User:Amzvanderlaan/gap analysis

Gap analysis

 * What is the title of the article in which you identified a gap. If no article exists at all, what should the title be?

June Leaf                        (no existing article)
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 * Document the gap you found, describe how you identified it, and analyze its impact on knowledge.

Having become interested in sculpture recently, I decided to research a contemporary feminist sculptor. I came upon an article entitled "20 Contemporary (Women) Artists You Oughta Know" and was immediately intrigued by June Leaf's sculpture Man as Gutter Spout. I decided to do a quick search on Wikipedia of June Leaf and was unpleasantly surprised to find that one did not exist. As an artist with an upcoming exhibit at the Whitney Museum in April, it is imperative that there is an accessible and familiar source in which the vast public viewing Leaf's work can be contextually acquainted with her.

June Leaf’s sole mention on Wikipedia is that of “Spouse(s)” under the photographer Robert Frank’s page-- an unfortunately usual occurrence for female artists who are confined to the domestic label. She appears once at the top of the page in the short biographical box at the top of the page and a second time in the sentence: “He remarried, to sculptor June Leaf, and in 1971, moved to …” Leaf and her upward of 60 years of artmaking, is reduced to a nominal mention and is placed in the same sentence as a move to a different city. Because of her notable contributions to the art world and her status as an artist on the forefront of feminism, June Leaf deserves to have her own Wikipedia page.
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June Leaf (born in Chicago, IL in 1929) is an American sculptor and painter. In 1954, Leaf received her B.A. in Art Education at Roosevelt University in Chicago, IL in addition to an M.A. in Art Education at the Institute of Design. In 1971, she married the photographer Robert Frank.

During Leaf’s time in the 1950s Chicago art scene, she became a member of the Monster Roster, an existentialist group of postwar artists living in Chicago. The Monster Roster group focused primarily on the psychological and mystical. When translated to Leaf’s own art, this took the form of various scenes imbued with bright, erratic colors on altered surfaces, as well as sculptures suggesting movement.

While not widely considered a feminist, Leaf was working contemporaneously with female artists on the forefront of American feminism in Chicago, such as Nancy Spero and Mary Beth Edelson. Her subject matter varies from re-workings of religious scenes-- as evidenced in the mixed media painting Last Supper (First Phase)-- to the functionalization and objectification of men as domestic apparatuses, as can be seen in the sculpture Man As Gutter Spout. The Whitney Museum describes Leaf's work as, "suggest[ing] a direct and physical struggle between men, women, and unseen forces, with control up for grabs and outcomes uncertain.”

Over the course of her career, Leaf has received a number of awards and has displayed her work at upward of 65 solo and group exhibitions. An exhibit of her work, entitled “June Leaf”, will be on view at the Whitney Museum in New York City beginning in April and ending in July of 2016.
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 * http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/04/artseen/june-leaf-paintings-sculpture
 * http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/arts/art-in-review-june-leaf-drawings-past-and-present.html?_r=1
 * http://edwardthorpgallery.com/artists/june-leaf