By Olivia Turner | Staff Writer
Right now, walking into Cultivate 7Twelve is like walking into the very temple of a goddess. This March, the dark blue walls of this Austin Avenue gallery space have been peppered with paintings of women of all different shapes, colors and demeanors. Lilies unfurl across canvases and ceramics sculpted into recognizable parts of female anatomy sit on tabletops. More simply put, there is not a trace of the male gender to be seen.
Ironically enough, exhibition curator and San Antonio sophomore Ellie Cerwin said she was not even aware her show would fall into Women’s History Month.
“I wanted to do a show really exalting women, especially women as artists,” Cerwin said.
To do so, she said she allowed female artists from the Baylor and Waco communities to apply to the show, which was unexpectedly met with over 100 responses. Those who were accepted submitted female-focused paintings, drawings and ceramics to the exhibition, which Cerwin dubbed “Divine Feminine.”
Olivia Havre | Photographer
Cerwin said she had originally intended the show to focus on the concept of women being misunderstood as artists, a theme which was inspired by the discriminatory treatment her painting instructor, professor Winter Rusiloski, has faced throughout her career.
One of Cerwin’s pieces, an oil painting titled “Through the Motions,” was the first to reflect this theme. Stretched across the wide canvas are a series of her facial expressions, some with mouths and eyes widened in awe at the support she said she has received in her artistic pursuits, others with faces crinkled in anger and frustration towards judgmental responses.
“I’ve had multiple people being like, ‘Oh you’re getting an arts and crafts degree’” Cerwin said. “Like, no! I mean, this is my passion, this is my life, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life and what I want to do for a living. It’s not just some hobby.”
“Through the Motions” is proof of Cerwin’s sincerity toward her passion. She said she worked on the piece every day leading up to the exhibition and used a neon pink underpainting in order to perfect her rosy complexion seen in the expressions.
Another work by Cerwin, “Overwhelmed,” is meant to depict the struggle of the day-to-day of being a female artist, she said. Amidst rainbow swirls, a long-haired Cerwin covers her eyes to the colorful chaos surrounding her.
Cerwin said the background is representative of the duties and commitments she has had to adjust to since becoming a college student as well as all the goals and dreams that make her life wonderful.
“The difference between freshman and sophomore year is crazy,” Cerwin said. “Once you move into that apartment, it’s a whole new world because you have to buy groceries for yourself, you have to cook for yourself, there’s no [Community Leaders] looking after you.”
In addition to themes of determination and struggle, womanhood also encapsulates confidence, according to exhibition contributor and Dallas junior Emmarie Rossiter. She said her oil painting, “Finding Myself,” displays her personal struggle of finding herself as a woman in the midst of the chaos of life.
Similar to Cerwin, Rossiter’s work also depicts a series of expressions, but hers were a response to some of her favorite artists. The grid format was reflective of Andy Warhol, the characterization of the faces were reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s work and the message splayed across the canvas in red, which reads “I AM A BATTLEGROUND,” was inspired by Barbara Kruger.
Olivia Havre | Photographer
“I feel like a lot of the time when you’re open and expressing yourself to how you honestly feel, it’s kind of just dismissed in a way,” Rossiter said.
Reflecting the character of the feminists she is inspired by in her life, Rossiter said she hopes the piece can likewise inspire ideas of self-confidence in those who view it.
Another Baylor student involved in the exhibition, Belton sophomore Sharon Almon, said she also recognizes the importance of female confidence in her work, especially that beyond that of a woman’s appearance. Almon said she has been inspired greatly by the confidence and certainty of her childhood best friend in her own life.
Her acrylic and collage painting, “Trap of Aesthetic,” made with scraps of illustrations from a storybook, rebels against the notion that women have to be stereotypically attractive to be beautiful.
“We’re trying to be empowering women through celebrating their bodies and the differences in them but at the same time that can be flattening them and reinforcing that idea that the only value women have is in their appearances,” Almon said.
Cerwin, too, said she hopes the “Divine Feminine” exhibition can help to fight some of the notions of hyperfixation society puts on women’s bodies. In particular, she said she wants the strength and resilience women are capable of to become more visible.
For Cerwin, the realization that both the beauty and strength women fit into being divinely feminine became apparent to her by being an outdoor adventurer in addition to her role as an artist. While camping during a minimester with the Baylor Outdoor Adventure LLC at the Minnesota boundary waters where the group was off the grid for sixteen days, Cerwin said she felt challenged, yet empowered.
“By the end of the trip, I was carrying a canoe on my shoulders, a 50-lbs backpack and like five paddles on my arm for three miles,” Cerwin said. “If we push ourselves further, we can do incredible things.”
For Almon, she said her involvement with the “Divine Feminine” exhibition and seeing so many woman artists come together for the purpose of art and celebrating their femininity, has been empowering, just as Cerwin intended it to be.
“For so long women have been confined and suffocated and not allowed to celebrate who they are; that fact that we’re able to now is just so amazing,” Almon said.
