Of Two Minds Exhibition Statement

Women, mothers, can never be one thing. We must always carry with us the knowledge we may need to be everything to those around us. But what happens when a woman pauses, looks around, and notices she is alone. Who is she then? What does she carry and what can she let go? These are questions many women face as they have children and grow older. It is our right to become who we want at a certain age, but how? We must cast off the expectations, the insecurities, the need to please and be all. Instead, we have to dig deep, examine and embrace the experiences that made us, the parts of ourselves that have always scared us, and admit the truth of who we want to be, and how that may differ from who we are. All while our children are watching. No pressure.

Of Two Minds explores themes of identity and being pulled in multiple directions as the artists process the ways in which motherhood, loss, and ideas of femininity have shifted their journey both personally and professionally. Each artist in this exhibition approaches their media and subject differently, but all share in the balancing act and compartmentalization of making as mothers and women while trying to establish a sense of self in the context of their current and past families. For this show, Katherine Duclos presents all new work while considering herself anew through painted and photographic self-portraits. This work reflects on what motherhood has revealed about her newly discovered neurodivergence. Using pen and ink to create precise line drawings, Emiko Venlet pivots from her typical still life paintings to her inner beast and beauty, calling forth a personal mythology in her drawings. Lydia Cecilia questions and reconstructs female agency in floral collages in order to take ownership and control of her own feminine identity and power as a woman on her own and in her family. Laura Clark will be exhibiting photographs and sculptures of found and collected objects she has broken and remade, creating new works that hold space for memory, nostalgia, and questions of who we are after loss.