TAUNA COULSON
Most often said about my work is its order, attention to detail and balance — its harmony. After 20+ years as a graphic designer my grid theory, negative space and hierarchy of information are evident. I’m most interested in color and its myriad ways it can be presented or ignored.
My work is created to bring a sense of calm, of peace to our environment while questioning what is special in our lives. I begin by gathering images, color and textures, mostly paper, that I find intrinsically connect. There is often the addition of wire, metals or found objects that ask what it is that we find precious. I recently began painting on canvas with acrylic while continuing to incorporate these same materials.
ANNA SOFIA AMEZCUA
The The The The (Women, Gods, Seeds, Fruit)
Our history of masculine-driven actions has brought us to the precipice, and it is impossible to deny that our social structures, for human and nature alike, are untenable. It is imperative that we find more balanced ways of being. Through powerful and intimate expressions of femininity that delve beneath the surface to encourage and validate deep emotionality and the strength in vulnerability, I celebrate what has been culturally sidelined as ‘feminine’. In this, I seek more nuanced and inclusive expressions of gender and power that embrace the full and infinite spectrum and variety.
This body of work: The The The The (Women, Gods, Seeds, Fruit) is part of an ongoing musing on the myth of Persephone and Hades, which feels particularly apt during the fall season, and which has come more intensely into focus for me during the recent Ford/Kavanaugh hearings. This work is about the deep wounds and dysfunctions we are grappling with as a society around how we relate to each other sexually, emotionally, and politically. It’s about finding ways to heal my own and all women’s traumas. It’s about my desire to have ever more compassion for everyone, including perpetrators. It’s about continuing to love fiercely, joyfully, and playfully, and to hold many paradoxes together, at once. It’s about the riches we compost from the muck, the jewels we find in the underworld and in embracing our shadow — the shadow that, like it or not, we are vigorously confronting as a collective.
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First Friday Artist Reception
Tauna Coulson at Stripe
Anna Sofia Amezcua at Stripe Men
November 2nd
5–9pm
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