Call for Artists WW13

Wonder Women 13: Walk With Me
Wonder Women Residency Project 
Presented by Wildflower Sculpture Park
Curated by Doris Caçoilo, Alana Kakoyiannis and Penelope Malakates

Submission deadline: April 10, 2025

The thirteenth edition of the Wonder Women Residency Project called Walk With Me asks artists to propose and create artworks as part of a thematic project developed through weekly group meetings over two months. The cohort of eight artists will discuss their ongoing projects, philosophies and processes surrounding the projects and planning for installation and performance. The residency will culminate in an outdoor exhibition at Wildflower Sculpture Park in South Mountain Reservation.

Project proposals should emphasize the visitor’s journey into and through the forest preserve and wildflower field of the Wildflower Sculpture Park and the larger South Mountain Reservation. The residency asks artists to activate the sculpture park temporarily through performance, video, virtual reality, sound or experiential projects that augment visitor experiences through the many paths in the forest preserve. All art media will be considered.

The Wildflower and Forest Preserve is a 14-acre enclosure constructed in 2008 as part of a South Mountain Conservancy initiative to restore the understory and ecology of the forest. In addition to its role in forest regeneration, the Preserve serves as a destination to educate and engage people of all ages. With a simple trail system, preservation and stewardship programs, and artwork from the Wildflower Sculpture Park, the Wildflower and Forest Preserve is a special destination in the park.

Every Sunday, beginning April 27 through June 8th accepted applicants will meet as a cohort at The Baird in South Orange and at Wildflower Sculpture Park to discuss the ongoing projects. Each week participants come together for group discussion and critique of the works in progress. Each Sunday will also include a potluck lunch. Accepted applicants must commit to the Sunday meetings (see schedule below). The program ends with a group exhibit at the Wildflower Sculpture Park which is planned for fall 2025. An honorarium of $250 per artist will be awarded.

History:

Wonder Women is a residency program in its 13th year. The Wonder Women mission is to engage local artists who are eager to participate in a collective dialogue about art, social change and environmental stewardship. _gaia, an environment for creative process is dedicated to fostering women’s activism, art practice and study. This year the Wonder Women project is being organized and curated by Doris Caçoilo, Alana Kakoyiannis and Penelope Malakates. 

Residency dates:

April 10, 2025 – submission deadline

April 12, 2025 –  email notifications to applicants

April 27, 2205  – First Meeting 12-5pm 

May 4, 2025 – Second Meeting 12-5pm 

May 11, 2025  – Third Meeting 12-5pm 

May 18, 2025  – Optional Meeting (Mother’s Day) 

May 25, 2025  – Fourth Meeting 12-5pm 

June 1, 2025  –  Fifth Meeting 12-5pm

June 8, 2025  – Sixth (Final Critique)  Meeting 12-5pm 

Exhibition in Fall 2025 at Wildflower Sculpture Park

Submission Guidelines:                          

Wonder Women is currently accepting proposals from female-identifying artists working in all media and disciplines from the NJ/NY area. Artists are required to attend weekly meetings to take place at the Baird in South Orange and at Wildflower Sculpture Park in South Orange, New Jersey, Proposed projects will be completed during the residency time and will be installed or launched in Fall 2025. The application materials below must be emailed to sculpturepark@somocon.org by April 10, 2025. 

Project Proposal: 

Please explain in 2-3 paragraphs the project you plan to complete during the residency. Please include any visual documentation of proposal ideas, sketches and any works related. Proposals should specify why and/or how this project or your work considers the theme of the residency. All media is welcome for consideration.  

Portfolio Images: 

Artists should submit 6 to 10 images/samples of recent works. Video samples can be submitted via link or sent as compressed files using file sharing applications. 

CV/Bio: 

A CV and short biography are required. An artist statement is recommended. Please include your name and contact information on each page.

“Who are we, but a collection of stories someone has told us about ourselves”

For WW12 I am exploring language, place, body and spirit. I am drawing inspiration from two artists: Portuguese artist, Helena De Almeida and American artist, Barbara Kruger. Helena De Almeida uses her body as her canvas, and she identifies herself with the being of her work. This emotional commitment to the making her work is what I aspire to most in my own. Barbara Kruger, like me grew up in Newark, her work dissects culture, and she uses a combination of imagery and text to challenge the viewer. My focus will be on the duality of language, of my Luso-American identity and my body. I want to bring together two disciplines, photography and drawing. My canvases are a combination of personal x-rays and self-portraits. My drawing tool is a needle and embroidery thread which I will use to highlight text and imagery within the canvases.

