CHICK ART

I'm always thrilled to meet other women making aggressive, powerful, sexy works of art. I don't feel like such a naughty girl knowing there are plenty of other gals using a pool of images that haven't always been very accessible to women -- images inspired by nostalgic pin-ups, pornography, comics, and pop culture. There are now more and more women producing cultural artifacts of a sexual nature than ever before: people like Lisa Palac, who's revolutionizing the way we look at pornography, premiere pin-up artist funk, and the countless women film makers making sex films geared towards getting the female viewer's motor running.

Over the years I've curated some shows that deal expressly with "the feminine" -- women's personal or erotic interests applied to their art. I've heard guys calling this unnamed movement "chick art." I guess I can live with that. Here are a few of the ultra-talented gals whose art revels in fantasy, fun and the joys of being female. They've reclaimed a lot of taboo imagery as their own, creating bodies of work that have personal meaning and sex appeal.

Isabel Samaras spent her childhood planted in front of the TV set like so many of us latch-key kids -- and yes, she was forever damaged by it. Her first drawings were inspired by a Warner Brothers carton of a sexy girl wasp-bug, and indication of the future direction her career would take. A few years ago, after working for other artists as the Program Director at the Franklin Furnace in New York City, Isabel painted her first lunch box and decided to put Catwoman and Batgirl on it -- which seems normal enough except that she had them involved in a passionate lesbian scenario. There it was, the first "adults only" lunch box. She came up with about 75 more absurd situations involving celebrities and television characters, but only executed a few of them, given the labor involved in painting each side of the box. Everyone fantasizes about what really goes on at Gilligan's Island, don't they?

The lunch boxes led to TV trays (Isabel grew up eating off them at her grandparents' house) and gave her one surface to paint on. The paintings are more like objects this way as well. I bet nearly any boy would enjoy eating his TV dinner of Isabel's naughty Batgirl TV tray -- she sure looks extra perky as a glossy pin-up girl smiling out from under a favorite snack!

Isabel enjoys her work, and sees it as an opportunity to destigmatize pornography. She likes to think that her work hits you between the eyes and below the belt. Her paintings have been shown in San Francisco (where she currently lives and works), New York City and other places across the U.S. Besides the lunch boxes and TV trays, she makes ceramics as an affordable option for those out there lusting for her paintings with little dough to spare. These are not ordinary pottery by any means. They're decked out with devil girls, Elvis, and flames. It's doubtful you'll be seeing her plates advertised in TV Guide -- thought I'm sure she'd just love that!

Isabel's comic "The Filched Frontier" appears in Signs of Life: Channel Surfing Through '90's Culture, a Manic D Press anthology featuring seventy artists and writing addressing highbrow and lowbrow culture.

Lisa Petrucci
Axcess Magazine
Vol. 111, No. 3, 1995