Foundry Gallery
Washington, DC
202-387-0203
http://www.foundrygallery.org
Women, Hips & Fruit: Phelan Meek
November 2 - November 21, 1999
Phelan Meek creates a marvelous new medium with her steel paintings.
The current exhibition is the result of several years work refining and
reworking female images of the past. Phelan transforms reclining women whose
primary purpose is to be attractive to the male viewer into strong yet pliable
women who relish their solitude. By cutting and welding curves out of metal
and painting the steel in vibrant colors Phelan makes a masculine medium
feminine. Her women with their bountiful hips and curvaceous fruit suggest
most of all that a woman's potency lies in her ability to produce life.
About
her show Phelan commented "Hips take centrestage in all of these works.
The hips or curves of the fruit and the hips of the women. To me a woman's
hips being the repository of life 
are her strength. I, also, like bringing together
the hardness of steel and the suppleness of paint. By cutting the curvaceous
women and fruit out of steel and coating them with paint the cold, hard
steel softens. It changes from masculine to feminine right before my eyes.
At the same time while the figures are feminine they are made from steel
and so take on an air of strength. The juxtaposition of hardness and softness,
strength and resiliency, femininity and masculinity excites me."
Images from top to bottom: Fruit with Tablecloth, 1999, painted
steel,36 x 30 inches; Still Life in Odalisque, 1998, painted steel,
29 x 48 inches; She's Got "It," 1996, 36 x 48 inches. Please
click on images to enlarge them.
Foundry Gallery is located at 9 Hillyer Court, NW, Washington,
DC 20008.
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Phelan Meek creates a marvelous new medium with her steel paintings.
The current exhibition is the result of several years work refining and
reworking female images of the past. Phelan transforms reclining women whose
primary purpose is to be attractive to the male viewer into strong yet pliable
women who relish their solitude. By cutting and welding curves out of metal
and painting the steel in vibrant colors Phelan makes a masculine medium
feminine. Her women with their bountiful hips and curvaceous fruit suggest
most of all that a woman's potency lies in her ability to produce life.