I think this my final full draft before I actually start to pencil! Here are some fun, shitty thumbnails I enjoyed without context.

I haven’t had a lot of time to edit this week. Below is a YouTube link to a version that doesn’t have any narrative changes. I did make a significant add in making a hand performance to show that the slide advances at my keyboard in sync with the “beep” sounds. I think it’s kind of funny, and gives a kind of motion to the video which is nice. I’m also thinking of it as a non-face performance for “zoom” context that subverts the expectation of seeing a person in a chair at their screen.

I also put my paintings in for the Getting There and Going Back slides. Those particular paintings are okay, but they are recycled from performances I did when I was in Southern California. It feels like I should make at least one painting from the palette developed from going to Sibley. So I’m working on that this week.

I’m also thinking of getting a voiceover actor from fiverr to do the part about the road from Rebecca Solnit’s book. It doesn’t feel completely right to have the text-to-speech “robot” there. Although I think it works amazingly at the signage for the lava/tuff, it’s not really communicating the magic of Solnit’s words. But that idea kind of begs the question of whether I should get more voiceover work done in the piece. Maybe the whole thing should be an actor? Or maybe only some parts read by me? I keep thinking of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil and how he used the device of a narrator reading letters between two (or more?) correspondents. I don’t think I want to invent characters exactly, but maybe voiceover narration could do something different if it wasn’t performed by me?

PROJECT STATEMENT:

For WW12 I am writing and illustrating “The Itches”, a comic about navigating the racist medical system when I accidentally gave myself heavy metal poisoning last year. This webcomic guides you through my process of curating western and herbal medicine in order to diagnose and cure myself.

INSPIRATION:

I was initially inspired by the book “Medical Apartheid” written by Harriet A. Washington. This book guides you through the dense history of the racist U.S. healthcare system from the colonial period to the present. This book is incredibly important to me because its roots in history validated a lot of my feelings around the medical system. It goes beyond the normal anxiety of visiting the doctors and reveals how experimentation on Black bodies has been at the forefront of the medical advances we enjoy today. Most importantly this book reveals how ingrained racism is in medicine and how we continue to experience this today.

I was also inspired by a segment on the Brian Lehrer show called “Combatting Black American’s vaccine hesitancy” . This segment highlighted mistrust rather than hesitancy which I thought was important because hesitancy erases the violent legacy of the U.S. medical system.

FIRST DRAFT OF COMIC:

The first draft of my comic was a bit of a catch-for-all, trying to not only highlight what I learned from the “Medical Apartheid” but also making a case for reparations. This proved to be too much and not a great narrative because 1. It wasn’t following a character(s), which didn’t allow for the reader to emotionally attach themselves to the story, and 2. Although referencing history it felt heavy-handed and not something you would particularly be excited to pick up.

MOVING FORWARD:

Critique helped me reel the story back a bit and remember that the personal is political. Although this is a serious subject matter I was missing my humor. I realized that this past year I had experienced navigating the medical system in a way that not only showed my growth but came from years of experience navigating the U.S. medical system when professionals would not listen to me.

I am excited to be a part of my first Wonder Women! I have already gotten so much artistically and personally from interacting with the other wonder women these first few weeks.

Project Background
Last March, we collectively took each other’s health into our own hands. We stayed home and millions of us baked. Galettes, jammy star bread, onion rolls, vegetable garden focaccia; the kneading of the dough was my calm in the storm. My repertoire grew, but my health declined.

To regain it, I began the Auto Immune Protocol (AIP), a strict elimination diet aimed at reducing inflammation, pain and other symptoms. After the initial period of the elimination phase, foods are reintroduced one at a time to gauge their effect. The slow successful reintroduction of foods has been a tangible measure of progress; the light in this, at times, very bleak tunnel.

Alongside nutrition, physical exercise has been instrumental in rebuilding my body after years of assistive reproductive therapies and procedures, surgeries, pregnancies, childbirth and the gradual deterioration from an autoimmune disease. In spite of genetics, my body has given so much, it deserves to be healed.

