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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us March 8, 2006 Exhibit touches on the ... Universal Younhee Paik’s large acrylic on canvas “St. George, 2005 ,” left, is featured at the Schneider Museum of Arts latest offering “International Women’s Exhibition: Intimate Revelations.” Sosa Joseph’s “Blessed Fruit,” below, shows another example of the work on display at SOU. Submitted photos International women artists address family, history, life and death at the Schneider By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings Younhee Paik will always wish that she could have given her dying mother a final gift of beauty. “She could see only the empty ceiling of the hospital and the hospital equipment. I always wanted to put something beautiful on her ceiling so she could see the outside world and be comforted,” Paik said. But she was too busy tending her mother to make art, and hospital officials would not allow her to block the lights in the room. “Then she passed after one year. I kept thinking about her,” Paik said. “Why didn’t I do something for her?” She may not have been able to make paintings for her mother, but the South Korean artist, who now lives in the United States, has created paintings on fabric that drape in gentle curves from the ceiling. Paik’s installation is on display at Southern Oregon University’s Schneider Museum through April 10 as part of the show International Women’s Exhibition: Intimate Revelations. Her paintings are rich with spiritual symbols. Architectural floor plans of European cathedrals hover on backgrounds of galaxies. Human footprints mix with images of clouds, ladders and empty moorings — the ships they once secured now gone on journeys. Visitors can lie down on a cot, gaze at the hanging paintings and listen to music that is at once mysterious, peaceful, sorrowful and comforting. While the installation is temporarily at the museum, Paik has also set up the work in hospitals. “I want to give something to the patients. Art is something we give to other people. I want to give it to people who are weak. We can comfort them,” she said. “If we do art only for ourselves, it’s only self-satisfying. It should be more than self-satisfying.” Japanese-born artist Mari Omori’s art also touches on universal themes of family, time and history. Using mosquito netting and unfolded tea bags, she created a kimono based on those worn by her now deceased mother and grandmother. Omori remembers rooms in Japan swathed in mosquito netting when she was a child. She also attended a private high school, where she learned the traditional skills of kimono stitching, flower arranging and carrying out the steps in tea ceremonies. After World War II, Japan opened up to the West and now those traditions coexist with rapid technological change, according to Omori. “The kimono is about the family side of history, especially the women’s side of history. It’s adaptation and survival,” she said. Omori also has used tea bags and paper to create a wall of art in the museum. She pressed wet tea bags against individual pieces of paper to create hundreds of small prints, each as distinct and yet as similar as snowflakes. The papers — stained with tints of dark brown, sienna, orange, yellow and pale green from different types of tea — hang in rows, adorned by the strings and tags from the tea bags. Omori noted that in Japan, many people use loose tea leaves to make their drinks, but she admires the pragmatism of Europeans and Americans who created tea bags. “In America, things are very pragmatic, functional and reproducible. A tea bag is really a work of art. It is like origami art — folded paper — but it is functional,” she said. A 10 foot by 12 foot work by German-born artist Christel Dillbohner hangs on the opposite wall, complementing Omori’s tea-printed papers. Dillbohner used naturally hued mulberry paper punched through with holes and coated in wax as the canvas for her assemblages — a major departure from when she lived in her native country and worked in the colorful, gestural style of German Expressionism. “I moved to L.A. and I was overwhelmed by color and light. There was also a lack of something. History was lacking. It had only 150 years of settlement,” Dillbohner said. “There was nothing really to hold onto.” In Europe, 2,000 year-old Roman foundations sit beside Medieval buildings and modern structures, she said. “The pairing of time and human history is there and it infiltrates everything. After getting away, I was able to reconnect. I wasn’t even aware of the information I had in me that was stored,” Dillbohner said. Her large-scale assemblage at the Schneider features a barnacle-encrusted box with an obscured glass panel. Silk worm cocoons nestle inside. Nearby, delicate roots dangle down from a leafless bush, the part of the plant from below ground more than five times longer than the above-ground branches. The piece brings to mind thoughts of the constant cycling of human and natural history, and the unimaginable eons of time that preceded the present moment. The exhibit, curated by Josine Ianco Starrels at the request of the SOU Women’s Studies Department, also features Belkis Ayon of Cuba, Kyung Sun Cho of Brazil, Yolanda Andradel of Mexico, Theodora Varney Jones of Hungary, Sosa Joseph of India, Eichiko Ohira of Japan and Maritta Tapanainen of Finland. The Schneider Museum, located just uphill from the intersection of Siskiyou Boulevard and Indiana Street, is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. For more information, call 552-6245. Staff writer Vickie Aldous can be reached at 479-8199 or [email protected]. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations Hammocks Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams