The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will host the artwork of four emerging and mid-career female artists from Arkansas whose pieces are featured in a statewide tour. 

“Arkansas Women to Watch: Organic Matters” is the fourth biennial tour of work by Arkansas women. The competitive exhibit is sponsored by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.  

The UALR Art Gallery will display the exhibit from Sept. 8 to Oct. 20 in the Maners/Pappas Gallery and Gallery III in the UALR Fine Arts Building.

Artists include Sandra Luckett, of Conway, Katherine Rutter, formerly of Little Rock, Dawn Holder, of Clarksville, and Melissa Wilkinson, of Bono.

A reception will be held for the artists at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the UALR Fine Arts Building. The reception will also honor Brian McCarty, an internationally exhibited artist and toy industry veteran whose photographs are on display in the UALR Art Gallery from Sept. 1 to Oct. 20.

Three of the Arkansas Women to Watch artists will give guest lectures at UALR during the exhibit, including:

• Melissa Wilkinson, 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, UALR Fine Arts Building Room 157
• Dawn Holder, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, UALR Fine Arts Building Room 157
• Sandra Luckett, 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, UALR Fine Arts Building Room 157

The Arkansas Women’s Actions for New Directions is a co-sponsor of the reception. The event will be held during Arkansas Peace Week in observance of the United Nations’ International Day of Peace.

Curator Courtney Taylor canvassed the state of Arkansas to select four contemporary female artists working with imagery and materials taken from the natural world. Their work includes mixed media and photographic installations, mixed-media drawings, and watercolor paintings.

Historically, society encouraged female artists to take the natural world as their subject. Rather than narrative art, which was thought to require invention and imagination beyond women’s capabilities, subjects such as botanical drawings, still-life paintings, and images of animals — merely requiring the powers of observation — were deemed suitable.

The theme of “Organic Matters” illuminates how contemporary artists re-contextualize images in nature to reflect upon the themes of sexuality, gender politics, and the abstract to redefine emerging relationships between women, nature, and art.

The UALR Art Gallery is located in the UALR Fine Arts Building and is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Beginning Sept. 10, the gallery will be open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays and 2 to 5 p.m. on Sundays.

For more information, contact UALR Gallery Director Brad Cushman at becushman@ualr.edu or 501.569.8977.

In the upper right photo, Dawn Holder’s “Once Upon a Time in the Forest of I’m Not Sweet Enough” is a featured work in the “Arkansas Women to Watch: Organic Matters” biennial tour of work by Arkansas women.