Today

Tomayko Foundation and the National Association of Women Artists
Juried by Sarah Hall
April 19 - May 31, 2024



Today asks us to address the here and now and includes works that are inspured by everyday (or extraordinary) incidents, stories, feelings, anxieties, text messages, diaries, conversations, and routines that make up the quotidian.


Juried by Sarah Hall, Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Washington County, Hagerstown, MD, this exhibition asks participating artists to consider personal, universal, social, metaphorical, and formal responses in consideration of their ideas about “today.” Broad themes emerge that deal with internal emotion based on external stimuli; each artist offers their own interpretation of trauma, anxiety, grief, togetherness, love, and joy. These works beg the question: how do we make sense of the world, or make a shield from the world, or even a temporary distraction from in? In response we are offered images with power and beauty--of construction, of observation, of thought, of materials, of color, and of form.


The works included in the exhibition utilize many traditional approaches--figuration, landscape, still life, and abstraction, with a wide variety of expression. Several photographs convey concrete visual facts of the world, while some depict abstractions--some gestural, and others carefully constructed, while the sculputural work expresses tacticle and formal engagement with materials (Carol Boram-Hays, Hydrozoa), and some with a “pop” sensibility, energy, and humor (Maidy Morhous’s Consuption Drain). There are pieces that converse with art history (Still Life with Five Steaks) and others that have the immediacy of today. There are pieces that are gut-wrenchingly literal in their narrative content (Jeni Bate’s It’s About Time), and some that evoke the 18th-century notion of the sublime (The New Dig, Catherine Gibbs). Others revel in the material.  


Thank you to the artists who have shared their stories, their approaches, and themselves, showing viewers what “today” can look like. 

Participating artists: Tricia Adler, Patricia Chiacu Apuzzo, Jeni Bate, Carol Baum, Carol Boram-Hays, Mayya Bork, Paula Borsetti, Ann Winston Brown, Pauline Chernichaw, Amber Dong, Jeanne Goodman, Lisa Goren, Catherine Gibbs, Sheila Grabarsky, Margie Greve, Gaelle Hintzy-Marcel, Marylin Lowney Johnson, Anita Fina Kiewra, Carole Kunstadt, Jennifer Leighton, Elizabeth Miller McCue, Maidy Morhous, Linda Mulhauser, Raisa Nosova, Julie O’Connor, Jennifer Jean Okumura, Jacqueline Sferra Rada, Elizabeth Reed, Sharon Sayegh, Susan Sinek, and Melinda Welker. 

Congratulations to the award winners: Carol Baum, Sheila Grabarsky, Carol Boram-Hays, Lisa Goren, and Catherine Gibbs





Installation images courtesy of Chris Uhren