St. Marks (16 Frames) 1967

Miriam Schapiro made this work, *St. Marks (16 Frames)* with a strong approach to geometric forms. You can sense the way the artist is thinking through a process, like the layering of blocks of color. The texture here is especially interesting. Schapiro pairs bold, opaque colors with a shimmering silver leaf, that gives the piece a beautiful reflective quality. Up close, you can almost see the individual strokes of the paintbrush that constructs the primary colored rectangles surrounding the silver squares. The artist is concerned with how the materiality of these forms come together, making a whole. Schapiro was always experimenting with collage, feminism and ornamentation. She once said, "In my art I celebrate the domestic skills of women as well as the shapes, colors, and patterns of women's lives." Think of artists like Harmony Hammond, or Judy Chicago, who used pattern and decoration to create a kind of radical, feminist art. It's all part of an ongoing conversation.