Solo show: Ephemeral Allure at UC Santa Barbara Women's Center

Ephemeral Allure; Eternal Struggle

UCSB Women's Center, Nov. 2, 2011 - Feb. 3, 2012

Forty years ago, when Ms. magazine was founded and the Equal Rights Amendment sought ratification, women knew they were oppressed. The external barriers were well-defined: they were expected to be wives and mothers, discouraged from going to college, denied advancement in the workplace and reproductive control over their own bodies. The list goes on and on.  

Gains have been made, but true equality remains elusive. Today's barriers are much less obvious, and consumerist distractions are insidiously seductive.

These 39 artworks contrast my paintings from the early 1980s with recent photographs to ask "How much progress has been made? Can women really have it all? Or do we need to choose carefully what we buy into? The fight for true freedom begins within." 

Ephmeral Allure opening

When I was their age, sensible shoes and natural fibers were not a fashion statement; they were a  move towards healthy and affordable lifestyles. Today's young women may be liberated from corsets and pantyhose but are tooth whiteners and nail spas an improvement?

Double Vision: A Celebration of Hybridity

Double Vision: A Celebration of Hybridity

Digital Photography by Shizue Seigel, UC Santa Barbara Multicultraul Center, April 13-June 13

Artist’s Statement: Japanese American artist and writer Shizue Seigel blurs the boundaries between photography, painting, found objects and poetry to explore the shifting planes of multicultural identity. In today's evolving world, where minorities are the majority, the complexity of our stories is our American

story.

Through little-known narratives from many cultures, she illuminates the common humanity that transcends divisions of race, gender, class or national origin. We are a nation in transition in a world in flux, backing our way out of the evolutionary dead-end of a fossil fuel economy. It’s an exciting time to be alive, and to contribute to the on-going national conversation. But to do so effectively, we must be well-informed and open-minded. Who are the givers and the takers, the informed and the oblivious?  Who is American? What is progress? What gives us strength and how can we move forward together?

Bio:

Shizue Seigel was born in 1946, too late to be incarcerated in American concentration camps like her parents and 120,000 other Japanese Americans. But she earned her first dollar picking strawberries in a migrant labor camp for former incarcerees. As a child, she shuttled from segregated Baltimore to Occupied Japan to skid-row Stockton. Arriving in San Francisco in the late 50s, she flowed with the zeitgeist to the Haight Ashbury in the 60s, Indian ashrams in the 70s, the Financial District in the 80s, the AIDS epidemic in the 90s and today’s vibrant mix of arts and activism.

These experiences engendered an awareness of many cultures, and deep compassion for the disadvantaged.  After some arts training in painting and printmaking in the late 1970s, she became an art director at major advertising agencies with clients like Chevron, Kaiser Permanente and Wells Fargo.

In the early 90s, she developed a reality-based HIV-prevention campaign for African American women for the Centers for Disease Control.  It was a life-changing experience which sparked a passion for furthering social change through narratives about ordinary people.

After several years working with the poor, homeless and addicted, she began working with the Japanese American community as the editor of the Japanese American Historical Society’s Nikkei Heritage magazine, and the author of the book, In Good Conscience: Supporting Japanese Americans During the Internment (AACP, Inc. 2006).

Her paintings, photography and mixed media have been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally by the Women’s Caucus for Art, Asian American Women Artists’ Association, Manilatown Center, Kearny Street Workshop, Greenlining Institute, University of San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, Women Made Gallery, the United Nations NGO Conference, Mexico City and others. Her poetry and other writing have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women and InvAsian: Growing Up Asian and Female in the United States.

Many thanks to Julianne Gavino and Viviana Marsano for making the exhibition possible. See all 29 images from the show at my Flickr site: www.flickr.com/  Screen Name: ShizueS. Album: Double Vision.

Women's Caucus for Art CONTROL Show, SOMArts, Aug. 6-29, 2009

“Veils” digital print, 11”x14” in 16”x20” frame, 2009

Statement: Are we seen for ourselves or how we are packaged? Dare we walk around with naked faces and look people in the eye? Is the feminine so powerful it must be controlled, commodified, dissected, denied? 

“SRO” digital print, 11”x14” in 16”x20” frame, 2009

Statement: Single room occupancy hotel (SRO).  Rooms by the day, week, month. Threadbare carpet, long halls, thin walls, a bed, a chair, a sink. A chain across the door. I am in control.

These two works were exhibited in the CONTROL Show presented by the WCA’s South Bay and Peninsula chapters at SOMArts in San Francisco Aug. 6-29.  The show was juried by Guerilla Girls West and curated by Karen Gutfreund. See the Control Exhibition's Facebook site. Photos of 88 of the artworks is at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124262&id=117770210798.

I was impressed by the variety, quality and passion of the work, and by the formidable intelligence and organizational skills of Karen Gutfreund, who worked so hard to make it all happen. I was inspired to join the WCA’s Northern California chapter, which meets in San Francisco and the East Bay.


Much of my work in the 80s had to do with sexism and its effects on both genders. But in the past couple of decades, we as a society seem to have lost interest in reclaiming our full power as women. I tried to raise my children in a non-sexist household, but my daughters love their cosmetics and shoes, and don't seem to realize that just because their husbands do the dishes doesn't mean the battle is won.

“Veils” and “SRO” are both experiments in combining paintings with found objects. The metal object in “SRO” is a brand-new, never used crampon (ice-climbing spikes for mountain climbers), which I found for a dollar at a sidewalk sale in the Haight. Esther, who runs the sale, is pretty remarkable in her own right.