This journey has given me a much deeper appreciation of food and activity, and its role in my mental, emotional AND physical well-being. How to thrive on less, eating (and moving) closer to the way our ancestors did.

Project Proposal
Mandalas are renowned as a means of self-expression and meditation. They also have a personal cultural significance, surrounding me my entire life. They are markers in my life: painted on my hands and feet before marriage, intricately stitched into clothes and created on auspicious occasions and holidays.

I envision my piece to be mixed media on paper. A large mandala, with each ring comprised of foods I have been able to reintroduce without ill effects. As the residency proceeds, the list should grow.

Each ring will use the food itself, the shape of the plant or seed, it’s naturally occurring dye properties or a mix of the three. A handful of the foods have naturally occurring dye properties (ie mustard seed, anise star, cardamom).

Additional rings woven through the food rings will represent the physical activity required to continue my healing.

The addition of each ring will mark progress, while the accretion of layers will be the map. The process itself will be my meditation and a hopefully a way of making peace with the journey. I envision this to be an ongoing project, fully complete when I have established my new normal. With this residency serving as an impetus for the first of a possible series.

WW12 Health.
Wonder Women!
2021

Below is my proposal for the twelfth edition and first all virtual Wonder Women.
After two weeks my idea has already evolved thanks to some amazing Wonder Women who listen and give thoughtful feedback. As a brain-fogged, chronic pain fibromyalgia warrior I can get lost in an idea. These woman bring me to the action of making and participating and it is so valuable to be involved.
___
The proposal –

2020 made me need a designated art practice time more than ever before. While my time became all about supporting the needs of my family to an extent that is difficult to put into words (mental and physical health, home, safety, procuring toilet paper) I began to find myself primarily daydreaming about making. I have long been planning, thinking, and sketching out an idea related to my body, my health.
As a fiber based maker I seek to better understand my own health by creating a soft sculpture self-portrait. I plan on dissecting myself and putting myself back together creating a deeper understanding of my own issues.

I will sew a (life sized if time permits) stuffed buddy, she will have all the areas of her body where I have health issues embroidered (?). I am considering both realistic imagery as well as invented pattering to represent ailments and complaints. Each embroidered stitch and color could represent a time, a pain, a surgery. I have thought of extensions to this project that involves scanning various body parts to see medical records and xrays—this may become a film, or take the form of viewers scanning qr codes and seeing information on personal devices. This brings in the concepts of privacy of information and of sharing of our most personal data.
—–

Steph Tichenor

April 22, 1970 saw the beginning of Earth Day. On April 22, 2018 I participated in the 48th year of celebrating and bringing attention to our Earth. I have participated on Earth Day for all of the past 48 years.
As a continuation of the project I started with the WonderWoman 11 Residency I brought a portable version of the ARK project to the public park earth day event and spent the day asking people to participate and leave a message about “What would you save?”. The scale of the project had to be portable, smaller and able to stand on uneven ground. In addition I had giveaways of information about reducing your carbon footprint and chocolate candies!
Most adult people who attended the event were skeptical; asking what was I selling? I had paperweights holding down a giveaway sheet of suggestions. I had books on the table to suggest readings. They wanted to know what the price of the paperweights and books were. I would have to explain to them that this was a social art project that it was free and anonymous and there was nothing for sale. Most of the younger people at the event knew right away what they would do with this and what they wanted to say.
Taking the project out of an art gallery setting where people are expecting some sort of environmental statement to the streets was eye opening and very informative. There were many people who flat out refused to participate telling me they believed in the Bible and there was no way they wanted to leave a message because they believed the bible that earth was exactly as it should be. Some told me that Climate Change was not true that it was natural climate variations at work. One woman was particularly hostile and dismissive about my project stating to me that all she had to do was pray to fix things, and that I was wasting my time. Predictably as is occasionally my personal failing I blurted out at her “…And good luck with that”.
From my 7 hour Earth Day Ark installation I gave explanations to and received 153 responses to my question. My intention is to read them in a performance piece that I am working on over the next few weeks. In general most people left the message that they would save their family, or friends or pets. Only one comment was on the subject of people of color suffering the consequences of climate change injustice. One comment stated that they wanted to save pretty women. Several comments from boy or girl scouts who were in attendance were about saving scouting. There were the expected responses of save trees, oceans, polar bears, whales as well as comments about saving RC Cola, and Pokémon.
As the saying goes, “all politics is local” applies to this day of The Ark Project. People for the most part were focused on their immediate surroundings and family. As the effects of climate change are delayed to the future, and the moral corruption of doing nothing seems the easiest path, people seem to default to what is close, familiar, and culturally comfortable. What galvanized the world in 1969 were events like the Cuyahoga River exploding in flames. That was local, that was outrageous and horrifying. That was the beginning of the legislation that brought us the EPA.

