Helping women through art
February 23rd, 2008, 6:34 am Hobbies And Interests
Art has the power to rescue so many things: a soul, a culture; it can even rescue a life from violence. That is what women artists in the Treasure Valley are seeking to do this week at We Art Women. The event benefits the Women’s and Children’s Alliance, a Boise-based crisis center that helps victims of domestic violence throughout the Treasure Valley. The problem is ongoing, even though it is not always a headline, said Bev La Chance, who runs the WCA’s programs.”Sometimes it takes a heinous crime, like a beheading, to get it on the front page, but the cycle of violence in our homes is pervasive and insidious,” La Chance said. Led by metal artist Zella Bardsley, We Art Women brings together the work of 59 women artists. Twenty percent of purchases, and 100 percent of the silent auction proceeds and other donations go to the WCA.JEWELSBarbara Bowling’s life changed when she took “Louise’s Leap.” In her pre-Louise life, she taught plant physiology at Penn State University. When she moved to Boise with her husband, John Gardner, who is an engineering professor at Boise State University, she turned from science to embrace the artist within.”Louise is my middle name. I fantasize that she is my artistic inner child who was beaten down my science,” she said. Plant science was sort of a compromise. Plants have a certain aesthetic even through she was doing experiments. Now, she uses them in a more creative way.She treats each jewelry piece as a small canvas on which she sculpts scalloped petals and etches swirling leaves that bloom underneath the richly colored enamel.WORKS ON PAPERKellie Cosho’s art comes from her soul. Her newest abstract impressions of landscape and mood mark a shift from her previous art career. There was a time when her work hung in galleries across the region. Then, if only subconsciously, she let what would sell influence her. After a 10-year-hiatus to tend to her late husband, Cosho has returned with a new attitude. “I paint what I feel at the time,” she said. “When I picked up the brush again, I didn’t want that again. If I see something that turns me on, it comes out on paper. It’s a liberation.”A series of pastel and ink on foam and paper was inspired by travels to Abu Dhabi, where “you find these Wizard-of-Oz type cities rising out of the desert,” Cosho said, and to California, where black crows in black trees led her to work with ink. “It’s liberation. I can experiment with line and color. I’ve found my own way.”SCULPTUREBernie Jestrabek-Hart tried to become an artist by drawing. It didn’t work. “I wanted to be an artist but I couldn’t pull the image out of my mind and put it on paper,” she said. “I could draw you, if you didn’t move. Once I started working in three dimensions, it all opened up. I just discovered who I am when I discovered welding steel and barbed wire. Now I can do anything I want,” she said. Jestrabek-Hart was introduced to sculpture in 1980. A few months later she bought a welder’s torch. By 1987, working with metal became her full-time career. She works mostly in steel and barbed wire to create a variety of intriguing and vivid wildlife sculptures that range from private commissions to large-scale public art.”Inspiration just comes. I really work a lot to bring other people’s ideas to life. I have so many things I want to do, I never have enough time to try them,” she said.
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