Artists on Fire: Deborah Faye Lawrence and Nancy Kiefer

Hats off to Bonfire Gallery for another cutting-edge exhibition with two of the most outrageous artists in Seattle. Deborah Faye Lawrence and Nancy Kiefer both push the boundaries of what is acceptable, but in strikingly different ways.

The title “Still Hung Up,” refers to a phrase that used to refer to passionate affairs gone wrong. But now it means the artists’ obsession with creativity.

Nancy Kiefer Eye Rise 22” x 30” mixed media in paper

Nancy Kiefer has a long career of creating insanely confrontational, close up images of women. They are sassy, angry, beautiful, naughty and, recently, tragic in her mothers of the disappeared from her “Fierce Woman” series. These are not easy to look at, the colors are harsh, highly saturated and discordant. Kiefer’s use of black line is aggressive.

But what immediately almost overwhelms us is the power of all of these women, whether they undulate like a flame as in “Eye Rise,”

Nancy Kiefer Gorgon (protector)Oil on canvas

offer protection with a flip of a long nailed hand in “Gorgon (Protector)”,

Puppet Oil on wood 12” x 9”Nancy Kiefer

or hold a terrifying witch mask in “Puppet.”

More anguished are the faces of the mothers of the disappeared: they convey a psychological reality of screaming suffering with gaping mouths, yellow streams that could be tears flowing from all directions, wisps of white cross a face like a ghost passing.

Kiefer is a storyteller as well as a painter, and we see stories in these faces. She exposes the grotesque in our public world with these private women. I am reminded of both Jean-Michel Basquiat’s rawness and Picasso’s portraits that layer emotional states from outside to inside. But Kiefer boldly strips away the outside and gives us only the inside and it is, of course, also her own intense emotional experiences that inform these works.

Deborah Faye Lawrence disrupts us with collaged images that create unexpected juxtapositions paired with an intense choice of words and references. Like Kiefer, her women are strong and naughty. In “Hen Party” four rooster headed acrobats perch on others only partially seen. They triumphantly hold at bay an intense onslaught of pointed streamers from every direction, each with a different barbed expletive for women.

“Psychic Revolution” features a busty woman built up from multiple robot-like pieces. She holds out her arms as if to present herself to us but she also holds at bay dozens of smiling teeth filled mouths.

Lawrence frequently uses tin tv trays as the ground for her complex collages. The oval format reinforces the image of the many crescent shaped mouths. The text, collaged from cut out words, reads “In 1985 a psychic told me that in all my past lives I was a man.” So we see the figure at the center now as androgynous and dominating all the teeth and mouths out to eat her up.

In “Fluid Self Portrait,” another collage on a tray, a 1950s woman with pearls and heavy glasses balances spherical wooden tops on two fingers of each hand. Her body is an unstable stack of plates balanced on another top, in a landscape of tops. The whole suggests an impossible situation even as the woman beams a huge cheerful smile. The message is clear.

Lawrence has been making powerful collages for decades. She addresses specific political events, feminism, and personal history, as she undermines cliches and takes on causes. Her sardonic humor wakes us up.

BONFIRE’s small gallery in the International District explodes with feminist energy. These intense artworks show us how to resist the multiple abuses of women’ rights world-wide. Here in our country, of course. we have the imminent loss of the right to an abortion.

These artists tell us we are already angry and outrageous, now we need to act on it!