PLUCK!
Images of Women and Flowers

By Kirsten Ervin and Sharon “Mama” Spell
January 5-30

Opening Reception on Friday, January 5th from 7-10 pm
Closing Reception on Saturday, January 20 from 7-10 pm
At Imagebox, 4933 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh (in Garfield)

            Pluck can mean to draw out, or to snatch.  It also indicates a sort of fearless glamour.  Traditional subject matter for female artists often included depictions of other women and/or flowers. Previous portrayals of women and flowers followed a more staid, formal portraiture. While the artwork in PLUCK! draws from  this precedence, it infuses humor, joy and honesty, reflecting the personalities of artists Kirsten Ervin and Sharon “Mama” Spell.  Both used collage, including preexisting images, drawings, prints and other media.  And while this show is a collaboration of ideas, the artists did not work directly with each other, and didn’t see each other’s work until the day the show was hung.  However, the resulting images are surprisingly complementary, and well, Plucky!

         Kirsten Ervin has shown her paintings, drawings and collages at the following places/venues: Artists Upstairs, Digging Pitt, Gallery Chiz, SALVO, the Turmoil Room, and Buckets of Joy. She has been a vendor for the past three years at Handmade Arcade and has also made puppets and performed for the Sarver Express at the Black Sheep Puppet Show. She's also a proud member of the women's history organization LUPEC (Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails). When she's not making things or dismantling the patriarchy, Kirsten works with high school students who are blind and visually impaired throughout Allegheny County. Kirsten loves Lawrenceville, her husband Will, and their two cats, Peeps and the Professor.

         Sharon “Mama” Spell planted roots in Pittsburgh after growing up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  The Southern transplant moved here in 1995 after earning a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her visual art has been described as possessing a fine and distanced beauty that suggests abstract expressionism. (For a good time, go to http//mamaspell.com.) She was teaching at the Andy Warhol Museum and Carnegie Museum of Art when she dove headfirst in the cabaret performances, putting her fine and distanced beauty onstage, spouting abstract expressionist humor that everyone can relate to.  In her visual art, she recently switched her focus toward private commissioned portraits and illustrations.  This current work for Pluck! represents a marriage of her painterly traditions with her new illustrative inclinations. She’s exhibited her work far and wide and it is currently represented at Uncanny Evolution in Chattanooga, TN, The Attic Gallery in Vicksburg, MS, and also at Digging Pitt Gallery in Pittsburgh, and she is now a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators.

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