About the Exhibition
The Art of Creative Women
Women artists have often been overlooked and undervalued. Though gender bias is less apparent today, women artists continue to face many obstacles and disparities – especially minority women. The Chesapeake Arts Center is committed to diversifying the gallery by acquiring the work of women artists and to highlighting the art of creative women. Their identities as women influence their artwork in various, unique ways.
Selected artworks will be displayed in the Chesapeake Arts Center’s Hal Gomer Gallery from March 7 - April 28, 2022.
Hal Gomer Gallery Hours:
Monday-Thursday 10:00am-6:00pm
Saturday 10am-1pm
*Visitors are required to reserve a time to view the exhibit. Please call CAC’s main office at 410-636-6597 or email Gena, our Program Coordinator, at gena@chesapeakearts.org during our business hours Monday - Thursday, 10:00 am-6:00pm to reserve a date and time. Visitors will be checked in upon arrival and masks are required to enter the gallery and CAC building.
*The above hours are subject to change based on Holidays and Closings. Updated information in regards to current Holidays and Closings that would affect available gallery hours can be found at the top banner of our website, Instagram, and Facebook prior to said date(s). Please contact us if there are any questions.
Featured Artists
Allyssa Yamaguchi-Juárez : Amber Cruz : Amy Takemoto : Boma Tende : Caitlin Gill : Cami Ascher : Gayle Mangan Kassal : Isabella Falen : Janelle Washington : Jiwoo Shin : Jo Coyle : Katrina Childs : Kayla Williams : Kianna Wilson : Lexi Arrietta : Liza Figueroa : Nadine Baldwin : Dasha Kalumuck : Laura Curtis : Margie Smeller: Nadia Lezcano : Nia Parks : Sonia Pratt : Stephanie Smith : Tammy Barnes : Viki Keating :
Artist: Allyssa Yamaguchi-Juárez : Allyssa Ray Yamaguchi-Juarez originates from The Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Allyssa Ray currently lives in Laurel, Maryland, and has completed her Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Art and Graduate Certification in Arts Management at American University in Washington, DC in May 2021. Yamaguchi-Juarez participated in an Artist Residency at the Chautauqua School of the Fine and Performing Arts in 2018. She has exhibited works in numerous juried and group exhibitions including American University Katzen Art Museum: “Free Punch & Pie”, in Washington D.C. Target Gallery at Torpedo Factory Art Center: Juried Exhibit "Those Spaces Between Us" in 2021. “Chautauqua School of Art Annual Student Exhibition” at Fowler and Kellogg Art Center, Chautauqua, New York, and “Viva La Femme! Exhibition of Women Artists” at L’Atelier Berkshires Art Gallery, Barrington, Massachusetts. Yamaguchi-Juarez was honored with the Van Swearingen Scholarship in 2019-2021. She is currently working on a series entitled “Liminal Realities” where she explores her familiar everyday imagery and composes them into a surreal fantasy.
Website: https://www.allyssayamaguchi.com/
Artist: Amber Cruz : Amber McKay Cruz was born in Tokyo, Japan. She currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. as an educator and artist. Her work draws largely on the examination of ordinary objects, materials, and food of an American Middleclass through lenses of history, feminist theory, and personal memory. Primarily working in sculpture and drawing, Cruz uses personal and found objects to dissect labor, complex relationships, and familial rituals. In 2017, she earned her BA in Visual Arts from University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She completed an MFA in Studio Art at American University in 2021. Recently her work was included in the exhibition, Envisioning, by Transformer Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Website: www.ambermckaycruz.com
Artist: Amy Takemoto: Amy Takemoto is an illustrator living in Baltimore. She works primarily in watercolor and ink. Amy is currently writing and painting her first graphic novel. She is a mother to three teenage daughters and enjoys running the local trails with her husband and dog.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amy.takemoto/
Artist: Boma Tende : Boma is a Nigerian-American Visual Artist and UX Designer located in Maryland. She primarily creates portraits using dry and wet mediums such as colored pencil, acrylic paint, and oil paint. Her art focuses on Black women, nature, and her Nigerian heritage. She hopes her art inspires other Black women to see the beauty within themselves and have self-love.
Website: artbytende.com
Artist: Caitlin Gill : Caitlin Gill is a mixed media artist living in Baltimore, Maryland. She has a B. A in Drawing and Painting from Towson University and an MFA in Curatorial Practice and Art Criticism from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She currently works as the Program Manager and Arts Directory Coordinator for Maryland Art Place (MAP). Gill uses printmaking, sculpting, drawing, painting, collage, and fiber to create artwork that explores ideas of identity, femininity, and the divergence between human and animal. Evoking ideas of discomfort and repulsion, she encourages viewers to engage with how unnatural being human can sometimes feel.
