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Many Voices, Many Visions: Inside Her Collective Voice
- SAC
- Mar 13
- 4 min read
Her Collective Voice brings together artists exploring identity, memory, and personal history through a wide range of artistic approaches. In this exhibition at the Suwanee Arts Center, no single visual language dominates. Instead, viewers encounter a diverse field of perspectives shaped by the experiences of women artists.
Winner announcements
These award-winning works are just a glimpse of the many beautiful pieces in the exhibition. Visit the gallery to experience the full show, and don’t forget to vote for your favorite artwork for the People’s Choice Award.
Review by Sana Aslam, March 09, 2026
At the Suwanee Arts Center’s Her Collective Voice: A Women’s Art Exhibition, women’s art does not look any one way, because, well, women themselves do not look any one way, both in how they appear in the world and in how they observe it.
Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter a wide range of artworks across media, subjects, and styles. No single visual language dominates the exhibition. Instead, the curation embraces a diversity of approaches. The result is a show with something for nearly every viewer. Figurative paintings of women appear across different cultural contexts and stances, alongside florals and landscapes. In some pieces, the two merge, placing women directly within natural settings.
Many of the artists were present at the opening reception, offering visitors a chance to hear the stories behind the work.
Vanessa Prat’s piece Love Is pairs floral arrangements with painted canvas. For Prat, floral design is a deeply personal practice. Her engagement with it began during her late sister’s wedding celebrations, and more recently she created corsages for her granddaughter’s prom. Love Is offers viewers an arrangement to cherish, suggesting that love often takes the form of something offered, like flowers.
Claudia Apperson’s pastel work Among the Living; Matthew 8:22 recounts a moment from a visit to a cemetery in New Orleans with a dear friend. Amid the grayness of the setting, her friend began speaking with a stranger, the two connecting over their experiences of life. When Apperson later revisited the photograph from that day, she was reminded of the biblical passage in which Jesus tells a follower to “let the dead bury their own dead” and to be among the living. The contrast of color and vitality against a muted background is striking, emphasizing the immediacy of life.
Julie Kral’s oil and acrylic self-portraits present powerful studies of presence. Natural elements play a central role in the compositions: Late Summer’s Eve engages with wind, while Hopeful Gaze evokes the sky. Kral’s figures stand with a quiet confidence that anchors each painting.
Morgan Slaton, who received an honorable place for Borrowed Womb, draws inspiration from the film Alien, where women’s bodies are harvested for alien life. Another sculpture of hers in the exhibition, She Keeps Herself, depicts a woman’s hand grasping her own foot. As a dancer, hands and feet have long held special significance for Slaton. In a sculptural tradition that has historically featured men rendering women’s bodies, She Keeps Herself reads as a moving image of bodily autonomy. Slaton shared that she often creates a work before wondering what it might evoke for viewers, which ultimately informs her piece’s title. She noted that titling a piece can be one of the most difficult parts of the process.
During the awards announcement, an engaging exchange unfolded between artists Janet Paszkowski, who received third place for Cynara, She Who Emerges from the Thistle, and Viviana Corso, whose oil and watercolor paintings of birds are also on view. The two shared a fascination with faces that appear within flowers—Paszkowski’s painting centers such an image, and Corso recalled once painting a bloom that similarly resembled a face.
The exhibition was judged by artist Drema Montgomery, and the winners were announced by SAC Executive Director Athea King. Morgan Slaton received honorable place for Borrowed Womb; Janet Paszkowski received third place for Cynara, She Who Emerges from the Thistle; Vicki Gladden received second place for Window View; and Marsy Santos received first place for Americans of Samaná.
The exhibition’s Best in Show, Americans of Samaná, presents a portrait of Santos’ grandmother. In the painting, her hair transforms into three plants representing the past, present, and future. The left takes the form of a cotton flower, the center a plantain tree, and the right a palm tree. The imagery reflects Santos’ own family history. Her ancestors were among formerly enslaved people who left the United States for the Caribbean after the Civil War in search of a better, calmer life. After her father passed away in 2021, Santos began researching and documenting that history more deeply.
Set against a joyful yellow background, the portrait carries a sense of optimism. The white of the figure’s blouse is drawn from the color and texture of her grandmother’s home—old and weathered, yet still standing. Santos also reflected on the challenges of pursuing art while coming from a developing country, noting that not everyone in her family or community always understood her choice. Inspired by this, she says she sometimes thinks of people as abandoned buildings. They may appear aged or worn, and we may judge or overlook them for staying “stuck in their ways,” yet they laid the foundations that made later possibilities feasible. Santos describes the work, then, as a tribute to her grandmother and to the earlier generations whose dreams made her own path a reality.
The current exhibition also spotlights Françoise Lama-Solet, a longtime SAC member and supporter who will be moving at the end of the month. Her acrylic works, described by Apperson as “incredibly innovative,” speak to Lama-Solet’s enduring influence within the local arts community.
Taken together, Her Collective Voice suggests that women’s art is less a single style than a field of perspectives. The show affirms that art by women cannot be neatly defined, and its power lies in that very diversity.
The Suwanee Arts Center held the opening reception for Her Collective Voice: A Women’s Art Exhibition on March 7 from 12–4 p.m. The exhibition is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and runs through April 25, 2026.
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