Amazons Among Us by Donna Dodson May 5th-June 6th 2021
Featuring guest artists Trina Baker & Kledia Spiro and poet Melchor HallOpening Night Artist Talks with Donna Dodson, Trina Baker and Kledia Spiro. Watch a video of this event (recorded May 5th)
May 7th: First Friday opening reception 5-8:30p with a performance @ 8p “I should have stuck to ballet” with Kledia Spiro and Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe Watch a recording of this event.
Gallery talk by Donna Dodson and Poetry Reading of K. Melchor Quick Hall's "Four Poems." Watch a video of this event (recorded May 15th)
June 4th: First Friday closing reception 5-8:30p with a performance @ 8:45p “She’s a Beast” with Kledia Spiro and Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe Watch a recording of this event
Informal meet and greet with the artists: Sundays May 9th,16th and 23rd, 11a-5p
2020 felt almost apocalyptic, rife with divisive politics, racial unrest and a Pandemic that took over half a million American lives. Yet, on the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, history was made when a woman was elected Vice President, ushering in an era of hope as more women rise to take leadership roles in all fields. It is fitting that Wonder Woman celebrates her 80th year as America’s most famous heroine in 2021. The world needs heroines now, and Dodson creates them for this exhibition.
This exhibition offers the audience inspiring words and images of women to uplift and inspire the amazons among us who have yet to discover their own superpowers.
June 4th: First Friday closing reception 5-8:30p with a performance @ 8:45p “She’s a Beast” with Kledia Spiro and Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe Watch a recording of this event
Informal meet and greet with the artists: Sundays May 9th,16th and 23rd, 11a-5p
In her new series of wood sculptures, Dodson re-imagines Albrecht Durer’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” as Amazon warriors. She uses the traditional medium of woodcarving to suggest that these women have always been among us, but that gender misconceptions have prevented us from recognizing them. Drawing inspiration from legendary warrior women such as the ancient Amazons of the steppes, the Dahomey of West Africa and the Rani of Jhansi, Dodson’s amazons portray courage, strength and grit. Dodson chose to collaborate with artists Trina Baker and Kledia Spiro, and poet Melchor Hall, because of their commitment to social justice. Dodson, Baker, Hall and Spiro are united in their quests to create a new iconography of female empowerment.
In Dodson’s collaboration with Baker, whose work deals with sexual assault and domestic violence, the artists translate Dodson’s Amazon warrior sculptures into three-dimensional digital characters and create a short animation demonstrating their superhero qualities. To continue this project, Dodson has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in the Visual Arts for the 2021-2022 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. In Vienna Austria, Dodson will be an artist in residence at Tricky Women, the world’s only digital animation festival for women artists, to write the storyboard and script. Watch a snippet of the animation “Alpha Female Embodies Wonder Woman” here.
Spiro feels a deep connection to the fictional character Xena, the Warrior Princess. For this exhibition, she premieres sculptures, photographs, and a two-channel video in honor of Xena. Audience members will have the opportunity to wear Spiro’s interactive sculpture. Spiro wonders whether we can become our own superheroes, particularly as “girls”. Can we unchain women from society’s expectations of mothers, good house wives, eroticized objects, and irrational emotional beings?
In Dodson’s collaboration with Baker, whose work deals with sexual assault and domestic violence, the artists translate Dodson’s Amazon warrior sculptures into three-dimensional digital characters and create a short animation demonstrating their superhero qualities. To continue this project, Dodson has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in the Visual Arts for the 2021-2022 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. In Vienna Austria, Dodson will be an artist in residence at Tricky Women, the world’s only digital animation festival for women artists, to write the storyboard and script. Watch a snippet of the animation “Alpha Female Embodies Wonder Woman” here.
Spiro feels a deep connection to the fictional character Xena, the Warrior Princess. For this exhibition, she premieres sculptures, photographs, and a two-channel video in honor of Xena. Audience members will have the opportunity to wear Spiro’s interactive sculpture. Spiro wonders whether we can become our own superheroes, particularly as “girls”. Can we unchain women from society’s expectations of mothers, good house wives, eroticized objects, and irrational emotional beings?
