Celebration
July 9 – September 1, 2016
Maureen Selwood was born in Dublin, Ireland, and has lived in the U.S. since her teenage years. She received a B.A. from the College of New Rochelle, and an M.F.A. from The Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in 1971. She has been on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts in the Program in Experimental Animation since 1991. Selwood has received fellowships and grants from various institutions including the American Film Institute, the Jerome Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and the C.O.L.A. Individual Artist’s Grant.
Selwood is particularly well known as an independent animated filmmaker since 1978. Her recent exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery was her first one artist show of her sculpture & works on paper.
by Carolina A. Miranda
Los Angeles artist and animator Maureen Selwood watched with the rest of the world as the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot became famous for the unauthorized concerts it staged in locations all around Moscow, from a prison garage to Red Square.
After the activist musicians took to the altar of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior in early 2012 for an impromptu punk jam — with the refrain "Mother of God, drive Putin away!" — some of the band members were convicted of hooliganism and served time in prison. But the video of the young women, decked out in bright dresses, colored tights and a rainbow's worth of balaclavas, prancing maniacally before the Cathedral's gold-leaf altarpiece, turned the band members into global activist-celebrities practically overnight.
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Inspired by the medieval trial of Joan of Arc, the treason of anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl, and the contemporary punk prayer of Pussy Riot, Maureen Selwood’s Sounding the Note of A grapples with the uncompromising feminine. Selwood extols the power of sensuality and thought to transcend violence at Rosamund Felsen Gallery.
