Pejman Mokhtari
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, Edvard’s The Scream, and, now, Edwards’ Muffin Tin. Rebecca Edwards, an artist/professor at the College of the Canyons, recently had a lecture and gallery showing of her art work.
Edwards has been creating art since 1979. In 1983, she got her B.F.A. at Printmaking and Drawing San Francisco Art Institute. Then in 1984, she got her first publication in Artweek.
In 1992, Edwards got her M.F.A. at Painting and Drawing California State University. She then became pick of the week in the LA Weekly by Peter Frank in 1995.
On Sept. 17, 2008, she has turned her canvas into a gallery for everyone to see.
Edwards considers her art as a “feminine point of view” and the “idea of what it is to be a woman.” Her work explores a side of art that to some may be percieved as “disturbing” and “really creepy,” said Larry Hurst, gallery director at College of the Canyons.
Hurst explains how Edwards’ art has a “thematic element to the work that binds it” and a “certain surreal attempt to it.” When the artwork is explained on why hair is the main essential element, it does not seem as “creepy.”
The hair is “suppose to be seductive” since it’s “beautiful and shiny and long, but nasty when you work on it,” said Edwards.
Edwards also explains how some of the hair she uses is real, but most of it is “synthetic.”
Edwards tries to show the dark and tangled side of hair and how every woman uses it to show a side of beauty and poise. Every artwork involved hair that was “ratty and tore up,” said Edwards.
Edwards explains how “women have to be a certain shape” and it shows a sign of “entrapment.” That women are always suppose to be “beautiful” and “dressed up” with the right clothes, right make-up, and, of course, the “beautiful shiny long” hair that fingers can go through.
Dennis Morrow, a mathamatics professor at College of the Canyons, said that Edwards’ art is “very dynamic” and a “different take on art.”
Edwards’ had a certain piece of artwork called “Muffin Tin,” which contained a muffin tin, with rubber nipples on each muffin holder, aligned with fur. The Muffin Tin has “a real feminist statement,” said Hurst.
Edwards explains that the “fur is the idea of the trophy wife” and “the muffins is the idea of the woman being the caretaker.” All that is left is the rubber nipples and Edwards describes how they are a reference towards “motherhood.”
Jonathan Chai, 26, art major, desrcibes Edwards’ artwork as “cryptic” and “nurturing.” Chai becomes more drawn to the piece referred to as “Quit it” because “it’s not so cryptic, it’s very obvious.”
Since most of her piece represent femininity, Chai related to “Quit it” the most because according to him, it is “not too feminine.”
Everyone has hair whether it is on your head, on your chest, under your arms and even in private areas, however, Edwards brings it all together to create a gallery of art that shows the hairy side of art.