The Flagstaff Arts Council presented Underneath It All: Desire, Power, Memory & Lingerie – an art exhibition featuring the work of ten women artists from all over the United States who create or use underwear as objects or topics in their work. Underneath It All explored many topics including: body image, sexuality, empowerment, privacy, women’s roles, equality, and many others, as lingerie embodies all of these issues in our society.

Three main ideas were the focus of this exhibition: desire, power, and memory. These ideas are visually represented through various mediums including painting, drawing, printmaking, bookmaking, textiles, papermaking, assemblage, sculpture and collage. “Each artist has a vivid and personal point-of-view and talent,” says Diane Bronstein, who developed the concept and is one of the artists featured in the exhibition.

Bronstein says about the exhibition: “Many of the artists employ traditional craft associated with ‘women’s work’; sewing, embroidery, patterns, weaving, but with an edgy, contemporary eye and results. Often, they utilize materials not associated with delicate undergarments, such as aluminum cans, paper, hair, and playing cards. Others create non-traditional representations of lingerie – as objects of memory through vintage imagery, gender statements or stark depictions.”

The exhibition has been traveling around the country, being shown in galleries and art centers, the first being in Minneapolis. Next was Flagstaff, followed by Massachusetts and New York in 2013.  The ten women artists featured in the exhibition include Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch, Diane Bronstein, Julie Harris, Laura Ann Jacobs, Joanne Kaliontzis, Lisa Knox, Erica Spitzer Rasmussen, Diane Savona, Miriam Schaer, and Amanda N. Simons.

In our Jewel Gallery, we showed The Arc of Time, which was open at the same time as Underneath It All. The Arc of Timefeatured the photography of Matthew Allred.