Erica by Anne Luther
BAGS:
Portraits by Anne Luther



Maggi by Anne Luther

_______________________________
Bags will be on view at Frameworks, Caruso Woods Fine Art Gallery, through April 30th. 20% of the artist proceeds will be donated to Girls Inc. of Greater Santa Barbara. Frameworks is located at 131 East De La Guerra St. For more information call (805) 965-1812.

WHILE PORTRAITS OF WOMEN often try to capture the elusive beauty of clear skin, a sensual curve, or the flash of an eye, occasionally a portrait reaches deeper - to the very spirit of the woman it embodies.
Anne Luther's Bags...You Are What You Carry at Frameworks/Caruso Woods Gallery is such an instance. The 26 tastefully arranged bags, created, found, and assembled by Luther, mark the lives of 26 women - both real (several represent live Santa Barbara women and others, women from around the world) and imaginary - that populate Luther's inner landscape.
Find there the famous and the unknown. "Viewers have an opportunity to learn about the sitter, not in the usualway of studying the face, the

surroundings, the dress or undress," Luther explained, "but through a representational assemblage hand bag."
Anne Luther studied art at a New York City's Parson School of design, New York University and at the Taos Institute of Art. A member of the Santa Barbara Art Association, her award winning work has been featured in numerous galleries, solo and juried group exhibitions. Anne has received private commissions as well as commercial ones and is the recipient of the John Profant Foundation's Michelangelo Award. Her work in in several private collections. She is the past President of the Santa Barbara Visual Arts Alliance and is a current trustee of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

"When my mother died, she left me very few material things. A woman who's mantra was "out with the old and in with the new" erased my past and discarded the talismans of my childhood in her attempt to be "modern".
Shortly after her death I purchased a vintage alligator had bag, in a local antique shop. It was identical to the one my mother carried when I was a child. Too young to have my own, I marveled at the mysteries of this grown up accessory and the contents hidden inside. Outwardly it was a symbol of all that she was, fashionable, chic and rich. Inside was her own secret life.
I began to search for items which formed that internal secret life, a gold compact, a Revlon lipstick, a jeweled encrusted pillbox filled with tiny white tablets, a silk handkerchief embroidered with my mother's initial, and a letter she always carried and which, later in my life, I imagined was from a secret lover. Along the way I came to understand the importance a handbag plays in a woman's life. This simple act of creating a shrine to my mother, turned into a two year journey of discovery.
- Anne Luther...


Mary by Anne Luther