79-’82), along with deadpan text or her own image looking into the camera, as if she’s saying the written words, never fail to amuse me. Pat Forni Curran’s paintings of paper doll dresses (’97), all poufy and frilly, make a statement about our unchanging stereotypes of little girls. And Sandra Crandall Cutting’s satirical "Self Portrait with Manet" (’83) always makes me smile.

Terry Gay’s acrylic paintings take a familiar phrase and give it a literal symbol; my favorite of the three in the show is "Damn! There’s a hole" (’93), showing bright yellow garden gloves with a hole in one finger. Ramsey Lofton is even more direct in her mixed media piece "Re-Thinking History" (’94), in which the words "she began to believe her own fiction" and "to hide her embarrassment, she fictionalized her Fresno upbringing while attending an elite women’s college" are superimposed on a collage of female images.

Stepping away from the wall, the clay-slab abstract sculptures of Mary Ann Killilea from the early ’80s are still thrilling in their sensual lines and suggestive curves. Toby Bornstein’s wood sculpture of "Bathers" draws you to its tactile sense of water on bodies. Margaret Prince Williams’s polished bittersweet branch from a small granite base has an urgent sense of pushing through hard times. And Lilla Samson’s experiments with tie-dyed-like fabric ("Shibori") wrapped around rocks look like colorful, luminous hedgehogs.

The co-curators of the exhibit, Alexandra Broches and Barbara Pagh are represented by two pieces each that show their continuing development as artists. Broches’s early large acrylic ("untitled," ’79) is all sharp angles in a maze-like structure, and a recent toned photograph, "untitled (Bones)," shows her attention to the texture of the objects she is capturing. Pagh’s marvelously-textured mixed media piece "Moonrise Over Chaco" (’89) reflects her ongoing interest in Native American art; her recent photo-lithograph on handmade paper, "Coastlines #1, "is an even subtler textural play of lines and curves.

With nearly 75 works by 45 artists, it’s impossible to touch on all the fascinating pieces in this show, including those by current director Cynthia Farnell and past director Katherine Veneman. Their works are among the most recent, with all of the pieces hung in chronological order, above a time line that was printed on self-stick vinyl sheets, so that they look decaled onto the wall.

These texts are a terrific way to place the artwork into its cultural and political context. For each sheet that encompasses a year, a few historical happenings (or pop culture events) are cited above the list of Hera’s shows for that year and alongside a recognizable symbol for that era: Clinton’s smirk; the exploding Challenger shuttle; Cher in all her finery; Nelson Mandela. The years 1968-’74, just before the gallery opened, also have texts to point out significant events, such as the founding of the NEA and RISCA, the beginning of the Women’s movement, the Roe v. Wade ruling, and Watergate.

Lastly, check out the notebook of responses from past and present members about what Hera has meant in their lives. These letters highlight Hera’s accomplishment in building a community of artists that not only supported each other’s endeavors, but taught the broader community outside its gallery doors about women’s ability to cooperate, to persevere, and to produce meaningful art.

"Hera Gallery:The First Thirty Years"

At Hera Gallery, 327 Main Street in Wakefield, through November 13, and at AS220 Project Space, 1 Union Station in Providence, through November 20.