Margaret Kilgallen

1.

I like how the women are standing together, in a binding kind of way like they are
supporting each other.
2. Margaret Kilgallen, Untitled, c. 2000. Acrylic on canvas, 26.5 x 33 inches. Used yellows,
reds and browns.
3. http://www.art21.org/texts/margaret-kilgallen/interview-margaret-kilgallen-influences-trainmarking-and-graffiti
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/aug/08/margaret-kilgallen-art-graffiti
http://www.art21.org/texts/margaret-kilgallen/interview-margaret-kilgallen-heroines-andworking-in-the-community
4. Margaret Kilgallens choice of hand-making everything and not using anything mechanical
interests me because I also like to make things by hand. I enjoy crafting and making things
that could be brought at the store for cheaper at home. She was interested in the way that the
human hand is not perfect, and that imperfection is beauty. I feel like sometimes I think like
this when I want my art to be perfect, being a perfectionist, but I end up giving up and being
ok with what I have. One of her purposes for making art was to inspire young women to
work and to be independent because there is too much emphasis on being pretty and skinny. I

agree with her 100%, we should care more about what a women can do and not about what
she looks like. A women can be independent. Margarets background included creating
murals and graffiti art, often of heroines and strong-looking women. She says she paints
women possible because she is one, and they often inspire her.

Judy Pfaff
1.

2. Judy Pfaff, There is a Field, I Will Meet You There (Rumi), 2014, steel, plexiglass, florescent
lights, plastic, expanded foam
3. http://judypfaff.weebly.com/biography.html
http://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=27
4. The first thing that I stood out to me when I read up on Judy Pfaff was that her mother was a
very important person in her life who always pushed her to be her best, and I feel similar
with my mother. Pfaff is known to use recycled materials like wire, plastic tubing, and fabric
along with natural ones like tree roots, bark, and fungi in her installations/sculptures. I love
nature and using elements from outside reminds me of something I would do if I were to
make sculptures. Her work is said to have emotional feeling and being emotional myself, I
can relate to it. In one interview she talks about how she is curious about science and the
structure of things, and I feel like I am like that, too. A very big influence for Judy was Postminimalist sculpture as a whole, along with individual artworks by varying other artists.

Expressive, explosive, chaotic, but never too much for the eye to handle describes her work.
She gathers books and magazines about physics, medicine, biology, zoology, astronomy,
Western and Eastern religions to prepare for her creations.

Kiki Smith
1.

5. Kiki Smith, 2 Moons, 1996

6. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2003/kikismith/
http://www.jca-online.com/ksmith.html
7. The first thing that caught my eye about Kiki Smith was that she was interested in the

relationship between animals and humans. Being an animal lover, this made me interested in
what her art was about. I also liked how when I was looking at her art I saw a lot of fairytale
pictures like Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood. She has a theme of Feminine
Contexts which I appreciate being a women. In an interview, she stated that her work is
ninety percent psychological, and that someone in an article once said that the two main
systems that she worked on were systems that were weak in her body. She thought maybe
she was doing some kind of self-healing, working on building up parts of her that were weak
by doing this art. I feel like that is what I do with my art, I am trying to improve on

something that I thought I was weak in, which was fitting in. She is also a firm believer in
standing out from the crowd, and not shaping in to predetermined ideologies, trying to
reclaim your body. Religion, government, health, gender definition can all be a negative
influence and I understand that. I believe in being whatever you want and not trying to be
like everyone else in the world.