ART, WOMENGlynis BerryGlynis Berry212008-04-06T15:26:00Z2008-04-06T15:26:00Z15683242277380311.5604NORTH FORK ARTS PROJECT: SPRING PROGRAM 2008ART, WOMEN, FEMINISM: THE CULT OF THE GODDESSA North Fork Arts Project in Collaboration with Floyd Memorial Library, Peconic Landing, and Art Sites: Joyce Beckenstein, CoordinatorArt, Women Feminism: The Cult of the Goddess, a conversation about what it means to be a woman, goes full circle, from earth mother goddesses to eco-artists who seek through their art to reclaim her life-giving gifts. Renaissance Venuses, Barbie Dolls, surreal female imagery, and eons of women honored at Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party are included in this lively interdisciplinary dialogue between artists and art lovers.Wednesday, April 23, Peconic Landing; 4:00 pmSigns and Symbols of the Goddess, a slide-illustrated talk by Joyce Beckenstein, explores the visual symbols of the earth mother goddess, and compares and contrasts them to contemporary images that reflect the conflicted and contradictory identities of women as portrayed in commercial advertising and in the art of today’s feminists. Free to public, Contact Dominic Antignano: 477-3800, extension 229 for reservations. Sunday, May 18 – Art Sites, Riverhead – 2:00 pm With Kid Gloves, a conversation with artist Claire Watson about her sculpture, explores how certain objects resonate a feminine history, however imperfectly remembered. The artist invites the audience to talk about her work in an exhibition that features ladies’ kid leather gloves, altered, fitted with skeletal armatures, and stuffed with sawdust. Transformed and reinvented, the gloves become discrete objects that recall- and call into question- roles that have defined womankind through the ages: her fragility, her confinement, her escape through play and costume, and her domestic identity, a role that the artist has literally stitched into her surreal imagery. (Claire Watson is a 2007 Artists’ Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a public program of NYFA.)Free to public; Contact Glynis Berry, 591-2401 for reservations.Friday, May 23 – 7:30 am – 6:00 pm Excursion to The Brooklyn Museum and Botanical Gardens. This day long excursion includes a guided tour of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, a hallmark installation that helped define the Feminist Movement in the 1970s, a self-guided tour of the new Sackler Center for Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum, and time to enjoy the burst of spring at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Fees: $48 pre registration; $53 after April 30; includes transportation, tours, admissions; lunch on own at museum or gardens. Buses leave from Peconic Landing (7:30 am) and Mattituck Shopping Center (8:00 am). Make checks payable and send to Floyd Memorial Library, 539 First Street, Greenport, 11944; {Peconic Landing residents may leave checks with Dominic Antignano. Fees are non-refundable. Contact Poppy Johnson, 477-0660Saturday, May 31; Floyd Memorial Library; Greenport, 3:00 pm Eco-Feminism: Eve Defends Her Garden, an exhibition of works by Jan Culbertson and a talk by the artist about Eco-Feminism, enlightens us about this relatively new contemporary art genre that intersects the worlds of art, women and nature. Finding a strong connection between the oppression of women and parallel violations of nature, many women artists like Ms. Culbertson have invented and reinvented numerous contemporary art forms to express their outrage, commitment and call to action. Ms. Culbertson explains this movement as it finds expression in site specific installations, rituals, performances, the recycling of detritus into works of art, and as the subject of her own compelling paintings which glitter deceptively as if they were bejeweled rather than toxic. Free to public