The people in attendance at this Earth Day event were expecting to be sold something. Next to me was a Bath Fitter company on one side and on the other a woman on my left selling cosmetics. Across from me was a person selling hair ornaments. Beer flowed along with the hotdogs. There were clowns and a radio station blaring oldies but goodies. Commercialism seems to have co-opted the municipal Earth Day event. Where is the urgency?

It was uplifting to see that the next generation coming along seems more engaged and informed about climate change. The girl and boy scouts were actively involved in clean-up and planting new trees.

What my take away from this social interaction is that I need to become
more of an instigator, researcher, and teacher. I need to actively find ways to engage younger audiences as older people seem particularly fixed and rigid.

I will need to synthesize science, art, place and agency into a tool box for communication. Perhaps I can figure out what to sell or at least a better give away.
The next date for the Ark Project is Memorial Day. I will be out there.

March – May 2018
Wonder Women 11: Eye of the Storm
March 26  – May 9, 2018

at Harold B Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 28, 4 – 8pm

Artists’ Talk: Wednesday, April 25, 4 – 7pm

gwen charles
Sharon De La Cruz
Jessica Demcsak
Tamara Gubernat
Wendell Jeffrey
Olga Mercedes Bautista
Deborah Sperry
Linda Streicher
Amanda Thackray

Curated by Doris Cacoilo and Eileen Ferara

NJCU Galleries and _gaia are pleased to co-present Eye of the Storm, the 11th annual Wonder Women Residency Project which features nine women artists exploring the increasingly vital issues of climate change and current environmental challenges. Eye of the Storm is an urgent call for action to address the drastic changes in temperature, glacial melt, super storms, plastics pollution, and contaminated resources, from our local communities to as far away as the Arctic. Each artist’s work s an individual narrative, engaging in the science, data and future of life on the planet, and considers the artist’s role in informing and empowering people. 

The Wonder Women mission is to engage underrepresented artists who are eager to participate in a collective dialogue about agency, gender, art and social change. This year’s residency was hosted at Dineen Hull Gallery at Hudson County Community College, which will hold a panel discussion on Friday, May 4, 2018, 3 – 5pm. For more information visit:gaiastudio.org/wonderwomen

_gaia, an environment for creative process is dedicated to fostering women’s activism, art practice and study.

Image: Image: Jessica Demcsak, Forest of Shadows and Memories (detail) 2018

Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery
Hepburn Hall, Room 323
New Jersey City University
2039 Kennedy Blvd.
Jersey City, NJ 07305

Gallery Hours: 
Monday – Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
and by appointment
(201)200-3246

Gallery visitors can receive up to one hour of free parking in any of the NJCU lots during weekdays.
Please ask the gallery attendant to validate your parking ticket.

For school group visits and other inquiries, contact: Midori Yoshimoto (myoshimoto@njcu.edu)

For directions, see http://www.njcu.edu/directions-njcu

**May 4, 2018 Panel Discussion at Dineen Hull Gallery at Hudson County Community College

WW11: Week 5 notes Final critique.

gilbert and george say fuck the planet, 2015

Olga

see dahn vo at the Guggenheim

Heidi Bucher’s latex casts of inside of rooms in 1980’s

Sharon

Marion wasserman recorded several native Americans from different tribes “blessing” the oil pumps near the reservation.

https://vimeo.com/252584551

Amanda

http://www.abramsbooks.com/product/chihuly-an-artist-collects_9781419727627/

Amanda since you like collections you might enjoy the new book of Dale Chihuly’s wacky collections: Chihuly: An Artist Collects

Linda

Deborah

Wendell

Tamara

Jessica

Gwen