Santa Monica Artist Targets Eating Disorders

Santa Monica artist Janna Stern will show her series, "Measure for Measure: An Artistic Exploration on the Mythology of Eating Disorders" at Ventura College in Ventura, California. The show marks the West Coast debut of the series, which attempts to promote awareness of and education about eating disorders. In it, Stern uses her experience in digital art to "articulate the forces at work in eating disorders." 

According to "Eating Disorder Awareness and Prevention," five to ten million adolescent girls and women, and 1 million boys and men struggle with eating disorders and borderline conditions -- a sum total that triples the number of people living with AIDS in this the United States. Ventura Galleries is located at 4667 Telegraph Road in Ventura. For information call (805) 648-0983.


Worth Relishing

The Contested Concept of Womanhood
At UCSB’s Women’s Center until March 16
Sometimes I love this town. It doesn’t matter how small it is or where you go, there’s art tucked away into every little corner, just waiting for you to happen upon it and love it.

Such is the case in the little building way out at UCSB called the Women’s Center, whose walls are currently covered with a loose collection of several different women artists’ work, all exploring “The Contested Concept of Womanhood,” which for you non-Women’s Studies majors is just a fancy way of saying “female identity.” And as you might expect, there are as many diverse ways of exploring that idea as there are women. When you walk in and turn on the lights, you’ll see everything from dioramas, to menacingly thorned sculptures, to color photocopies of an elaborately illustrated journal, to traditional oil paintings.

I was particularly intrigued by Silver Boo’s dioramas. These weren’t your typical paper cut-outs from second grade about the Christmas Carol; they were multi-media extravaganzas: dolls taken out of their oppressive little houses and transformed into tiny, three-dimensional women with crazy hair. One navigates a huge jungle with a smile above the inscription, “When your life catches fire, walk! The slower view is magical.” While you’re there, be sure to take a look at Janna Stern’s series on eating disorders—so silently powerful, I doubt you’ll look at mannequins the same way again.

I know what you might be thinking—mannequins and eating disorders, multi-media artwork, female identity? But I assure you, this is a blessedly schlock-free zone. I even found the pieces light-hearted most of the time.
These women may be mixing media all over the place (one piece had Boggle cubes glued to it) and dealing with heavy subject matter, but I found myself connecting with them in a moment, each in their own way. They communicated without depriving me the joy of subtlety, and the various strange tools they used were merely the best ones to get that message across. (Yes, even the Boggle cubes worked.)

It’s only on view Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.—while the Women’s Center is open— and you’ll have to pay a little for parking, but if you’ve got a few moments, get yourself out there. Take a picnic or something. This is what life is about—these little jewels. After all, the slower view is magical.

—Olivia Kienzel