The Sorority Series

 

            The Sorority Series is a series of large (26”x40”) graphite drawings of Filipina Dominican nuns. This series is a contemporary sociological portrait series, and each drawing is an individual portrait of a particular woman that I have known. From tiny school photographs I drew each image in large oval vignettes on paper. Each subject is placed against a background that vaguely resembles a halo. I used graphite on paper because I wanted to use a traditional drawing material with which I use to explore each face, and because it allows me to achieve the preciousness I desire for the finished work.

 

            My reasons for choosing these subjects are multiple. Raised Catholic, I was alternately fearful and fascinated by nuns in my childhood. I was trained to be respectful of and to consider them as a class apart, better than the average person as they are supposed to be closer to god. As an adult, I’ve had Dominican Sisters as coworkers. Atheism and developing peer relationships with nuns has humanized them for me. The awe and fear have long disappeared, but my fascination with nuns has remained.

 

            It is difficult for me to understand how religious orders can exist in a post-feminist secular nation like the United States. The position of Sister no longer has the exalted status it did during medieval times and the Renaissance, and the cloister is not the crucial means of economic and political shelter it often is in the third world. So how can women choose a lifestyle that is no longer seen as viable in this culture? In a culture that worships individualism and celebrity, how can these women choose to sacrifice their individual identity in favor of obedience and group identity? In this series I am exploring this theme of identity, and I hope to bring out the individualism of each subject. Every drawing has forced me to examine each subject with care, hoping that their faces will somehow reveal the mystery of the cloister to me.

            In this series I am also playing with the concept of the dignified and revered “holy person,” or martyr. Traditionally a religious Sister would only be portrayed in portraiture if she was the founder or prioress of an order, or a saint. The Sisters portrayed in my series are average women of average rank in their religious order. In contemporary society childless, dependent women who live in a patriarchal sorority are often treated as antiquated and undignified relics of perpetual girlhood. These “relics” become objects of juvenilia and ridicule. In a culture in which they no longer fit, nuns are kitsch. The subjects of my work have dignity, but there is a definite kitsch factor in the old-fashioned style in which they are rendered.

 

            Stylistically this series is influenced by Kurt Kauper’s male hockey players, Steven Shearer’s “Longhairs” series, and also by Flemish and British portraiture painters. My choice of materials was also inspired by my childhood obsession with Garth Williams’ children’s book illustrations.

 

            The use of repetition and large scale are essential to the work because they amplify both the similarities and the differences of the subjects, and make my exploration of group versus individual identity more obvious. Continuation of this series is a further exploration of the themes of individualism, reverence, and kitsch.

           

Gabrielle Gamboa, Fall 2006