Two shows in Old Lyme reflect the cultural and social challenges faced by women artists throughout history and how they've addressed them in their work - "Life Stories in Art: Three American Women Artists in Connecticut" at The Florence Griswold Museum and "Her Way: Three Centuries of American Painting" at The Cooley Gallery.

GOOD THINGS COME IN THREES

The Florence Griswold Museum is showing the works of three women artists in individual exhibits in the Krieble Gallery: Tonalist painter Mary Rogers Williams (1857-1907), modern sculptor Mary Knollenberg (1904-1992), and contemporary glass artist Kari Russell-Pool (b.1967).

Curating the exhibitions are Amy Kurtz Lansing and Benjamin Cole.

This is the first retrospective of the Hartford-born Williams, who died unexpectedly in Florence, Italy, just before her 50th birthday.

"It seemed like a natural pairing with Mary Knollenberg," Kurtz Lansing says. "Both these artists were very aware of what it meant to be a woman in their own time and make that a subject of their art. And so we thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice to also show the art of a current, working woman artist (Russell-Pool)?'"

"I had admired Kari's work for a long time - she was based in Essex for 25 years," Cole says, "and it became clear that there was this shared, unexpected thread between the three artists working in very different media, different times, but there was this push for self discovery and self-identification in all of their work."

"Williams was very aware of the limitations she faced as a woman in her time in the late 19th century, but her art pushes beyond that," Kurtz Lansing says. "She was one of the few Tonalist woman painters. She inserted herself into an artistic style in which she had no other female compatriots. It was a time when women were treated as amateurs, who could not compete on the same level as men. Williams tried to transcend that despite the difficulties."

Williams worked in a pastel technique that Kurtz Lansing notes was rediscovered by late 19th century artists, who loved to experiment with pastels and colored papers, creating a mysterious, dreamy quality.

"The basis of her work is in observation, but she really conjures something beyond sheer observation - that quintessential Tonalism that's a subjective response to the landscape," Kurtz Lansing says.

Knollenberg lived in Chester for more than 40 years, up until her death.

"She was someone who could conjure the confidence she felt as a woman artist and sculptor, but also as a woman beset by her own doubts and the struggle of finding an identity for herself-something we can all relate to," Kurtz Lansing says.

One of the things Knollenberg was credited with was translating modern art to sculpture.

"Artists hadn't really developed a way to meld modernism with sculpture until the 1930s and she's one of the people who did," Kurt Lansing says.

By the 1940s Knollenberg was working very physically with direct carving and stone.

“Her later work is much more heavily focused on women, different phases of their lives, and contemplation of herself," Kurtz Lansing says.

"Even late in life she was exploring new ways to do work. She learned from a friend (in the early 1980s) how to do sculpture in hammered lead," Kurtz Lansing says. "You can see almost a ghostlike, totally different concept of the figure in how you coax it out of lead versus bronze or clay."

Russell-Pool comes out of a tradition of American glass artists, who over the last 50 years have taken techniques used to make useful objects, like wine glasses, to sculptural ends, Cole explains.

"She's unique in that she's not a glass blower, she's a flame worker," Cole points out. "She has a single torch and works with these long, slender rods of glass in a kind of meditative way, mixing and melting her own custom colors. She forms them into these very intricate shapes and will work in these series where she'll develop an idea and come at it from different angles with similar forms before moving on to the next idea."

The series on exhibit highlights her most recent work, including a wall piece she made specifically for the show titled "Send me a Postcard" with a decorated birdcage in the center and birds flying around it.

"It gets a little at the irony and humor she puts in these pieces," Cole says. "There's the domestic space she's lovingly embellished (the cage) and also this yearning for what's beyond."

Her banded vessels are a series she's worked on for 15 years.

"They're so precise and the detail is so minute," Cole observes. "The bases are Grecian in form and the ornamentation is so Victorian - flowers and birds all layered together."

Her framed samplers titled "Safety Moms" is a series that came out of historical forms - needlework samplers and quilts, again with an ironic, contemporary twist.

"She started the series after she purchased a gun for home security. It reflects on her own life and the world and what came to mind in keeping her daughters safe," Cole says.

"This idea that a great-grandmother would have made a sampler for her family with a nice little quote, 'Home Sweet Home' kind of thing, in the middle, but instead (she inserts) a gun," he says. "Again, there's a bit of irony and ambiguity in these works."

DOING IT HER WAY

The Cooley Gallery also celebrates women artists of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, describing them as "fearless female pioneers experimenting and creating in spite of convention."

"It's an eclectic collection of paintings by all highly accomplished artists," gallery owner Jeff Cooley says of the show. "I tried to keep it Connecticut-oriented, and I also wanted to make it fun and interesting and have a little bit of everything: still lifes, landscapes, abstracts, figures, gardens."

The front and upstairs gallery spaces are entirely devoted to the works of Jean Swan Gordon (1922-2013) who lived and painted in Old Lyme for the last 25 years of her life, yet Cooley doesn't think she ever exhibited her work in town.

After getting a call from Gordon's family to come and look at her paintings, he says, "I had been thinking of doing this women's show and thought, what a great way to introduce/re-introduce Jean's work to Old Lyme through the auspices of women's art."

In terms of technique, Cooley points out that if you look at the paintings carefully, they are all totally outlined.

"So before they became these glorious watercolors, they were in fact these incredible ink drawings," he explains, "and then she filled them in with all these breathtaking colors."

In terms of subject matter, these are anything but predictable flower paintings.

"Hers are not at all typical flower arrangements - a woman painter painting flowers," Cooley says. "These are 'anti-bouquets.' There's this randomness to them, an exuberance and spontaneity. She approached her flowers and still lifes with a very distinct, very thoughtful, and really powerful approach."

The downstairs gallery moves up to the 21st century with works by nine women artists ranging from figurative to abstract, oil paint to mixed media.

Cooley states that an exhibit celebrating women's art wouldn't be complete without the boxed narrative assemblages of Maureen McCabe; a retired professor emeritus at Connecticut College.

Also noteworthy are the vibrant, complex still lifes of Janet Fish, granddaughter of Old Lyme Colony painter Clark Voorhees; recent works by Old Lyme's prolific Judy Friday, using etching ink on paper; and a series of colorful monotypes in oil by Anita Soos of Guilford.

Finally, in the back room are 19th- and early 20th-century paintings including Matilda Brown, who Cooley describes as "our local hero from Old Lyme, defying stereotypes in her artwork from an early age" and Mary Post, whose "fantastical pictures of faeries are really fun."