With Sue Shlom, Lynn Edwards Newman created this umbrella to illustrate the condition of women “confined under the umbrella of the male gaze.” Figures on the outside of the umbrella represent pressures on women to be pretty, fit, pleasing, better mothers, better cooks, forever young, and to produce whiter whites in their laundry; but women succumbing to these pressures never feel quite good enough. The images from the outside of the umbrella illustrate these various states. Examples are collected at the end of this gallery.

Kathryn Poremski reporting on membership tallies (up)

Kailee Hanson, 2026 Scholarship winner

Carol LaChiusa spoke of her recent experiments to make her art freer and unpredictable—for example, by drawing with her non-dominant hand and by using wax candles to draw transparently on paper and then applying a wash or images that don’t necessarily follow the wax lines.

Kailee Hanson, newly graduated from CCS, is enjoying release from deadlines and from the need to perfect each piece she sarts. She’s been painting on cardboard and leaving it unframed, which she finds freeing. The work pictured consists of slices of images of herself, taped together.

Jarie Saad Ruddy and Terry North

Margaret Reese has been experimenting with “disruptive realism,” exploring and seeking freedom in her work and trying to understand where to stop…

Ruth Harvey presented high-value water colors painted en plein air at a retreat in Hastings, Michigan…and a squirrel done in ball-point and colored pencil.

Kim Santini joined via zoom. Inspired by the recent exhibition Monumental Color featuring Cecily Brown, Sam Gilliam, and Joan MItchell, she has been drawing a lot, on anything, including packing material and old paintings. She shared an example (left) of her drawing, and a painting it inspired that reflects her own spiritual unease in the present condition of the world.

Jarie Saad Ruddy has been drawing on her memories of the material culture of her past (see: “Botticelli’s Angel Appears to my Mother on Ironing Day”) and on her Lebanese origins, represented in modern icons that incorporate family members. Sometimes she even builds these icons around public figures, for example, John Coltrane on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

In Kate Apple’s recent work she uses a lot of layering and sometimes digging down to earlier layers. Texture matters. She relies on a limited palette and incorporates very subtle imagery and collage. Of this abstract painting she observed on finishing: “It had to be a landscape.”

Katherine Poremski aims at representing the invisible archetypal woman: invisible because she is not engaged in the business of making money and bound to disappear from memory, even though she is in fact the “glue” that holds things together by keeping the home running and the family on course. In Kathryn’s paintings she leaves the particular occasion represented ambiguous; viewers can make their own stories. The painting shown is partially a response to the controversy over Flock cameras—devices that are meant to protect us, but which have ominous implications.

Penelope Trikes created this collage from memories of following a deer path at the back of her childhood home in the mountains of Virginia. The frame was formerly a print drawer holding moveable type.

Cathy Huntoon has worked extensively in gouache, a medium not widely loved, but which her days as a commercial artist have taught her to control. It is not a medium beloved of many artists, and extensive discussion followed about ways to manage the problems it entails (drying speed; color variation). Cathy also described working en plein air with multiple small, stacked palettes of watercolor, refreshing the contents with water as needed.

Theresa Moore, President, with Kathryn Poremski, distributing Membership Directories