In Her Own Image
On View Sun, July 13 – Sat, Aug 30
Artists' Reception July 13, 2-4pm

Above Image: Sunlit, Video performance & Animation by Magaly Ponce

Participating Artists
Anis Beigzadeh  |  Ruth Dealy  |  Crickett Fisher  |  Susan Freda  |  Leigh Craven  |  Soraya Lutes  |  Mercedes Nuñez
Allison Newsome  |  Magaly Ponce  |  Esther Solondz  |  Meredith Stern  |  Maedeh Tafvizi  |  Tina Tryforos  |  Shari Weschler 

In Her Own Image celebrates the creative power of women through a collection of artworks rooted in personal experience, emotional truth, and embodied knowledge.
 
The artists represented are inter-generational, with distinct global points of view. What unites them is a shared inquiry into how to represent lived experience, memory, the evolving conditions of womanhood, and the courageous act of claiming a voice in a world that too often distorts, limits, or overlooks it. The exhibition features figurative, expressive, abstract, and narrative works in painting, photography, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture, and ceramics.
 
Spanning a range of life stages—from emerging voices to those shaped by decades of practice—the artists offer reflections on identity, resilience, and autonomy. Each work invites viewers to consider how women reclaim the act of seeing and being seen, or reimagine their relationship to the world, resisting cultural forces that have too often sought to define them from the outside.
 
By amplifying these diverse visions, In Her Own Image creates space for recognition and solidarity—affirming the right to represent oneself and one’s experience in all its complexity and many forms.

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Below are artist Maedeh Tafviz's words
as spoken during the reception.
Maedeh Tafvizi is an artist and educator specializing in ceramics.

"I just want to share something personal with you—something that’s been sitting with me for a long time.

One of the most important things I’ve done in my life, as a woman, is to learn how to claim space.
Sometimes it’s physical.

But often, it’s internal—a space to think, to feel, to be present in your own life, without needing to shrink or translate yourself for someone else.
I didn’t learn this because I was bold. I learned it because I grew up without that space.
And I got used to making room for others while quietly stepping back myself.
When I moved to the U.S., I thought maybe that challenge would go away.
I thought it was something I carried because of where I’m from—because of the politics, the culture, the expectations around women.
I told myself: If I go somewhere freer, maybe I’ll feel free inside too.
But after years of studying, teaching, working, and being part of serious, meaningful conversations and communities, I realized something else.
That quiet question—the one that follows you around in different languages and forms—was still there.
Not just for me as an outsider, but for many women who were born here.
Women who speak the language perfectly.
Who “belong” by every definition.
That changed something in me.
It made me realize: this isn’t just my personal challenge.
It’s a pattern—deeply woven into how so many of us are taught to show up:
with hesitation, with apology, with self-editing before we even speak.
The work I made for this show—this rug—is part of my answer to that.
It’s a space I built for myself.
Not a stage. Not a statement.
Just a place to grieve, to feel, to exist fully—without being watched, measured, or explained.
I used to think the challenge was about where I was from.
But I’ve come to understand that it’s about how women are taught to exist in the world—no matter where they are.
And so the question for me is no longer:
“Am I allowed to be here?”
It’s:
How can I shape a space that reflects who I am—without asking permission to exist in it?
That’s what this show is for me.
That’s what this space is.
And I’m incredibly grateful to Mary for creating it with care—and for inviting us into it, not as guests, but as people who fully belong.”
                                                                                                    - Maedeh Tafvizi