Four Poems
by K. Melchor Quick Hall
written for mothers, daughters, wives, and lady lovers
especially intersex, trans, masculine, and chosen family
in harmony with animals, plants, natural elements, and wilderness
for girls and women who are/were boyish or manly
who have been made feminine in the face of myopic visions
we need your queer courage and strength
to struggle together in this fight that requires a womanish touch
to disrupt capitalist-driven inequitably uneven apocalypse
and to aim for fertile feral feminist futures
This exhibition offers the audience inspiring words and images of women to uplift and inspire the amazons among us who have yet to discover their own superpowers.
May 20th @ 7pm: A Virtual Conversation with Donna Dodson, Trina Baker, Kledia Spiro and Melchor Hall moderated by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on the Future of the Feminist Imagination Watch a recording of this event
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence magazine has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” A cofounder of Particles for Justice, she received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics and the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology. Originally from East L.A., she divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, (2021) is published by Bold Type Books.
Trina Baker has shown her paintings, drawings, and artist books nationally and internationally in galleries and corporate collections. Baker’s animations have received numerous awards including a Pixie, which honors outstanding work in Motion Graphics, Visual Effects and Animation and two International CINDY (Cinema in Industry) awards. Her work tackles social justice issues such as domestic violence and sexual assault. Trina currently Chairs the Animation Department at Lesley Art + Design.
Donna Dodson is a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center and a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery. She has complete numerous international residencies and her work is in many private and public collections. Her “Seagull Cinderella” sculpture attracted international media attention. Donna will be a Fulbright US Scholar working as an artist in residence at Tricky Women in Vienna Austria in 2022. Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. Her forthcoming paper “What do we call courageous women” will be presented at the Society for Classical Studies annual meeting in 2022.
K. Melchor Quick Hall, PhD., is a Black feminist scholar-activist crossing disciplinary and national borders. Dr. Hall is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness and co-editor of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism with Gwyn Kirk. Framing Reproductive (In)Justice: A Picture Perfect Gruesome Negress Hurt-story, her poem about Black mothers and their children was published in MoMA Magazine.
Kledia Spiro creates videos, performances, installations, and paintings. Born in Albania, she was a member of an Olympic weightlifting team. Kledia uses weightlifting as a vehicle for discussing women’s roles in society, immigration, and war. Spiro has exhibited nationally at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Queens Museum, NY; SAIC Sullivan Galleries, Chicago; Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire; and the ProArts Gallery in Oakland, CA.
Donna Dodson: Amazons Among Us runs concurrently with Wood stone poem Meditations on The Natural by Andy Moerlein. All events are free and open to the public following COVID -19 protocols.
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence magazine has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” A cofounder of Particles for Justice, she received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics and the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology. Originally from East L.A., she divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, (2021) is published by Bold Type Books.
Trina Baker has shown her paintings, drawings, and artist books nationally and internationally in galleries and corporate collections. Baker’s animations have received numerous awards including a Pixie, which honors outstanding work in Motion Graphics, Visual Effects and Animation and two International CINDY (Cinema in Industry) awards. Her work tackles social justice issues such as domestic violence and sexual assault. Trina currently Chairs the Animation Department at Lesley Art + Design.
Donna Dodson is a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center and a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery. She has complete numerous international residencies and her work is in many private and public collections. Her “Seagull Cinderella” sculpture attracted international media attention. Donna will be a Fulbright US Scholar working as an artist in residence at Tricky Women in Vienna Austria in 2022. Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. Her forthcoming paper “What do we call courageous women” will be presented at the Society for Classical Studies annual meeting in 2022.
K. Melchor Quick Hall, PhD., is a Black feminist scholar-activist crossing disciplinary and national borders. Dr. Hall is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness and co-editor of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism with Gwyn Kirk. Framing Reproductive (In)Justice: A Picture Perfect Gruesome Negress Hurt-story, her poem about Black mothers and their children was published in MoMA Magazine.
Kledia Spiro creates videos, performances, installations, and paintings. Born in Albania, she was a member of an Olympic weightlifting team. Kledia uses weightlifting as a vehicle for discussing women’s roles in society, immigration, and war. Spiro has exhibited nationally at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Queens Museum, NY; SAIC Sullivan Galleries, Chicago; Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire; and the ProArts Gallery in Oakland, CA.
