Bloody Good

The Bloody Marys
Hibbleton Gallery
Fullerton, CA
Opens October 5
Through the Month of October
4 Scoops of Bosco

Previewed by Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

For the amount of time that the eight members of the Bloody Marys have spent together from the early 1980's until now, you would assume that there would be some commonality between their art but the reality is that it could not be more diverse.

The Bloody Marys; Martha Bartholomew, Fay Colmar, the late Elaine Kennedy, Marjorie Kerr, Mildred Kouzel, Pat Morgenthaler, the late Joan Ross, and Virginia Spencer, named after their favorite alcoholic beverage and it's feminist undertones are showing their art as a collective. The show opens at the Hibbleton Gallery in Fullerton, Southern California on Friday October 5 during the monthly Art Walk.

The women have known each other and exhibited separately as working artists since the 1970's but they started getting together for monthly meetings in the early 1980's after their kids were grown first, at Martha Bartholomew's house and then at the late Elaine Kennedy's cabin in Mammoth, CA . 

There, according to Fay Colmar, "We would paint watercolors outside on the green, the music of McGee Creek rushing by as our backdrop." The only rule that they observed was: No men were allowed!

"Our dinners were a safe place where we could share our most inner thoughts, our political opinions, family problems, and of course, the issues of the art world.", continued Colmar. "In those days, there was little representation of women artists in the museums."

Colmar added, "That prompted lots of discussion as well as other questions. Was it possible to be over-educated? Can knowledge paralyze intuition? How to be authentic artists? 24 years later, our art speaks for itself. Each of us has our own individual way of making art but as our friendship deepened over the years we discovered many similarities in our personalities."

" We are all democratic, family oriented, highly spritual", Colmar said. " We love arranging a beautiful dinner table, then sitting around that table eating great food, drinking fine wine and laughing and talking. For each of us, making art is our passion and that is reason enough for celebration."

When I saw the exhibit the first time, I was impressed most with Colmar's Mixed Media series utilizing actual natural artifacts from locations around California and blending her sensational eye for color with the 3 dimensional presentation.

I would have liked to see Mildre Kouzel's work, mixed media on wood, portraying US 99 and other California roads interpreted differently. Technically she is sound but I would like to see the art match the subject. For instance in US 99 I would show scenes from the actual road instead images of BB King, et. al.

The show runs through the month of October and is worth a look if you are in the Southern California area.

Photo by Jessie LaTour, Hibbleton Gallery