Only three hours north, Door Peninsula beckons the city dwellers. For those traveling to those shorelines on the peninsula for the 4th of July weekend one might take the time to stop at the Peninsula School of Art's Guenzel Gallery. The school located near the Top of the Hill Shops in Fish Creek hosts a welcoming gallery that brings national artists to the flourishing Door County community.
In the school's current exhibition “Unruffled Views: Dress as Symbol” nine artists explore the triangular shaped silhouette that often represents particular emotions, expectations or perspectives on femininity. Expressing these viewpoints through ceramics, iron work, painting, photographs and sculpture the artists in “Unruffled Views” challenge how the dress can reflect a historical period, individual personality, and cultural context or even roles experienced as mothers, sisters, wives and women.
Sonya Naumann exhibits an interesting photographic continuing series from Her Thousand Dollar Dress Project. The Univerisity of Iowa art professor plans on photographing 1000 women in her own wedding dress (that cost $1000) while making a statement about marriage and the culture of weddings in contemporary society. Through Naumann's fine art and photojournalistic approach she captures Charlotte, 58, a divorced woman in the white dress. Two others remain single women, while other are indeed married, all various ages. The white dress can acquire a new context when each woman wears it.
John Petrey exhibits throughout the United States and constructs freestanding sculptures resembling dresses. His sculpture titled Scottie features a bodice fashioned from painted bottle caps while the skirt uses yellow wooden yardsticks and metal from a plaid thermos bottle to create an iconic kilt like costume. Another sculpture Jayne gives a copper dress a red patina.
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A dry wit embodies Kathy Reemstsen's oil paintings and their titles come from the former fashion student who envisions the shirtwaist dress painted with satirical titles. Her pastel colored dresses draw from the 1950's and conjure dreams of those homemakers who ruled their white picket fenced neighborhoods. In Reemsten's image Dirty Girl the artist reinvents the homemaker into a working girl with tools, dressed in orange with elbow length rubber gloves. Transparent bubbles surround the hourglass torso to echo the candy colors seen in the clothing.
Even in the 21st century the dress still denotes femininity, even though women wear more jeans and pant suits than ever before. As a solid representation of womanhood the dress remains the universal symbol of womanhood usually seen on a rest room door. "Unruffled Views" considers how clothing reveals societal roles similar to the Portrait Society Gallery's former exhibition by photographer Nicholas Grider “Men in Suits.” Clothing helps society distinguish sex, gender roles, and occupational status, to name only a few of its connotations.
The accompanying brochure available in the gallery quotes sociologist Nancy Green who believes, “Fashion in the United States is used as a form of fitting into the social code, not standing out from the crowd as a form of artistic statement [unlike the French view]." The other exhibiting artists Molly Carter, Cathy Daley, Stephanie Evans, Robin Lasser, Teresa Lind and Adrienne Pao express their own individual artistic statements on the subject. Whatever view one believes regarding the dress, “Unruffled Views” will creatively ruffle those conceptions. ( Continues through July 9).
Visit PeninsulaSchoolofArt.com for available classes, gallery schedule, and hours. Sonya Naumann has a specific website for her photographic series, thousanddollardress.com., while many of these artists have specific websites as well.
