WOMEN ON THE CREATIVE EDGE: Showcasing Utah Art’s Feminine Side
NEWS / EVENT PREVIEW
Women The Creative Edge 2023 3rd Place Winner: “Beholding” by Rebecca Johnson. Photo from Eccles Art Center
Ogden, UT—Just as the global pandemic was about to become a harsh reality back in March 2020, Eccles Community Art Center launched what has become a highly popular annual competition — “Women: The Creative Edge.”
Designed to coincide with International Women’s Month in March, the exhibit was an invitational that first year, rather than a competition. By the time the show opened during the First Friday Art Stroll on March 6, 2020, people already were becoming iffy about gathering large groups or for events because of the spread of Covid-19.
By the end of March, everything was pretty much shut down.
“It was up for four months,” Debra Muller, assistant art center director, said of that inaugural exhibit. “I had a few people call to come see it.”
And they showcased the pieces on the Eccles website, which resulted in a few sales, added Melissa Seamons, the center’s senior education, media, and communications coordinator.
International Women’s Month is celebrated each March by the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States (where is it called Women’s History Month), and it coincides with International Women’s Day March 8. Canada celebrates in October, to coincide with Persons Day Oct. 18.
This year’s competition opens March 1 in the Eccles main gallery.
The show replaces one Eccles hosted in 2019 revolving around spirituality that didn’t go as expected. The juror for that show and even some of the artists didn’t see the overarching theme in the manner that the Eccles staff had intended. The resulting exhibit just didn’t hit the mark, Muller said. And sometimes, that happens.
“We review exhibits to see what works and what doesn’t,” she said. “You try it one year, and if it fails, you try something else.”
Although the women’s show started as an invitational, it wasn’t long — the following year, actually — before Eccles opened it to any female artist in the state and made it a competition. That’s in line with most of the center’s other exhibits.
“We moved more toward competition-based because it gets more artists involved,” Seamons said.
“And because of the competitions, we’ve had many new artists come to the center, Muller added.
The March competition attracts creatives from St. George to Logan, Muller said. They pull the show’s theme from whatever the International Women’s Month organization posts on its website. This year focuses on diversity and inclusion. The name of this year’s judge is a secret — as it is with most shows, so that artists create pieces without trying to create simply to please a certain judge.
The one caveat for this show is that they want the judge to be a woman. But that can be challenging, Muller said, because many times the artist they want as a judge enters the show.
Once the entries have been recieved and juried, Pat Poce, art center director, does his magic and aranges and hangs the show. Poce is known for his keen eye and ability to hang interesting and aesthetically pleasing shows. Much of that comes from how he considers the historic Eccles home gallery space as a whole.
“Pat is a geniius,” Seamons said. “Instead of looking at (the center) as a gallery, he looks at it as a home and groups (pieces) as if it is a home.”
The jury process is hard, Muller said, because not everyone who submits can typically get in. And it’s hard to tell an artists that their piece wasn’t accepted. Seamons said there are times when art center staff favorites don’t get in. But that’s how it goes. The judge has the final word.
Still, just having the opportunity to compete is welcome in the art world. A few hundred years ago, women were marginalized as artists.
“At lease we’re not in the middle ages when women had to sign their names as a man,” Muller said.
“Women the Creative Edge” exhibit opens on Friday, March 1 at an opening receiption from 5 to 8 p.m. and will run through March 30 in the Eccles main gallery.