Gill explores the notion of femininity, its relationship to nature, western culture, and women. Human nature is nothing short of unnatural, and the concept of the feminine is even less so. Women are continuously linked to nature historically and culturally yet are refused the most natural basic animal instincts and acts (territory, aggression, fitness) as these are characterized as unfeminine, or inherently masculine. This contradiction plagues the artist and her work explores these binaries attempting to reconcile how to be simultaneously feminine and natural.
Website: https://caitegill.wixsite.com/mysite
Artist: Cami Ascher : Camilla is currently our Resident Ceramic Chair. She is a ceramic artist from Natick Massachusetts who currently resides in Baltimore Maryland. Camilla graduated in 2012 with a BFA in Art Education and in 2013 with a Certificate in Ceramics, both from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Camilla has completed artist residencies in Taiwan at Tainan University of the Arts and in Truro Massachusetts at Truro Center for the Arts Castlehill.
Website: https://camillaascher.com/
Artist: Gayle Mangan Kassal : Gayle Mangan Kassal lives and creates in Annapolis, Maryland. She applies unique realism and a keen sense of color to her lush vivid paintings. The dynamic style and large scale images attest to the spiritual energy she brings to her work. They are snapshots of life, brought to immense proportions, transforming ordinary spaces into vibrant new whimsical worlds.
Since 1996, corporations, restaurants, schools, hospitals, and private residences nationwide have enhanced their spaces with Gayle’s colorful murals or fine art pieces designed with her playful imagination and masterful skills. In every project, she creates custom one-of-a-kind environments, specific to the needs and desires of the client.
Website: https://gaylemangankassal.com/
Artist: Isabella Falen : Isabella Falen is a current senior Creative Writing major at Hollins University, expected to graduate in the Spring of 2022. Isabella has always loved expressing herself through the arts, whether that be through writing or the visual arts, and has loves exploring visual artistry. While at school she has had many amazing opportunities to dive deeper into different mediums, and recently has become entranced with alternative photographic methods, such as photograms and chemigrams, where the artist is not using a camera at all to create their pieces. Isabella is excited to continue to explore and create art as she finds her way through the world.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pullaprint/
Artist: Janelle Washington : Janelle Washington is a self-taught paper-cut artist from Virginia. She graduated from VCU with a BFA in Fashion Design and worked as a designer for 12 years. While designing, she found interest in paper cutting after being presented with an opportunity to display other artistic talents during a company show and tell presentation where she exhibited her first paper cut. Working with paper led her to explore themes of African American history, identity, and culture.
She has permanent silhouettes housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and Downing-Gross Community Arts Center in Newport News, Virginia. Janelle's first illustrated book, written by author Angela Joy, will come out in Fall 2022. In addition, her silhouette of Breonna Taylor with the #SayHerName campaign was featured in the Oprah magazine September 2020 issue. She is also a member of The Guild of American Papercutters.
Website: www.washingtoncuts.com
Artist: Jiwoo Shin : Based in Jakarta, Seoul, and Baltimore, Jiwoo Shin builds abstract paintings that are constructed in a calculated yet intuitive manner by layering, removing, and blending collectively whilst investigating contrast and luminosity. Her interest in art education has provided an opportunity to work as an art teacher in Greensum Art Academy in Seoul, Korea, Tomato Art School in Jakarta, Indonesia and as a teaching assistant at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore MD. She had her first solo exhibition: ‘Unveiling Luminosity’ at the Maryland Institute College of Art and her work has been featured in Art Moments Jakarta Online 2021, MICA x GWU Corcoran Students Exhibition, and PAFA Crosscurrents Juried Exhibition 2019. She has also commissioned for the Johns Hopkins Community Physicians Remington in Baltimore MD.
Website: jiwooshinart.tumblr.com
Artist: Jo Coyle : Eager to create everything from abstract mixed media pieces and contemporary portraits to pattern designs and upcycled tins, Jo considers her work to be led by an internal "art roulette." With unending curiosity and an unwillingness to commit to one subject or style, she challenges her creative boundaries and assumptions whenever she can for the sake of making art that evokes subjective, emotional reaction.
Jo graduated from Mount St. Mary's University with a BA in Fine Art, after studying fine art and film at the Carver Center for Arts & Technology in Towson, MD, and has recently rediscovered her passion for art after leaving the corporate marketing world in 2019. Experiencing the beginning of the pandemic while pregnant rekindled her artistic practice, as well as her appreciation for art as a safe outlet with which to filter a growing awareness and anxiety of the unknown.
