Women create at Joan of Art gallery

“Art is my passion, my therapy, my saving grace,” enthuses painter Jane Evershed. “It’s everything to me. It’s gotten me through my hardest times. It’s how I express myself and share my vision.”

Her sentiment finds a home at Joan of Art Gallery. Kimber Fiebiger, a sculptor and co-owner of Joan of Art (with her partner wood artisan Lori Reese) opened the gallery as a space devoted to showcasing women artists. “I need my art to make me happy because I know too much. It’s my refuge in the world,” says Fiebiger.
The gallery is housed in a former small office building that has been transformed by women’s labor: gutted, remodeled, made fanciful with round windows and the application of royal purple, fuscia and yellow paint. The addition of second-story living quarters and a basement studio make the gallery home base for Fiebiger and Reese. Entering, one finds respite in a space that vibrates with women’s creative energies.

Evershed’s images have been popularized on cards, posters and her “Leap of Faith” T-shirt. (It pictures a woman in mid-air leaping across a canyon.) Her paintings are glorious to experience directly, vivid with color and brimming with ideas. Evershed’s works in oil are her most recognizable: she distills them like delicate watercolors, and they exude harmony like visual music. A recurring motif in her work is the concept of women as mothers of the world. It traces back to the oldest art humans have made: Evershed reinvigorates ancient “myths” for our modern times. There’s a decidedly pagan spirit here.

Most paintings are complemented by poetry (which would also work as song lyrics). They are declarations of defiance against the current order, contrasting with the hopeful loveliness Evershed is known for. The exhibit’s title painting, “Evolve,” is a joyous return to a past balance with nature and a clarion call for a future where that division has healed. The poem’s closing lines proclaim, “Humanity is a bird waiting to blossom/Into the flowering orchid/It was always meant to be.” Pastel and bold colors mingle in a cornucopia of merged woman, lush flowers/fruit and wings. It exemplifies Evershed’s established style.
“We need women’s images flashed in the face of humanity to say, ‘There’s another way!’ The whole world’s landscape is taken over by B-1 bombers flying around! It’s turning our minds with ugliness that’s not gentle. Women paint a gentler landscape that’s missing,” Evershed articulates values that inform her work. “We need women’s work if we’re ever going to live in peace.”
Evershed has responded to the post-9/11 “war on terrorism” by moving in bold, new directions in style and content, creating what this writer feels is her strongest work. The ragged brush-strokes and primary colors in “Mother & War Baby” portray raw anguish that is visceral. Her “The Dive” echoes the Tarot’s Moon card, urging individuals (and our culture?) to face subterranean forces that may destroy us if not reckoned with.

Three large narrative paintings are totally realized as a mature artistic and personal vision. Evershed challenges the current war-fever with a realism drawn from a synthesis of the best of 1920s and ‘30s pastoral regionalists (like Thomas Hart Benton) and mural art. Renaissance compositional ambition marks “The Fall of Patriarchy” and its multiple figures in a polluted wasteland. “Nuns On A Higher Plane” pays witty tribute to civil disobedience against militarism. “You Shall Not Have My Children” is a stunning self-portrait of Evershed with her two children in an infinite field of soldiers’ graves. Evershed claims a fierce artistic power in these paintings, like Cassandra driven by truths and willing to risk everything to tell them. As beautiful as the earlier works are, one feels these constitute the birth of Evershed’s artistic self.

“If John Ashcroft wants to come and get me, I’m not stopping,” she says with determination. “What we’re up against is the end of the human race as we know it.”

The bronze sculptures by Kimber (the artist/gallery-owner goes by her first name) stand in counterpoint to Evershed’s paintings. Working in the male-dominated medium of metal sculpture, which demands multiple skills, was a revelation, she says. “It made me know why I was put on the planet.” Created in about 2500 B.C., bronze is a copper/tin alloy with a bit of lead.

Kimber’s magnificent figures, celebrating the dynamic female body, emerge from a many-stepped process; it begins with a wire framed clay figure; then a wax mold is made, parts of the sculpture are cast at the foundr;, then the pieces are assembled and welded. To my mind, iconic works by the likes of Rodin don’t have a damn thing on Kimber. From classic realism to abstract primitive modernity, Kimber envisions erotic expression that is self-possessed: women’s sensuality is also strong as hell, capable of mountain climbing or marathons. She also makes all sorts of “metalwork” and a Humpty Dumpty series that are a successful commercial base.

“Goofy style to feminist thing,” Kimber describes her work laughing. “Galleries like to pigeon-hole artists. That doesn’t work for me. I’m not creative to be limited—like Starbucks. We’re not like that here at Joan of Art. Anything goes—just don’t step on the cats!”

Joan of Art is always looking for women visual artists in all mediums (including ceramics and jewelry-making.) Kimbre doesn’t offer any theories about gender politics and art, but she is frustrated by the lack of press attention given to visual artists now, as compared to the past. “Picasso was the TOM CRUISE of his day!” she crows. Her invitation to the public is “I can promise you a good time because we’re so unpretentious and accessible.” I know I’ve discovered a new inspirational haven in my South Minneapolis neighborhood.

Kimber’s sculpture is always exhibited. Jane Evershed’s “Evolve” is up through June 1.Open Wed.-Sun. 11 a.m. —4 p.m. (or by appointment). Closed Mon. and Tues. Joan of Art Gallery, 3020 East Franklin, Minneapolis, 612-338-2511, www.joanofart.com.