Five Women Artists Bring 'Psychedelic' Sense of Play to Pioneer Square Exhibit

Where can women artists gather to step away from the male gaze?

For a quintet of women artists in the Puget Sound, one place came to mind: a beauty shop. As a collective, the group took on the name Beauty Shop, a moniker that serves double duty, celebrating salons as third spaces and recognizing the artists themselves as beauty-making agents.

Now, the Beauty Shop — consisting of Arni Adler, Lynette Charters, Saundra Fleming (Columbia City Gallery), Kate Harkins (Columbia City Gallery), and Ingrid Sojit — will have a group exhibit at Gallery 110 called "The Party Mix," which runs through March 28. Influenced by Mickalene Thomas, an artist whose works "introduce a complex vision of what it means to be a woman," the quintet aims to present a collection that's both whimsical and irreverent.

Co-curator Sojit said collaborating with her friends on an exhibit has been years in the making. A spin-off of Hole in the Air, an international group of artists who began to meet over Zoom when the COVID-19 pandemic began, the friends wanted to form a smaller collective of women local to the Puget Sound area, with the ultimate goal of a group show. While the collective prefers to work on their art separately, they meet monthly to give each other critical feedback and encouragement. "I think you can see it. We definitely influence each other's art," Sojit said. 

As members of Gallery 110, a Pioneer Square nonprofit and artist-run collective that empowers emerging and established artists through curated exhibitions, Sojit and Fleming were the principal curators of the show.They went for an arrangement that is eye-catching and prompts curiosity for audiences. 

"We didn't want to over-curate. … We want [the show] to be fun and interpretive, kind of a psychedelic experience," Sojit shared. "All of us are quite intuitive in our creative process, so that was important for the presentation as well."

Though the longtime artists come to their work through the use of vastly different media, approaches, and experiences (some are formally trained through university and others are self-taught), there is a chaotic, visual unity to the collection — similar color palettes, a sense of play that belies the more serious topics, the appearance of figures in every painting, and thematic commonalities such as the effects of aging and historically underappreciated women who have had their contributions and visages disappeared from society. 

According to the collective artist statement, "The Party Mix" embodies the joy we achieve when we bring our art together. "In these [turbulent] political times, art is the thing we need to be looking toward right now," Sojit said.

"Beauty Shop Collective: The Party Mix" is showing at Gallery 110, 110 Third Ave. S., through March 28. Visitors to the exhibition can peruse and purchase supplementary materials to support the artists, such as the official show catalogue, small doodles by Fleming, and Charters's book "The Missing Women Series."