Noël Ash

press release: Noël Ash announces that her MA show "Aquaphobic" opens in two weeks in the Art Lofts Gallery at 111. N. Frances Street. The show will feature Ash's characteristic fresh paint handling, and depicts the artist and her daughter in fierce battle over whether or not the three year old will succumb to being bathed.

Noel Ash is local painter whose work confronts a woman's struggle to meet today's high standards in child rearing while also fulfilling her mandate to be a self-actualized human being. Her oversized canvases confront the viewer with a woman on the edge, barely keeping it together in the face of the tantrums of a truculent child.

"For two months my daughter refused to bathe," says Noel. "The regularly repeated event of struggling to get her into the water became for me an example of the sheer pointless misery of many of the tasks of housewifing. It seemed like an effective lense for looking at the myth our culture propogates that housework feeds a biological need in women to nurture, turning housework into a satisfying activity. Actually, I find housework to be what it is: a chore. This includes many of the tasks involving my ofttimes delightful children. For me, last spring, the worst was the bath."

The opening reception will be held Saturday, February 16, at the Art Lofts Gallery, 111 N. Frances St., from 6-8pm. The same reception will celebrate the opening of another show, "The Little Death", by artist Autumn Brown. Both shows run until February 21.