Fern Shaffer

Fern Shaffer
Fern Shaffer, Winter Solstice ritual, 1985.
Fern Shaffer, performing Winter Solstice at Lake Michigan, © 1985
Born1944
Chicago, Illinois, US
EducationColumbia College Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago
Known forPainting, Performance Art
MovementEnvironmental art, Ecofeminism
WebsiteFern Shaffer

Fern Shaffer (born 1944) is an American painter, performance artist, lecturer and environmental advocate. Her work arose in conjunction with an emerging Ecofeminism movement that brought together environmentalism, feminist values and spirituality to address shared concern for the Earth and all forms of life.[1] She first gained widespread recognition for a four-part, shamanistic performance cycle, created in collaboration with photographer Othello Anderson in 1985. Writer and critic Suzi Gablik praised their work for its rejection of the technocratic, rationalizing mindset of modernity, in favor of communion with magic, the mysterious and primordial, and the soul.[2] Gablik featured Shaffer's Winter Solstice (1985) as the cover art for her influential book, The Reenchantment of Art, and wrote that the ritual opened "a lost sense of oneness with nature and an acute awareness of ecosystem" that offered "a possible basis for reharmonizing our out-of-balance relationship with nature."[3]

Shaffer is also known for feminist and ecology-themed paintings that critics have described as romantic, dizzying and panoramic,[4] spiritual,[5] and capable of combining the scientific, personal and universal.[6] She has been a long-time activist for women in art through her involvement and leadership at the Chicago alternative art space Artemisia Gallery and work with the national Women's Caucus for Art. In addition to exhibiting work throughout the U.S. and internationally, Shaffer has been active as an arts administrator, public lecturer, and educator.[7]

  1. ^ Diamond, Irene and Gloria Feman Orenstein, Ed. Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
  2. ^ Morgan, David. "Enchantment, Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment," in Re-Enchantment, edited by James Elkins, David Morgan. New York: Routledge, 2009, p. 16. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
  3. ^ Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment of Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992, p. 45. ISBN 978-0-5002768-9-1. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
  4. ^ Grabner, Michelle. Review, New Art Examiner, September 1991, Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 38.
  5. ^ Markovich, Annie. "Fern Shaffer at 116 Gallery," New Art Examiner, Vol. 32, No. 2, November/December 2017, p33. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
  6. ^ O'Brien, Patricia. Review, New Art Examiner, Summer 1983, p. 17.
  7. ^ Archives of American Art entry, Fern Shaffer.[1] Retrieved February 17, 2018.