Local artists Fu’una and Joanna Vespia have featured historic and barrier-breaking female artists in a mural series that pay homage to their lives and work. The inspiration for the project theme stemmed from Brent Alan Bachelder’s beloved former mural, deaccessioned during the 195 reconstruction, which featured great works of art from the Western canon all painted by male artists. While not produced by The Avenue Concept, the landscape also includes an adjacent artwork by Ysanel Torres. Her nearby painted utility box explores similar themes and features portraits of Frida Kahlo and Coretta Scott King.

Fu’una is primarily a two-dimensional artist specializing in murals and soft pastel. While stylistically fluid, her artwork is most easily recognized for its sensitivity and expert use of color, and animals and botanicals often appear in her work. Joanna Vespia is a Rhode Island artist with strong connections to the local art and music scene. She maintains a focus on realism and nature in her works. Her technical command of both brush and spray paint media are hallmarks of her practice and strongly evidenced in her piece for this project.

Fu’una: Featuring Georgia O’Keeffe

Fu’una chose to feature Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, best known for her paintings of the New York skyline, radical and enlarged flowers, and the New Mexico landscape, where she lived for the later part of her life. Fu’una juxtaposed a late portrait of the artist depicted in her iconic clothing against a detailed view of an earlier 1945 painting.

Of the work, Fu’una describes: “Georgia is considered one of the most photographed artists of all time. Even after a century her style has an enduring impact… When she moved to New Mexico, her focus shifted to the natural environment and she did several pieces of abstracted bones. This background piece is a well known painting from that series.”

“I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Fu’una: Featuring Yayoi Kusama

Fu’una also featured Yayoi Kusama, an avante-garde sculptor, painter, and one of the most renowned living artists still working today. Her practice centers around immersive installations, sculpture, painting, and fashion. Fu’una chose to feature Kusama’s iconic polka dots, which feature throughout her mixed media practice. The dots appear in one of Kusama’s often used palettes of black and yellow. The portrait is based upon a more recent photograph that celebrates the artist’s bold personal style.

“Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment.” – Yayoi Kusama

Joanna Vespia: Featuring Alma Thomas

Joanna Vespia chose to feature Alma Thomas, who emerged in the 1960s as an exuberant colorist, abstracting shapes and patterns from the natural world around her, particularly trees and flowers. Her eventual palette and technique—considerably lighter and looser than in her earlier representational works and dark abstractions—reflected her long study of color theory and the watercolor medium. Thomas became an important role model for women, African Americans, and older artists. She was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. Vespia chose to show the artist active in her craft and rendered in monochrome as a foil to the rainbow spectrum of colors featured in her artwork.

“Through color, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.” – Alma Thomas