Mentor Nick Mendoza with artists Alison Cook, Alysandra Holden and Linda Arrowsmith

At the beginning of the year Orem’s Woodbury Art Museum opened Hidden Voices: Women in Printmaking, the second in its annual installments of exhibitions centered around their community outreach program. Hidden Voices is designed to work with underrepresented populations, offering a safe outlet for individuals to develop skills, build community and express themselves through art projects. The program culminates with the opportunity to show finished work in a museum setting.

In its first year Hidden Voices worked with Utah County youths involved in the local graffiti and street art scenes. Over a six-month program the artists worked to overcome the negative consequences of illegal graffiti, participating in meetings, attending UVU events, and helping to draft the exhibition layout.

This year Hidden Voices turned its attention to women, who, as Woodbury’s interim director Melissa Hempel notes, have been underrepresented in museum settings. “Many major institutions house more works by male artists than female artists, and in turn offer visitors an unbalanced view of the practice of art. Even more pressing, according to the Utah Women in Education Project, Utah is below the national average for enrolling women in higher education at some universities.”

For the current program Hidden Voices partnered with local community organizations like the Clothesline Project and the Center for Women and Children in Crisis. Though all women were invited to participate, the museum sought specifically to reach women who have suffered from abuse. With artist mentor Nick Mendoza, Hidden Voices developed a printmaking workshop that encouraged the artists to express their personal stories and feelings surrounding issues of self-confidence, femininity, future goals, and in some cases, single motherhood and violence against women.

Six women, all of whom have had to overcome difficult situations, participated in the program during the second half of 2011 and have work in the current exhibition. “The inspiration for my work comes from my struggles and the strength I have found living in an abusive relationship, and then as a single mother,” says Linda Arrowsmith, whose print “Nurturing, Love and Kindness” features a large hand reaching down to hold a smaller one. “Now, with the love and support of nurturing, caring women, I’m finally being able to find my voice in society.”

Shanine Cornish working at Hidden Voices

The artists worked with Sintra, a PVC material, carving into the surface to create bold graphic works that have a similar feel to woodblock prints. They also learned to ink and burnish their 9 x 12 and 12 x 12 prints.

Art as therapy can work in different, sometimes opposite, ways. It can be cathartic, allowing the artist to purge difficult experiences by expressing them in material form. Hidden Voices participant Shanine Cornish says, “My art allows me to have a voice. It is an expression of myself, of who I am, of the life I’ve lived, of my innermost thoughts and feelings, of my connection to the world.”|3| Her print “Safe in My Arms” features a woman and child in a womb-like setting, protected from the entanglements of an exterior world.|0| “When I create art,” she says, “it gets me to that deeper place where true expression happens, and allows me to connect to myself and the world around me in a way that words alone do not.”

“Safe in My Arms” by Shanine Cornish

“Nurturing, Love and Kindness” by Linda Arrowsmith

At the same time, concentrating on an art form can take one out of oneself, the process becoming a sort of meditative experience, what many artists will describe, using sports terminology, as “being in the zone.” Carrie Espinoza says that the careful process of carving Sintra forces her to push out of her mind various distractions. “I am forced to put aside the business of my family, work, school, etc. in printmaking, every mark shows,” she says. “I must stop my multitasking and concentrate on one cut at a time. It is a physically difficult process, yet the final result – the velvety black of the ink emphasizing the most important lines, which communicate my own thoughts and feelings – that is invigorating.”

Hempel says that as she has watched both programs develop over the past two years she has been excited by the results – both in individual lives and for the community as a whole. “The confidence gained through the process of creating art is the greatest quality I have seen with each group. These artists invite family and friends to our space, and seeing them take ownership of the museum is something I celebrate. We still see the graffiti artists from last year’s HV exhibition come to visit the museum. The project’s reach is long term — we all support each other.”

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.