Notre Dame College Opens First Art Show of the Year

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio—30 August 2005-- Artist Anne Kmieck will exhibit new works in a show titled Out of the Closet: Her Side opening Thursday, September 15th in the college’s Performing Arts Center. The exhibit kicks off the fall exhibition schedule for the art department and runs through October 20. There will be an opening reception, free and open to the public, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

The series Out of the Closet is an ongoing one for Kmieck. The artist explores the feminine perspective in her installation of dresses and added four new garments to the series for this show. The phrase “Her Side” refers to the last four works in the series which were inspired by the words of four 19th century women expressing their views of the female condition. The dress functions as a metaphor for the female body in Kmieck’s work. The garments are altered through a variety of materials including pigments, oil, wax, dried vegetation and lipstick. The fabric is often pierced, burned or buried under layers of paint and wax. If the dress functions as a metaphor for the body then the fabric represents the skin and Kmieck meticulously explores the surface of the skin, penetrating layers of fabric and applying layers of meaning in each application. Ideas of public and private realms are examined in the processes of altering the original fabric of the dress. Kmieck investigates spiritual and corporeal issues, myths and history as well as popular and institutional ideology.

Each dress takes on a new persona as Kmieck adds meaning through words, phrases and patterns that are burned, painted and incised into the surface. The mixed materials added to the fiber in both color and viscosity, resonate ideas of vegetation, soil, milk, blood, tissue, and other organic matter inspired by microscopic imaging. Kmieck intentionally uses contemporary clothing as a starting point because she says, “ like our inherited DNA which quietly controls cellular activity, certain historical intellectual constructs continue to be planted deep in our psyche owing to religious and social ethos. It is my hope that by mining ideas from the past we can liberate ourselves from those that chain, and vigorously embrace those that celebrate the awe and beauty of womanhood.”

Anne Kmieck will give a gallery talk on September 20th at noon which is free and open to the public. Notre Dame College is located at 4545 College Road in South Euclid. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, noon to 6 p.m. or by appointment.

Contact Rachel Morris, gallery director, at (216) 373-5320 or rmorris@ndc.edu for more information.