Donna Dodson: Amazons Among Us runs concurrently with Wood stone poem Meditations on The Natural by Andy Moerlein. All events are free and open to the public following COVID -19 protocols.
Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center Spring 2021 Lecture:
Amazons – Non-Western Perspectives and Contemporary Interpretations in Art
Thursday April 27, 2021, 5-6:30 p.m.
The Amazons of Greek lore have fascinated the imagination of Western audiences for thousands of years. Lesser known in the West are the stories of the historical women upon whom the legend of the Amazons are based, such as Tomyris, the warrior queen of the nomadic Central Asian tribe of the Massagetae. In this wide-ranging lecture, Walter Penrose, Jr. will discuss the ethnic variations which allowed women to be fighters in far flung places from ancient Scythia and China to modern Dahomey and India. Donna Dodson will then discuss how warrior women from these non-Western cultures have inspired her most recent artistic endeavor in which she translates Albrecht Durer’s The Four Horsemen, from the Apocalypse Series, into sculpted “Amazon” women warriors.
Co-Presenters Walter D. Penrose Jr, Associate Professor of History at San Diego State University, is the author of Postcolonial Amazons: Female Masculinity and Courage in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit Literature. Donna Dodson, a Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center, is an award-winning sculptor.
Amazons – Non-Western Perspectives and Contemporary Interpretations in Art
Thursday April 27, 2021, 5-6:30 p.m.
The Amazons of Greek lore have fascinated the imagination of Western audiences for thousands of years. Lesser known in the West are the stories of the historical women upon whom the legend of the Amazons are based, such as Tomyris, the warrior queen of the nomadic Central Asian tribe of the Massagetae. In this wide-ranging lecture, Walter Penrose, Jr. will discuss the ethnic variations which allowed women to be fighters in far flung places from ancient Scythia and China to modern Dahomey and India. Donna Dodson will then discuss how warrior women from these non-Western cultures have inspired her most recent artistic endeavor in which she translates Albrecht Durer’s The Four Horsemen, from the Apocalypse Series, into sculpted “Amazon” women warriors.
Co-Presenters Walter D. Penrose Jr, Associate Professor of History at San Diego State University, is the author of Postcolonial Amazons: Female Masculinity and Courage in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit Literature. Donna Dodson, a Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center, is an award-winning sculptor.
Women Warriors: Donna Dodson and Trina Baker in Conversation. A Virtual Lecture series made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Dodson and Baker both take inspiration from civic minded heroines from their own families: Dodson’s great Aunt, an officer in the WACs, and Baker’s grandmother, who served four terms in the Connecticut state legislature.
Women Warriors: A Civic Duty, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Sudbury with generous support provided by the Sudbury Cultural Council, Sunday May 2nd @ 2pm. Watch a recording of this event.
Women Warriors and Social Justice, sponsored by the First Parish Church of Stow and Acton with generous support provided by the Stow Cultural Council and the Acton/Boxborough Cultural Council, Saturday May 8th @ 7:30pm. Watch a recording of this event.
Women Warriors and Artistic Collaboration, sponsored by Artspace Maynard with generous support provided by the Maynard Cultural Council, Thursday May 13th @ 7pm. Watch a recording of this event.
Update: Charles Giuliano, Editor of Berkshire Fine Arts, posted a preview of this show on April 19, 2021 "Amazons Among Us by Donna Dodson." B. Amore posted an advance review of this show on Art New England, May 1st, "Amazons Among Us: Sculpture by Donna Dodson." Magdiela Matta highlighted "Amazons Among Us" on WBUR's 5 Things to do this Weekend on May 6, 2021. James Foritano reviewed this show in depth on May 7, 2021 for Artscope Magazine, DONNA DODSON’S AMAZONS AMONG US & ANDY MOERLEIN’S WOOD STONE POEM AT BOSTON SCULPTORS GALLERY. Cate McQuaid featured this exhibition in her gallery reviews on Tuesday May 25th in the Boston Globe "Artists call upon the ancients at Boston Sculptors Gallery."
