“I think whether it’s a sculpture, drawings, or photographs, the images we most respond to are images of other people,” said Arlene Love.
That message encapsulates the last seven decades of Love’s lifetime of art. And no matter the medium, Love felt comfortable expressing the highs and lows of womanhood in her work.
“Women artists had a hard time, I remember,” she said. “A woman painter was called a ‘lady painter.’ A female sculptor, of course, was called a ‘sculptress.'”
Love recalls experiencing discrimination in the professional art world as a woman. However, she pressed on and kept creating.
“You just keep staying true to your own vision,” she said. “You don’t have to stay inside the lines.”
Although her days of creating new work are in the past, Love is curating a collection of her old work for the near future.
She will be honored with a solo exhibit alongside the citywide (re)FOCUS festival, which highlights women in the visual arts.