News Releases

“Women Art and War” Panel Discussion Focuses on Iraq Wars

March 31 , 2006

Connecticut artist Patricia Winer, Maine artist Natasha Mayers and USM Associate Professor of Philosophy Kate Wininger will discuss issues raised by artists whose work depicts the U.S./Iraq wars at 7 p.m., Wednesday, April 5, on the seventh floor of the Glickman Family Library, Portland. 

Winer’s exhibit of collages, “American Faces, Arab Names,” will be open to the public through May 31 in the seventh floor display cases in the Library during regular operating hours. A video of Nina Berman’s photographs of the current war, “Purple Hearts,” will be shown during a reception at 6:30 p.m., preceding the panel.

The panel will open with cartoons and parodies of the current war discussed by Kate Wininger. Natasha Mayers will show slides and discuss her recent series of Maine landscape paintings, “State of War,” and Winer will discuss her work on display.

Winer, a resident of Connecticut, has exhibited in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. This exhibit grew out of her response to the first Gulf War and her desire to memorialize those killed on both sides.  Her intent was not political realism, but arepresentation of the imagery from both cultures—American faces juxtaposed with Arabic names. In addition to Arabic calligraphy (by Saud Khazal) on six of the twelve prints, Winer freely uses the bright, cheerful colors that Islamic culture envisions in a garden of paradise after one’s death.

Natasha Mayers was recently honored by Peace Action Maine and also was included in Robert Shetterly’s book of portraits, “Americans Who Tell the Truth.”  She believes that “we need artists to help explain what is happening in this country, to tell the truth and reveal the lies, to be willing to say the emperor has no clothes, to create moral indignation, to envision alternatives, to reinvent language.”

The exhibit, panel and reception are cosponsored by USM’s Women’s Studies Program, the Center for Sexualities and Gender Diversity, the Women’s Resource Center, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Glickman Family Library.  For more information, contact Judie O’Malley, USM Public Affairs, 780-4200.

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