Bedgood, Flores Ansell & Karsten
video screening and artist conversation
Thu Jul 2, 2020
5:30 - 6:30 pm
conversation on the art of living is a short documentary made in 2000 by David Crumley & Douglas Perkins, that features Women & Their Work Alumni Artists Jill Bedgood, Bennie Flores Ansell, and Gabel Karsten. Join us for the live stream of the video and learn what the artists are working on now in a panel conversation following the screening. Also, stay tuned for a brief Q & A with the artists. Register below to receive the Zoom link.
About the Artists
Bennie Flores Ansell
Bennie Flores Ansell, I 2K-Imelda 2000 (detail), 2000, 2000 hand-cut shoe butterflies and stainless steel collection pins
In 2000, Bennie Flores Ansell created a unique photographic installation titled I 2K- Imelda 2000, after the show’s largest work, a huge swarm of 2000 shoe-butterflies. In tongue-in-cheek style, this series was inspired by the now infamous collection of shoes amassed by Imelda Marcos, the “Steel Butterfly.” In the installation, Ansell placed one of her butterflies on the wall for every pair of shoes Imelda owned. The sheer excess was breathtaking and conveyed the decadent horrors of the Philippine First Lady’s abuses of her own people. This shoe collection became highly associated with the Filipino collective identity and Bennie Ansell’s identity as a Filipino American. Ansell photographed the most outrageous, colorful, exotic, and torturous sets of high-heeled shoes that she could find. The shoes were placed directly on a scanner for maximum, if flattened, realistic rendering on transparent plastic. Click here to learn more.
Jill Bedgood
Jill Bedgood, Pearls Before Swine, 2000
In 2000, Women & Their Work showed Jill Bedgood’s mixed media installation, Deadly Sins/ Worldly Virtues, that explored contemporary issues as they related to society and some of the seven deadly sins. Her small bronze sculpture titled Tiara for Fashionable Causes reflected society’s need to receive recognition and acknowledgment for doing good works. The needy causes of the day must be rewarded appropriate Hollywood glamour; her tiara symbolized this need to be “crowned with power and recognition.” Click here to learn more.
Gabel Karsten
Gabel Karsten, Color Movement 57-58, 2003
In 2002, Women & Their Work showed Austin artist, Gabel Karsten’s exhibition Color Movement. Karsten has made thousands of prints based on abstract or semi-abstract forms and then animated them, creating short, evanescent films that flow and metamorphose effortlessly in space. Click here to learn more.