Get out of your comfort zone and into CoMFY’s zone this weekend: The Beacon-based CoMFY art collective presents the 4th annual group show at the Howland Public Library. Yellow Wallpaper Revisited showcases artwork by nearly 30 Hudson Valley women, drawing inspiration from a controversial short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written in 1892 by early feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The show opens with a reception on March 10, part of can’t-miss Second Saturday festivities in Beacon.
Michelle Rivas, the exhibit’s coordinator and an artist in the show, describes the groundbreaking source material: “The Yellow Wallpaper tells the story of a young woman's descent into madness while confined to a room with yellow wallpaper. With no other stimulation, she begins to obsess about the wallpaper's pattern until she imagines there are many women trapped inside the design.” According to Wikipedia, "Gilman wrote this story to change people's minds about the role of women in society, illustrating how women's lack of autonomy is detrimental to their mental, emotional, and even physical well-being.
Feminism and Artistic Identity, Spanning Two Centuries
Delving into the inner emotional lives of women, especially mothers, Gilman once claimed that The Yellow Wallpaper was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked." Making art - whether with paint, ceramics, drawing, fabric, fiber, photos, voice, or dance - is an outlet by which people may plant a flag, declare identity, and save themselves from being driven crazy.
Gilman’s art - writing - was a revolutionary act of expressing identity. She explored the limitations imposed on 19th-century women, as well as what happens when prisons get created in our own minds after we take advice from supposedly well-meaning but clueless authority figures (often men, especially 126 years ago...remember that time when married women couldn't open bank accounts or own property?).
As women’s voices and powerful stories have been amplified over the past year or two in the United States, Gilman's early feminist work has seen new light, and struck a nerve. This exhibition is an ideal place to check in with the creative identities of women based in the Beacon area.
What or Who is CoMFY? Beacon Women’s Balancing Act
Many of the presenting artists will be familiar to longtime fans of Beacon-based art, and anyone who has been paying attention at Beacon Open Studios and other local events for the past decade and a half. All of the artists belong to CoMFY, which stands for Creatives, Mamas, Friends and Yahoos.
