SUSAN MERRILL
Special to The Joumal News
VALHALLA - What do Marilyn Monroe and the Mona Lisa have-in common?
They're two tough cookies from an exhibit marking Women's History Month at Westchester Community College: "Tell It Like It Is"
They are among a collection of 23 portraits of women by famous artists that have been reinterpreted by Marcy B. Freedman, a Croton-on-Hudson artist and writer. She made posters of the masterpieces, cut them into pieces that look like Polaroid snapshots and reassembled the pieces with words that reflect her observations about the women in the paintings.
The sayings are quirky and unexpected. Freedman's poster/ Polaroid adaptation of Lichtenstein's famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe says, "Her laughter was contagious - like the flu."
-"Some of the women are tough coockies, some aren't" said Freedman. "I rearrange the fragments of the work into a personal analysis of the women depicted in the reconstruction. The series shows the many facets of the female psyche and the variety and complexity of the female experience."
Freedman's tough cookies were reCognized recently when several were chosen by the curators of four museums in the area for a show that opens next month, "The Westchester Biennial," at the Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle.
"Her work stood out among all the entries submitted," said Ellen Keiter, curator of exhibitions at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers. "It definitely was intriguing and original"
Freedman is involved in three more events dedicated to Women's History Month:
• She will read her narrative poem "The Mother Is the One Who Stretches," (Susan Henle Christensen, a Croton- on-Hudson resident will dance to it) on March 24 at the Women's Center of Ossining.
• On March 25, Freedman will give a lecture, "Women Artists of Westchester," at Westchester Community College from 1 to 4 p.m.
• And her work is part of an exhibit "Women in the Visual Arts," this month at the Erector Square Gallery in New Haven, Conn.
Freedman's lecture will discuss 40 women artists who live in Westchester and whose work she admires.
"I chose to focus on contempo- i rary women who have shown excellence and seriousness of purpose," said Freedman. "There's a broad range of work from the botanical illustrations of Eleanor Wunderlick of Ossining, the avant garde installations of Wennie Huang of New Rochelle, the politically charged works of Carla Rae Johnson of PeeksldlL to the whimsical creations of Inez Andrueyk of Croton."
Freedman moved to Croton in 1987 ft-om Los Angeles. She holds master's degrees in art history from the University of Michigan and Princeton University.
Her work has been exhibited in many shows since 1993. Her husband, Dr. Timothy Siglock, practices medicine in Peekskill and they have two sons, Devin and Blake, who attend Croton Harmon High School.
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2001
Artist Shows Mix and Match Works
Marcy B. Freedman has two master's degrees in art history, but her own
art is a liberation from history. By juxtaposing art reproductions from
different time periods, Ms. Freedman, a Croton-on-Hudson artist, curator
and lecturer, enters what she calls a "psychological free zone,"
where the resulting collage is something entirely new.
"For instance," she said, "I might juxtapose a self-portrait
by Van Gogh with a Japanese woodblock of a warrior. The warrior becomes
an emblem of the interior struggle of Van Gogh. He's pointing an arrow
at Van Gogh's head."
Ms. Freedman's exhibition, "Stolen Properly: Appropriation Art by
Marcy B. Freedman," can be seen at the Ottinger Program Room at the
Croton Free Libraryfrom Tuesday through Oct. 31. She will talk about using
the work of one's
predecessors at a free lecture titled "Artists Who Steal: A Brief
History of Appropriation Art," on Oct. 10 at the Gallery at Crystal
Bay in Peekskill. The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. For more
information about the lecture: (914) 788-0188. About the exhibition: (914)
271-6612.
Marcy B. Freedman of Croton-on-Hudson is an experienced artist with many exhibitions on her resume, but a recent experience has left her breathless. She learned, when she decided to submit an untitled collage into a show called "Oh, Mona! " at the Johnson Museum at Cornell University, that the works for the show had already been selected But she was invited to send a slide along anyway and her work was accepted,
Ms. Freedman called the Ithaca museum to learn more about the exhibition, which is based on Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa and is subtitled -Biography of an icon.'' Who else would be showingwith her? A staff member - shocked Marcy by rattling off a very, very impressive list of artists: Andy Warhoi, Jasper Johns, Keith Haring, Marcel Duchamp and WeeGee
Her work is an appropriation of the famous Duchamp painting in which Mona wears an up-turned mustache A text reads She was obsessed with the butcher, and Wanted to be like him.
Ms. Freedman, who created a body of-work in the 1990's based on famous image: from art history, said Duchamp was one of
her heroes 'I'm obsessed with him, she said I want to be like him. He's the best!- - he butchered the Mona Lisa.
