Jo Ann Chaus
Conversations with Myself
This work, a selection from a five year body of work Conversations with Myself, is about moving forward, looking out, looking back and around, for answers and clues to understand and digest the world within and around me. I am looking to discover, to become—more, and to understand my connection through time, of the past and present. Dressed in costumes of the era, adopted or inherited, I personify a woman of the 1950's, the era of my birth. I channel women who came before me, the constraints imposed on them, by society, family and themselves, as individuals, wives, mothers and the resignation, surrender, and the strength and courage they harbor within.
The work is an homage to and for women who have and continue to endure, acquiesce and struggle with the weight and responsibilities carried as wives and mothers, the traditional female roles, compromising personal desires, aspirations and sometimes unrealized potentials. The ability to access and explore these ideas through art reflects the potential to grow, and become, more.