Three brilliant women artists Michelle Robinson, Katie Murken and Deborah Oropallo are finding inventive ways to use the motif of glass and transparency to allude to what keeps one inside and how we can push through to the other side. 

Los Angeles based Michelle Robinson’s gorgeous “Glass House” photograph hits you right in the gut. Her work explores the psychological and the physical. This idea of “home” is definitely at the heart of it all, where the domestic space is defined and barriers or possibilities are defined. What is home for you? 

While it can be natural to be fired up during these times, it is a humbling studio process full of maternal love that breathes healing and contemplation for Oakland based artist Katie Murken.  In her newly launched artist film created by Mushi Wooseong James, she states, “I saw in these materials the potential that what doesn’t matter, starts to matter…. It starts to be something you can embrace and acknowledge, maybe even share with someone else, …and it becomes power instead of oppression”. Katie creates art as a way to transmute injustices to women into a source of power.  She works with everyday, abject materials such as plastic bags that contain the essence of these injustices and uses her process to transform them into works of art that reveal the beauty inherent in the act of giving care. 

San Francisco Bay Area based artist Deborah Oropallo’s photographic work on paper “Tsar” is truly an empowering artwork to the conversation! Bold, sexy and dynamic, this work provided Courtesy of Gallery 16 is all about pushing through these gestures and poses of power and seduction considering the costumes we wear to speak about who is in charge. Part of a series Guise featured at the fabulous local de Young Museum in San Francisco, Deborah pushes us through centuries of history busting through the glass ceiling indeed of perception with “Tsar”. Ask us more about this work and other works in her Guise Series!