{"id":3359,"date":"2020-03-23T09:38:27","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T16:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogschapman.wpenginepowered.com\/collections\/2020\/03\/23\/celebrating-womens-history-month\/"},"modified":"2020-03-23T09:38:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T16:38:27","slug":"celebrating-womens-history-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/collections\/2020\/03\/23\/celebrating-womens-history-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Women\u2019s History Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to <\/span>a story by Pliny the Elder<\/span><\/a>, a Roman writer from the first century C.E., the first drawing ever made was a portrait of a lover by a woman named Dibutades. After tracing the silhouette on the wall, Dibutades’ father created a clay model of the drawing. To no surprise, in Pliny the Elder\u2019s writing, it is Dibutades\u2019 father who gets praise for the invention of \u2018the art of modeling.\u2019 Dibutades’ silhouette was overshadowed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like most other professions, work by female artists has gone largely unnoticed. Between 2008 and 2018, <\/span>only 11 percent<\/span><\/a> of art acquired by the country\u2019s top museums for their permanent collections were by women.<\/span> With this in mind, the Escalette Collection has shown great effort to break the mold. According to <\/span>a blog last year<\/span><\/a> by the Escalette Collection,\u201cToday, over <\/span>half<\/span><\/i> of new acquisitions by Art Collections were made by women artists.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In honor of women\u2019s history month, the Escalette Collection spotlights two female artists whose work has recently joined the collection. These women are <\/span>Jenny Yurshansky<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Jessica Rath<\/span><\/a> who both use their art to explore the relationship between human and natural worlds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jessica Rath<\/b>\u2019s work unpacks the complicated history of the food around us. <\/span>Rath\u2019s project \u201cTake Me to the Apple Breeder\u201d – which marries sculptures and photographs – grew from a visit to the Plant Genetics Resource Unit (PGRU) in Geneva, New York. Here, apple buds from trees around the world are collected and grafted to make new trees and bear lost fruit. This process keeps a variety of apple trees alive, saving several apple species from extinction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The diversity of the grafted trees was mind-blowing to Rath, so she documented the process through photographs and sculptures. She created nine apple sculptures, based on examples of varieties from PGRU. Alongside the sculptures, Rath curated six photographs of the grafted trees \u201c<\/span>to catch the beautiful, leafless silhouettes and the sensuous detail of their skin<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n