August 12 - September 3, 2022
From Clamp Light Artist Studios & Gallery:
“Clamp Light Artist Studios & Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition It’s Hard Being a Woman During the Apocalypse, featuring Sarah Fox, Loot Achris, and Ashley Mireles. The exhibition will open to the public with a reception on Friday, August 12, from 6–9pm.
This exhibition explores the multifaceted experience of existence and being a woman in today’s world. Each of the three featured artists explore the human experience of living as an imperfect person in a woman’s body and embracing the divine feminine that accompanies all facets of this experience, even the parts that men and our society fear; The dirty, ugly, gorgeous truth that is being a woman. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, living through a global pandemic, seeing the immense effects of global warming, and living in a patriarchal society has informed all of their lives. In It’s Hard Being a Woman During the Apocalypse, Fox, Loot Achris, and Mireles’, new works touch on rage, trauma, discomfort, and the power behind shared experiences bringing women together.
Utilizing cutouts from Penthouse magazine, Ashley Mireles’ Cheerleaders feature collaged women in various positions and states of undress in pyramid style formations. The cheerleaders are strong and sexy with limbs that bend the wrong way and there are parts of the pyramid that seem unstable, ushering a sense of discomfort and mirroring each other in solidarity. “It’s really about the position that women put themselves in and at the same time support each other,” said Mireles.
Sarah Fox continues her exploration of her embodied female experience through corporeal hybrid creatures, particularly her Bad Bunny character. In this exhibition, Bad Bunny returns to express the artist’s anger and frustration over the war on women’s bodies. In this work, Fox is arming her friends to destroy the patriarchy before it destroys them, in true femme fatale fashion. In the solarprint here kitty kitty Bad Bunny is luring someone in to hit with a hidden frying pan, while other prints in the exhibition illustrate battle scenes. The femme fatale archetype is generally portrayed as villonous, and if it’s a villain they want, it’s a villain Fox will give them, using whatever means necessary to protect her body and her friends.
Loot Achris’s seemingly playful and cheerful characters withhold a deeper, darker meaning. Influenced by her own childhood traumas, albeit unconsciously, Loot Achris utilizes vibrant pieces of felt to create characters that don’t follow any typical beauty standards. The uncouth, brassy women are made with sweet, bright colors and wear youthful clothing. The seemingly innocent looking girls hide grisly truths. Their power does not come from physical beauty or strength, but from their vulnerability and how their past has shaped them.
This exhibition will be on view at Clamp Light from August 12–September 3, 2022 by appointment.
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About Clamp Light Studios and Gallery
Clamp Light Studios and Gallery was established in 2009 and has been committed to supporting local contemporary artists in South Texas ever since. Clamp Light functions as both a studio space for resident artists and a gallery space for monthly exhibitions. Resident artists work in a variety of media including drawing, collage, installation, sculpture, painting, photography, performance, and new media.
About Sarah Fox
Sarah Fox’s multi-media narratives and characters are created from embodied female experience. Stories of life, loss, sex and love are told through corporeal hybrid creatures. The resulting collages, cyanotypes, and animations suggest a childlike fairytale but with an undercurrent of dark symbolism. Her work has been shown throughout Texas, as well as in the Kinsey Institute (Bloomington, Indiana), Field Projects Gallery (New York, New York), Espacio Dörffi (Lanzarote, Canary Islands), Bedsetter Art Fair (Vienna, Austria), and Casa Lu (Mexico City). In 2019 she was a recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant that allowed her to live and work at the Women’s Studio Workshop in NY with her son. She was raised in Houston, Texas and currently lives and works in San Antonio, Texas with her 2-year old son William and their dog Myra. She is the director of the innovative community art space Clamp Light Studios and Gallery, the creator and co-director for the Brick Gallery in the Blue Star Arts Complex. She teaches at the Southwest School of Art and Texas State University. https://sarahfoxart.com/home.html
About Loot Achris
Loot Achris is a visual artist born and raised in San Antonio, TX. Working primarily in illustration, painting, installation, and photography, Loot Achris’ work draws influence from the vivid color palettes and graphic styles of cartoons and graffiti. Loot Achris uses satire throughout her work to provide an opportunity for serious, and sometimes taboo, issues to be made approachable and relatable. Loot Achris received her BFA from Southwest School of Art in 2018. She has exhibited throughout Texas and has work in both private and public collections. https://lootachris.com/
About Ashley Mireles
Ashley Mireles is a public and studio artist, educator, and arts administrator in San Antonio, Texas. Employing social critique and often humor, she explores her environment, cultural issues, and the human condition. Her works are in the collections of Artpace San Antonio, City of San Antonio, Mexic-Arte Museum, National Museum of Mexican Art, Texas Christian University Print Collection, University of Texas Libraries Special Collections, Walt Disney Company, and Zuckerman Museum of Art. Ashley continues to focus her practice on community access by developing and organizing creative programming for regional arts institutions and community spaces in Central Texas. Ashley has served as an Artist Mentor for the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Immigrant Artist Mentorship program and is currently a San Antonio Area Foundation Artist Fellow and National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Leadership Institute Fellow.
https://www.ashleymireles.com/”
Reception: August 12, 2022 | 6–9 pm
1704 Blanco Rd, Suite 104
San Antonio, 78212 TX
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