She-Wolves: Powerful Women from Medieval England to Modern Maine

She-Wolves is an exhibition celebrating feminine power and subversions of patriarchy, in dialogue with the eponymous solo performance work by Laura Careless. The performance and exhibition are presented by Hogfish in collaboration with SPACE.

Hogfish is a new regenerative arts residency and artistic training company at the historic Beckett Castle of Cape Elizabeth, surrounded by a world-class rose garden on the coast of Maine. They are building an artistic sanctuary and body of work dedicated to restoring creative and physical health to individuals, our communities, and our earth. Hogfish takes its name from the Western Atlantic hermaphroditic fish that changes gender once they reach a certain maturity.

Careless’ She-Wolves explores the forgotten female leaders of England. In the medieval world, power was inescapably male. Despite all the obstacles that stood in their way, a handful of extraordinary women did attempt to rule. When they pursued their power like kings, they were vilified as she-wolves. Performances of She-Wolves will take place on Friday, January 13th and Saturday, January 14th at 7:30pm with a reception for performance attendees beginning at 6:30pm.

Exhibiting alongside the performance are the works of visual artists Elise Ansel, Ruby Bowman, Angela Hoener, and Charles Mary Kubricht. Elise Ansel is a painter based in Portland and New York City, whose work challenges monocular thinking by translating the depth and resonance of old master paintings through the abstraction of a female lens to shine a light on imbalances existent today. Ruby Bowman is a young filmmaker and photographer from Cape Elizabeth and Austin who was awarded a Hogfish artist residency. Her work explores feminism and beauty standards, her short film of magical realism appeared during the electronic dance epilogue of Hogfish’s contemporary production of the opera The Magic Tree in summer of 2022. Angela Hoener a Brooklyn based artist and Skowhegan 2022 Alumni whose work is at the sustainable intersection of painting and fashion through recycled clothing and objects. Charles Mary Kubricht (Magenta Goddess, pictured above) is an artist from Marfa, TX, who designed living sets and projections for Hogfish’s inaugural Maine season. Her work examines the transitional zone between perceptual experience and technologies of visualization in which the prosthetic lens creates a highly pictorialized and artificial universe.

Artist Bios

Laura Careless is a Brighton-based dance artist. Through dance performance and education, she advocates for the reclamation and rewilding of our physical instincts. Laura’s critically acclaimed solo performance work has toured to venues throughout the UK and the US. She also performs in Rebel Boob, a post-verbatim production based on interviews with women who have received a breast cancer diagnosis, which tours the UK in October 2022. Laura is a graduate of The Royal Ballet School, London; the Ecole-Atelier of Maurice Bejart in Lausanne, Switzerland; and The Juilliard School Dance Division in New York City, where she received the John Erskine Prize for Artistic and Academic Excellence. Upon graduation from Juilliard, Laura became a founding member and Principal Performer at Company XIV, a Brooklyn-based multi-media production company. XIV’s performances blend dance with theatre, opera, circus, burlesque and opulent design in live performance and film and have been recognised by the Drama Desk, Bessie, and New York Independent Theater Awards. Laura has also worked as a guest artist with Buglisi Dance Theatre, Aszure Barton and Artists and the Metropolitan Opera. Teaching and dance education has been an equal passion with performing throughout Laura’s career. She is a Curriculum Specialist for Juilliard’s K-12 department and is the Dance Education Consultant for Rambert. Through her teaching, she seeks to empower students to move like themselves, prioritising their physical, mental and soulful wellbeing.

Elise Ansel was born and raised in New York City and she is currently based in Portland, ME. Ansel received a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1984. While at Brown, she studied art at both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. She worked briefly in the film industry before deciding to make painting her first order medium. Ansel has exhibited her work throughout the United States and in Europe. Her works are held in permanent collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences. She was represented by Danese/Corey in NYC until they closed in April 2020. She now works with Miles McEnery Gallery in New York City, David Klein Gallery in Detroit, Carol Corey Fine Art in Kent Connecticut, Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe, and Cadogan Contemporary in London.

Ruby Bowman, is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and Austin, Texas. Ruby was awarded a Hogfish summer residency in 2022. At the age of fifteen, she was nominated for best short at The All-American High School Film Festival. Since then she has won multiple awards as a filmmaker including at the NYC Indie Film Awards, Mindfield Film Festival L.A., Girls Impact World Film Festival, and L.A. Short Awards. In 2018, her short film “Let Me Eat Cake” was chosen to be featured on the Jumbo-tron at Austin City Limits Music Festival before the performances of Travis Scott and other artists. Her work encompasses themes of feminism, beauty standards, political activism, and magical realism. She is inspired most by music and her muses.

Angela Hoener is a Skowhegan Alumni from 2022 and a 2022 Finalist for the Founndwork Artist Prize received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Painting & Drawing. Her studies also include, Fashion Design at Parson’s School of Design and professional experience at Calvin Klein. Since 2018 she has steadily shifted her work within the sustainable intersection of Painting and Fashion through recycled clothing and objects. Her work has been exhibited in Switzerland, Art Basel, Hot Art Fair, also, Italy, Germany, Austria and The United States, notably Mixed Greens Gallery in New York City & Pulse Miami Beach Art Fair. She is featured in the recent New American Painting #144, selected, JUROR’S PICK by Rebecca Matalon of CAM Houston. In 2020, she was awarded an artist grant to the Vermont Studio Center and shortlisted for the SPRING/BREAK Art Fair in New York City. Angela has an upcoming solo show in Chicago, IL with Adds Donna. A most meaningful moment was teaching art at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago, Lathrop Homes Housing Project. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Heber, UT.

Charles Mary Kubricht is an artist and set designer in New York and Marfa. Charles Mary design the living sets and projects for the Inaugural season of Hogfish in Maine. Her artwork has been featured in CULTUREVOLT, BOMB, ELLE DÉCOR Italy, Marfa: Transformation of a West Texas Town, Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art and P61VMAG. Major institutional solo exhibitions include “Where Time Dwells”, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; “Canyon Series”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX; “Scanning the Grand Canyon” Austin Museum of Art; “Charles Mary Kubricht, Matrix Series”, Art Museum of South Texas. Kubricht’s public art installations include “Alive-nesses:Proposal for Adaptation” High Line, New York; “paraMuseum: Environmental Exigencies” Rice University, Houston, TX; and “Landscapes Near and Far”, U. S. Port of Entry, Columbus, NM. She was awarded a GSA Art in Architecture Award; Creating a Living Legacy Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (New York) and DiverseWorks (Houston, TX); residencies at the Core Program of the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, and Yaddo, Saratoga, NY. Her work is in the collection of museums such as Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Blaffer Museum, Austin; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; University of Houston, Houston; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso. Her opera set designs include Kurt Weill’s “Der Protagonist” and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “L’arbre enchanté” commissioned by the Fire Island Opera Festival.