‘Women Take Flight’

Fayetteville Underground’s first national juried exhibition takes off Thursday.

“Women Take Flight” was created to coincide with the Air Race Classic, an all-female air race that starts in Pasco, Wash., and ends in Fayetteville, says Martha Molina, Fayetteville Underground member artist and a past participant in the Air Race Classic. The fourday race spans 2,137 nautical miles, and all the racers have to arrive by 5 p.m. June 21, she adds.

Molina says she has a lot of friends that are flying in the race, and when Fayetteville Underground members were talking about wanting to do a juried show, she threw out the idea of doing a themed exhibition called “Women Take Flight,” leaving the interpretation up to the artists. Submissions were required to be twodimensional, she adds.

More than 60 submissions were received from across the nation, such as California, North Carolina, Texas, Nevada, New York and Florida, Molina says, along with local submissions.

Fran Otten, a well-known watercolor artist, was chosen as the juror, selecting 26 pieces that she felt were the best work.

“I was very pleasantly surprised to see that some were from Arkansas,” Molina says.

She notes that a few of the local works she likes a great deal are “Girl Unbound,” a photograph by Terry Lynne Dushan of Fayetteville that shows a woman with a tambourine, and a watercolorof the Sudan called “Flight Out” by Kathleen Barta of Springdale.

Molina adds that some of the pieces in the show are “quite unusual.” One that really stood out to Molina was of a pilot since she is a private pilot. The carbon pigment print work is called “Self Portrait” and is by Erin Tetterton of Hampstead, N.C. It is black-and-white and graphic in nature, showing a woman with a headset on to communicate with a tower, Molina says. Around her, the cockpit of a plane and instruments can be seen, she says.

“I think that one really captures the essence of the show,” she says.