For Immediate Release February 22, 2006

For More Information Contact: Rich Schneider, 317-278-4564 rcschnei@iupui.edu

IUPUI Professor’s Work to Launch New Art Exhibition

INDIANAPOLIS - Galerie Penumbra, 1043 Virginia Avenue, in Indianapolis, will unveil on March 3, 2006 an important four-exhibit series entitled In Her Element: The Art of Four Women. The goal of our project is two-fold: to bring attention to some of the city's exemplary local contemporary women artists and to attract more people to downtown Indianapolis, especially to the Fountain Square Neighborhood, with the high caliber of artists and presenters in the series.

In Her Element will launch with an exhibit and lecture by IUPUI philosophy and women's studies professor and artist Peg Brand. She will be followed by three more exemplary local female artists with consecutive one-month exhibits: Susan Hodgin, Nhat Tran, and Rebecca Lyon during the months of April, May, and June, respectively. Each exhibit will feature an event. Events include a lecture by Brand in March, roundtable discussions in April and June, and a lecture by art historian Laurette McCarthy in May.

The opening reception for Brand's work, “Picture Yourself Here” is from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. March 3. She will give an lecture, entitled “Women in Today's Artsworld” at 1 p.m. March 5.

Brand's exhibit features interactive free-standing paintings. The viewer is invited to peek her head through holes where the faces of famous female subjects should have been. It is both a parody and feminist commentary on perceptions of beauty and on canonical Western art, which was of course largely the product of male artists. ###