Website: www.jocoyle.com
Artist: Katrina Childs : I am a 27 year old poet from the Baltimore area. I've used poetry as an outlet for my strong emotions my entire life, and have recently started looking towards sharing my works. I love using strong imagery of earth, space and all nature- it resonates with me and my rawest emotions.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melancholynotepadpoet/
Artist: Kayla Williams : I am a printmaker and illustration artist with a BFA in Printmaking and a passion for Pop Art. Much of my work ranges from cute illustrations, NSFW, and the macabre, and is done so in vibrant and pastel colors.
Etsy page: www.etsy.com/shop/ThirdEyeDesignsCo
Artist: Kianna Wilson : My name is Kianna Wilson. I'm a black female lesbian photographer living in Baltimore, MD. Started my photography business, Major Ki Photography LLC, in 2016. My dream is to continue to inspire people with my photos; allowing my photos to tell a story, put a smile on someone's face, just make you feel happy, make you want to take your own photos, etc. Photography is my passion, happiness and peace and I wouldn't change it for anything else.
Website: www.majorkiphotography.com
Artist: Lexi Arrietta : Lexi Arrietta is a mixed media artist whose work deals with absence, grief, madness, and memory. Her practice is rooted in personal history and early recollections, in examining coping mechanisms and the emotional relics of things not had. Lexi’s work reckons with feelings of ferality and transience; with how individual trauma or instability can move us to the outskirts of shared society, marking us, and drawing us nearer to a metaphorical wood’s edge, where the dividing line between nature and culture becomes shaky and blurred. Her practice explores the ways in which we try to compensate for loss and compartmentalize wilderness.
The artist grew up among the fields, woods, and waterways of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied art with Rico Gatson and Dawn Clements, and where she was awarded the Lori Hertzberg Prize for Creativity. Lexi has had her work exhibited at Van Der Plas Gallery in NYC, and was chosen as a Director's Choice Winner for Viridian Artists' 31st Annual International Juried Exhibition. She lives and works alongside her partner of many years and their two wild dogs.
Website : https://www.lexiarrietta.com/
Artist: Liza Figueroa : Liza Marie is a Unit Secretary from Medstar Harbor Hospital who enjoys learning about and applying all mediums of art into her pieces. Drawing and painting since the day she was able to hold a crayon, Liza Marie sees art not only as a form of expression but also as therapy and a way to relax. She is inspired by her childhood, her family, her surroundings and by pop culture especially her favorite kpop groups 2pm and Monsta X.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/figgybean/
Artist: Nadine Baldwin : Nadine Baldwin has always been, in her own words, a “creative creature.” Coming from a family of artists, she likes to dabble in everything from sewing and clothing design, to writing poetry, to interior design, and artworks on paper and canvas. “I put spirit and soul into my paint and canvases. I put my own spin on. I can take anything and make it look spectacular.” Nadine spends a lot of time in her “studio nest” she designed at home. She is a “low residency” artist with Make Studio in Baltimore since 2017. Also a lover of nature, Nadine enjoys taking her sketchbook outside with her to work as well as gathering natural materials like wood, stones, and feathers to add to her artworks.
Artist: Dasha Kalumuck : Dasha has been making art since she was a very young age (as she recalls). Dasha says that she found that art was a safe outlet to express what she was feeling. After years of making art in private, Dasha began sharing her work and gained lots of support from her church community. She joined Make Studio (Baltimore, MD) as a member artist in 2015. She developed many original characters and the world they lived in and continues to populate many of her drawings and paintings with these characters in a comic- inspired style. Though most of her work is original character designs, she is also drawn to making more expressive non-representational work. She likes to take ideas and concepts and put her own spin on them, giving the viewer a different perspective, and uses a wide variety of media. In her free time, Dasha enjoys playing piano, watching the Muppet show, riding her bike at the skate park, playing soccer with her neighbors, and going on “crazy adventures.”
Artist: Laura Curtis : Laura Curtis draws voraciously and enjoys mixed media exploration, often engaging in an exploratory process with fluid materials such as watercolor and inks. She is inspired by nature and her love of animals, specifically dogs and puppy noses. Laura joined Make Studio (Baltimore, MD) as an artist in 2018. At Make Studio, she has enjoyed combining her process-oriented explorations with her more representational work, including depicting varied relationships between favorite characters. Laura resides in Baltimore County.
