Compassion Speaks: Women Artists for Animals
© Jo-Anne McArthur
Please note that this event has been postponed from November 2, 2019 to March 21, 2020. More information will be available soon.
Women Artists for Animals (WAFA) is a three-part series for Compassion Speaks for 2019-20 to acknowledge, support, and advance the community of women artists who help animals by using their artistry as a window through which the culture may bear witness to our treatment of other species and see animals as the soul-baring, kindred individuals they truly are.
The first event of the series will be a powerful and inspiring afternoon featuring presentations by artists/curators Jane O’Hara and Janell O’Rourke on the work of photographer and animal advocate JoAnne McArthur and reflecting on animals through the lens of other women in the visual arts as well. Poet and educator Gretchen Primack will emcee the event and read a selection of her poetry.
Jo-Anne McArthur is this year’s Artists for Ahimsa honoree and will be presented our award/painting by Jane O’Hara at this event. McArthur is a critically acclaimed and thought-provoking photographer as well as a globally recognized speaker, photojournalist, and advocate for animals. She is the creator of the short film Promises, the author of Captive and We Animals, and the subject of the documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine.
Proceeds from this event will go to McArthur’s current work in progress, UNBOUND, a photographic project celebrating women working to help animals worldwide. As the Unbound Project quotes:
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing” - Arundhati Roy.
Tickets and Registration
Tickets and registration information TBD.
About Jane O’Hara
Jane O’Hara is a visual artist, speaker, and curator of the continually growing Beasts of Burden group exhibit. O’Hara’s work, both as painter and as curator of Beasts of Burden, is centered on our complex relationship with other animals. She uses surrealism and creates a narrative to point out how the animal condition poses a duality. Examining how our insensitivity to animals raised in captivity is at odds with the casting of human traits on pampered pets, her paintings create an unnatural stage for the animals' situation to point out people's tendency to impose their own agenda. The author of the gallery book Beasts of Burden, O’Hara has delivered presentations at Symphony Space (NYC), Worcester Art Museum, Pace University, and various programs and conferences. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibits.
About Janell O’Rourke
Janell O’Rourke is a multidisciplinary artist using a visual language of drawing, painting, object making, contemporary silhouettes, photography, and stop motion vignettes to create art that questions and de-centers human constructs and prejudices about other animals. Her work explores animal advocacy as artistic expression, eco-feminism, and the ethical responsibilities of art. O’Rourke’s paintings have been featured in The Sexual Politics of Meat exhibit, The Art of the Animal book and in numerous exhibits. She is the co-founder of ArtAnimalAffect, an artist collective with co-founders Kathryn Eddy and LA Watson that is dedicated to bridging art, activism, and critical animal studies.
About Gretchen Primack
Gretchen Primack is a poet and educator living in New York's Hudson Valley. She has taught and/or administrated with prison education programs since 2005. She's the author of three poetry collections: Visiting Days, Kind, and Doris' Red Spaces, and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets. She co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown. Her poetry publication credits include The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, FIELD, Poet Lore, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Tampa Review, and many others journals and anthologies. Gretchen is a passionate advocate for the rights and welfare of non-human animals.