SHE: Honoring Women in Art

Featuring the work of Judy Jashinksy, Melissa Jones, Rebecca Mott, and Shelly Taylor

She: Honoring Women in Art, an exhibition exploring what it means to be a woman and an artist in today’s world will open at the Oliver Art Center on February 21, 2025. The exhibit focuses on female positivity, strength, resiliency and creativity, highlighting women artists’ ingenuity and ability to build community, generate support, creatively problem- solve and create and sustain life and beauty. An opening reception will be held Friday, February 21 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm. The exhibit continues through March 28th. Both the reception and exhibition are free and open to the public. An artist talk will take place on Friday, March 28th from 2:00 – 4:00 pm.

The work of four Michigan artists will be featured:

Judy Jashinsky is an American contemporary artist, currently living in Arcadia, MI., known for her paintings dealing with historical events, narratives, and personalities. Her work is intertwined with personal details and experiences, depicted in historical and fantasy environments, and across different eras and cultures.

Melissa Jones is a Detroit area art educator and multi-media artist. Her sculptures highlight the beauty and sensuality of the human form, often joined with objects that have highly textured, weathered and decaying surfaces, such as bones, rust, and other found items from the natural world. Her encaustic paintings layer rich colors embedded with objects and carved textures.

Rebecca Mott is a Ludington-area art educator and multi-media artist. Her ceramic sculpture, printmaking, and drawing reimagine ancient art materials and themes, breathing new life into the colors, materials, and subject matter found on cave walls or excavated pottery by merging them with new techniques, textures, and arrangements of form.

Shelly Taylor is a graphic artist and painter whose work is inspired by the roles of women. Women in early photography, the Victorian era, suffragettes, flappers, silent films, early talkies, old Hollywood glam, 60s mod women, 70s liberated women, and more – leaders, workers, inventors, movers, shakers, fighters, lovers, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, neighbors, and friends are featured in her work.