A Sense of the Spectacle
And Its Place in Society
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 10, 1998
By VIVIEN RAYNOR
KATONAH
THE title "Art as Spectacle" has the impact of a drum roll,
and the show it anTnounces is almost as short in duiation. In fact, there
is less than a we0k in which to observe works by 93 artists, chosen by
Thelma Golden for ,the.' exhibition at the Katonah Mu. seuln of Art here.
Ms. Golden needs no introduction as Cie Whitney Museum's director of branches,
nor have her achievem6ts as curator of exhibitions like th0nomentous "Black
Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contempoary American- Arr and
the 1993 Biepnial gone unsung. Her experienoe also includes serving as
visiting ~Projessor at Yale University and visAir
.. % critic at Columbia University, all,of which makes her an ideal if
sorQewhat overqualified candidate for4he task of winnowing the more thab
930 entries attracted by her reputation.
Ile show is billed as a tristate event, and while most of the artists
come from Westchester and several are residents of New York City or Connecticut,
the third state is not New Jersey but Utah, as represented by one contender.
Still, given a lineup in which, to quote Ms. Golden, "the extraordinary,
the unreal, the tragic, the beautiful and the ungraspable all contribute
to the notion of the spectacle and its place in our media-saturated culture,"
who is going to quibble, about geography? On the other hand, some may
be curious as to the art, which is not "spectacle."
Visitors can get an idea of what is to come from the works in the lobby,
two of them titled "Deviltry" and "Impatience," respectively.
A large and playful composition by Richard Ga~hot, the first looks like
a cross between an old locomotive and a power station and can be animated
by ~urning a handle. The second, by Barbara Cooper, consists of a metal
rack from which depend a roll of toilet paper, an ancient latch, a bestselling
pocket book titled "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" and
a diminutive cow bell - in sum, the bot(om line of family values.
A, sculptor who specializes in cows,Anne Huibregtse renders four of them
in plaster, standing one above the other on a
hypothetical hill and all flattened as if seen in perspective. There is
Roseanne George, whose bonsai tree in welded steel
pays twigby-twig homage to Bedford's celebrated oak. There are paintings
like Andrea Shapiro's austere geometric
abstraction and Richard Zelens's neo-Expressionist image of an androgynous
figure leaping into water with the texture of
crochet.
Though the show's first prize went to Barbara Ellmann for her ninepanel
series of geometric encaustics, the emphasis is on representational painting.
This can be serene and straightforward, like Marion Ranyak's high-keyed
"Italian Landscape," but is more likely to be eccentric, even
weird. one noteworthy
example is David Febland's "Stop the Musicl" a street scene
with capering figures, which owes something to Robert Birmelin except
that the figures dwarf the buildings on either side. Another is the image
of a half-nude man with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.
Titled "Little Voice," it is worthy of a late 19th-century salon,
and it is hard not to suspect Ms. Golden of picking it for camp reasons.
But when it comes to works that the show could do without, "Fame"
by Bruce MacDonald is front runner, and not just because of its heavyhanded
irony. The artist recognizes that celebrities, like the poor, are always
with us, but unlike the Bel. gian pie-thrower he makes no distinctions
and crams them all into one
imidl painted canvas - fe
male iron pumpers, Dennis Rodman, the Mona Lisa, John Wayne, Barbra Streisand,
Henry VIII and, tastelessly enough, JonBenet Ramsey.
Hovering over the pile, which probably includes Princess Diana,1s.~
You guessed it - MichaeI!J4tk9dfft1r Barbie is absent, which seems likely,
interested parties will find her in the
large, ungraspaole color photographs, of Margalit Mannor. Lael Morgan's
painting of two-and-a-half giant lemons is not to be overlooked. Neither
is Murry Gelberg's comment on calligraphic Abstract Ex~ressionism, writ
large in ink on brown paper and facetiously titled "Kline and Motherwell
Dance in the
Imperial Garden." The images thatstick in my mind are small: Mitchell
Friedman's white-on-black monograph of a naked figure swinging from a
tree, which recalls a black lament about a lynching; Marcy Freedman's
checkerboard on paper, which is half-images appropriated from Leger and
half-story line in the manner of Dottie Attie, and, last but not least,
Peter Krusko's pencil drawing of what appears to be the same ominous cloudy
sky over the Hudson a couple of weeks ago.
The show, which closes next Sunday, is called the most prestigious of
its kind in the New York City area this year. What I can say is that a
production that fills the Katonah Museum with a Whitney-style jauntiness
is not to be missed. The infor. mation number is (914) 232-9555: E
A Sense of the Spectacle And Its Place in Society
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 10, 1998