The Tarble Arts Center recently opened two exhibits that share one common theme: gender identity and breaking convention.

The first of the two to open is “Skirting Convention: Illinois Women’s Art 1840 to 1940,” which opened in May and is open through Sept. 16.

Michael Watts, the director of the Tarble Arts Center, is in charge of planning and organizing the exhibits at the Tarble.

“The exhibition provides information about a little known aspect of art in Illinois—women who were active as artists prior to World War II and the struggles and efforts it took to become recognized in what was then a very male-dominated field,” Watts said. “Also the exhibition provides an interesting survey of art styles of the time period covered, which includes styles (and subjects) that many people today find interesting and appealing.”

Channy Lyons is the exhibition’s original curator from the Lakeview Museum at Bradley

University, the original location of the exhibit.

“It is impossible to know exactly how many women living in Illinois between 1840 and 1940 dreamed of becoming artists,” Lyons said. “Many of them must have had the skill and desire to make art, but gaining access to the training and being accepted as a professional artist was much more difficult for women than for men.”

Lyons said things that were acceptable for these were women included craft activities, needlework, and china painting, and not the fine arts of portraiture and sculpture.

Watts said this oppression is among the things that can be learned from this exhibit.

“What these artists faced parallels what women of the same time period faced in many fields,” Watts said.” The other aspect to consider is the quality of the art these women artists produced—was there any reason in terms of the quality of the art they produced not to be taken as seriously as artists when compared to their male counterparts?”

Beyond this exhibit, the Tarble also have the “Jake in Transition from Female to Male by Clarissa Sligh” exhibit.

The exhibit opened Aug. 18 and is open through Sept. 23.

It focuses on Jake’s transition from “Deb” his given female name to Jake, his chosen male name after going through the gender reassignment process from 1996 to 2000.

“The exhibition was selected as the 2012-13 Tarble Humanities exhibition by and Janet Marquardt, the EIU Center for the Humanities Director, and I, to align with this year’s Humanities’ theme ‘Transformation’ and to introduce next year’s theme of ‘Authenticity,’” Watts said.

Clarissa Sligh is the artist and said this project opened her eyes to the complexity of the process but also made her think about other forms of transformation and oppression.

“As I observed and supported Jake in his changes so that his body could pass as a white man, I could not help but think about the fact that I will never be able to change my brown skin to escape the layer of oppression one experiences from being black in America,” Sligh said.

As these exhibits continue members of the Women’s Studies faculty will be giving talks on these subject.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or alwywialowski@eiu.edu.