Artist: Margie Smeller : Margie is a seasoned visual artist, having honed her craft over many years working on commissions at home, exhibiting her work in solo shows and as part of a collective with the Artists’ Gallery in Frederick, MD. She has also worked and exhibited with the Scott Key Center (Frederick, MD) and Art Enables (Washington, DC) and is a current member artist with Make Studio in Baltimore since 2011. Margie loves writing poetry, often in tandem with her visual artwork. She draws inspiration from a vast array of sources, including pop film and National Geographic. Alongside her art, she is a talented athlete, competing in varied sports including snowshoeing, skiing and kayaking.
Artist: Nadia Lezcano : Nadia Lezcano recently graduated with her BFA in Ceramics from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Primarily she works sculpturally, beginning to focus more on site-specific installations as a way to challenge how the artwork can function. Her work deals with her perception of the world and how these processes of making can serve as a form of communication. Nadia enjoys talking about special interests and learning new skill sets, and when she isn’t working, she enjoys her time with her many cats.
Website: nadialezcano.squarespace.com
Artist: Nia Parks : I create to explore. And explore to create. The act of creating art is both an instrument of introspection and a tool that promotes civic engagement and fosters hope. This act of creation has meant randomly manipulating and mixing various mediums; finding inspiration from life, family, and the world around me. My work acts as a document, a chronicle of self-exploration and identity. Pondering and keepsaking expressions of God’s character and promises to His children through collage of scripture, cataloging, and God-given creativity. Creating to learn, to heal, to self-reflect and ponder; completely vulnerable and fully submitted to expression and growth. A sort of diary that gives others permission to experience my journey. Allowing myself a fluidity and freedom to use various mediums within one piece and/or to step into completely new expressions of art.
Artist: Sonia Pratt : Sonia Pratt: Sonia is a multimedia artist, working primarily in encaustic and cold wax mediums. She was born and raised in an agrarian and industrial community in North Central WV, where her roots run deep. She is a graduate of Fairmont State University with a BA degree in art education and English. After college she moved to Western Maryland to work as a teacher in the public school system. Her rural surroundings have been a major influence in her work. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States in both national and international exhibits. She is a 2021 recipient of the MD State Arts Council Individual Artist Award.
Website: http://www.soniapratt.com
Artist: Stephanie Smith : is a painter and muralist focusing on the human figure and lives in Howard County, MD. She’s completed public art for private and public entities including MuralArts Philadelphia, Merriweather Post Pavilion and DoodleHatch. Her work has been featured in over 20 exhibitions.
Website: https://stephaniesmith1.crevado.com/
Artist: Tammy Barnes : Originally from rural Western Pennsylvania, Tammy’s artistic inspiration has deep roots in the concepts of repurposing and recreating to bring about new life or new direction. In many ways, that process closely describes her journey to an art career. Tammy Barnes started somewhere else, nearly fifteen years in business operations in the non-profit industry. She always brought a creative flare to her job. And now, Tammy has repurposed and redirected her work to creating art and public art.
Largely self-taught, Tammy has also completed coursework in continuing studies at MICA: Maryland Institute College of Art and a community college. Broadly speaking, Tammy spent her childhood watching Bob Ross paint “happy little trees” on PBS, too. Currently, Tammy’s peers are her best teachers; she is a member of two regional art societies CHAL Capitol Hill Arts League and Artbae. In 2022, Tammy was selected as the first Treasurer of the Board of Directors of the Artbae Foundation.
For Tammy’s upcycled contemporary pieces, she often source materials locally; for example, from a creative reuse store in Baltimore, a home improvement supply reuse in Hyattsville, or thrift stores regional to the District of Columbia. If “waste not, want not” is a proverb to live by today, Tammy’s upcycled contemporary art aims at lightening the carbon footprint of discarded and thrown away items by giving them new life through art. Over the last ten years, Tammy’s upcycled art has been custom designed to support various purposes of local non-profits such as, Street Sense Media, Central Union Mission, and the American Psychological Association. And in February 2021, an upcycled sculpture of the US Capitol Building was included in a public art installation of the Logan Circle neighborhood of DC, celebrating the inauguration of the first woman Vice-President of the United States.
Website: www.tbarnescreates.com
Artist: Viki Keating : Viki Keating has a glass studio called Stained Glass Creations, which produces commissioned glasswork for architectural installations as well as original work for galleries. She has been working with glass for over 35 years and works in fused and cast glass. Using and experimenting with different techniques. She has at-tended many professional workshops for various glass techniques with well-known glass artists and has been exhibiting in juried exhibitions for many years. She also does artist residency programs for Maryland schools, teaching the students about glass and helping them make fused glass for their school and/or doing projects with murals and recycled art.
Website: http://viki.keatingproductions.com