French & Michigan Gallery is pleased to host the pop-up exhibition Conversations, a presentation dedicated to Planned Parenthood of South Texas curated by Scott A. Sherer, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Texas at San Antonio. 

Featured artists include Christie Blizard, Jenelle Esparza, Mira Hnatyshn, Julia Barbosa Landois, Libby Rowe, and Anabel Toribio-Martinez.

Exhibition is on view from November 7 through 21. Join us for a preview on Thursday, November 7, 5:30 pm, and a reception on Friday, November 13, 7:00 pm, during Second Friday on Beacon Hill. 

A portion of art sales throughout the exhibition will be donated to Planned Parenthood South Texas. Click here for more information on the organization.

Curatorial Statement

Sometimes, even the most simple situations surprise us with variable challenges.   We may find the experience of talking across the kitchen table, chatting at the photocopier, catching a stranger’s attention at a supermarket, composing an old-fashioned letter, an e-mail, or a text to be smooth and easy.  At times, we may have difficulty expressing thoughts and approaching particular topics.  Emotions change and opinions waver between firm and flexible.  We have immediate responses and we deliberately prepare for the infinite possibilities of response and potential affect. 

All of us inherently respond to the people and the world around us, and we all know that both what we say and how we say it combine to affect meaning.   

This exhibition, Conversations, presents the underlying character of the exercise of women’s unvoiced private thoughts, intimate discussion, routine presentation, and dramatic declaration.  

The artists consider narratives of communication in women’s lives, as well as the very processes inherent in the actions of thought, reverie, dialogue, and inscription in personal and cultural history. 

Anabel Toribio-Martinez’s paintings depict intimate moments of women’s lives, of the power of private thoughts and of the nuanced threads that extend throughout the tenuous character of relationships.

Mira Hnatyshyn’s work depicts the strength of women in contemporary culture, honoring the self and challenging the legacy of discourses that influence women’s lives and the lenses through which we may view women in life and in representations.

Julia Barbosa Landois’s works on paper consider how language operates, how words such as “mom” and “madre” may carry a range of connotations from humorous pop-cultural memes to the vulgar. 

Jenelle Esparza’s sculptural installation focuses on the function of the power of words and their relationships to women in various stages of their lives as they pass insight and information across generations. 

Libby Rowe considers the character of visual and textual modes of communication that connect and transform virtual distances that link the unique space where one might have a cup of tea to the unique space of another sitting faraway in another time zone. 

Christie Blizard challenges the character of how meaning is traditionally “framed” in public and private spheres. Based upon her investigations of the possibilities and limitations of painting and performance, in a recent project, she has been accessing national television media with her body, her text paintings, and her challenge to others to consider how media influences our psyches and the societies in which we live. 

Image: Anabel Toribio-Martinez, Interference, 2013. Oil on panel, 36 x 56 inches. (Previous page) Anabel Toribio-Martinez, The Evening (detail), 2013. Oil on panel, 24 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist.