'Lilian Garcia-Roig, ‘La Infanta Teotihuacana,’ 1995, Serigraph, Museum Purchase through funds donated in memory of Robert F. Puterbaugh, Sr., Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 2001.14.5.

It is no great revelation that, in the history of art, female artists have been consistently overlooked and underrepresented. That same history has also placed far greater esteem on paintings and sculptures — seemingly examples of "finished" or "final" works of art — than on works on paper.  Indeed, the arts of drawing and printmaking are commonly viewed as studies for something yet to be completed or, in the case of prints, as multipliable and thus not singular or original.  But rather than inferior, unfinished, or unoriginal, works on paper can be instructive and revelatory precisely because they offer an intimacy that other art forms do not, minimizing the distance between us and the artist, highlighting her careful hand and line-work, and offering immediate access to her process and experimentation. 

Whether sketches, etchings, or printed books, works on paper gain their value as showcases for their creators' expertise in what we call draftsmanship, the drawing skill-set that forms the root of all traditional two-dimensional art and a problematically gendered term in itself.  In this installation, we take the enormous talents of draftswomen — or, better, draftspersons — as our subject, bringing both women artists in our collection and their equally worthy works on paper to the fore.