She Opens the Door: Women Artists and Writers Shape Language and Space

Member Preview: Saturday, December 6, 5-6 pm
Public Opening: Saturday, December 6, 6-9 pm
Art Walks, 6-9 pm: December 6, January 3, February 7, March 7

She Opens the Door: Women Artists and Writers Shape Language and Space, curated by CLMA Poet-in-Residence Chloe Martinez, will showcase contemporary women artists from Claremont and the greater Los Angeles area whose work encourages us to think about gender, community, and agency. The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from the Pasadena Art Alliance.

THE EXHIBITION

She Opens the Door will feature nine artists whose artworks question what “women’s work” might be, often drawing from materials and techniques traditionally considered “craft” to offer sharp cultural critiques and new visual languages.

In addition to selecting the artworks, Chloe Martinez will contribute her own poetry and writing to complement the artwork, while also inviting other creative writers to participate. A limited-edition catalog will be available featuring images of works of art alongside the poetry and prose they inspired.

The exhibition will include artists: Lisa Anne Auerbach, Ako Castuera, Adrian Culverson, Mercedes Dorame, Kari Gatzke, Emily Joyce, Amy Maloof, Maria Maea, and Elana Mann. Participating writers will include: Genevieve Kaplan, Chloe Martinez, Cynthia Prochaska, Prageeta Sharma, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, and Vickie Vertiz.

THE CURATOR

Chloe Martinez is a poet, a translator, and a scholar of South Asian religions. She lives in Claremont and works at Claremont McKenna College as the Associate Director of Programming for the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and a Lecturer in Religious Studies. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she was a Mellon Mays Fellow; the MA/PhD program in Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara; Boston University’s Creative Writing MA; and the MFA for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Holden Scholar.

Her two newest projects, both forthcoming in March 2026, are a book of translations, Songs of Mirabai (New Directions) and a craft anthology she co-edited, Chaos, Creativity, Completion: New Approaches to Writing and ADHD (Chicago). She is also the author of the poetry collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020). Her research has appeared in journals including The Medieval History Journal, South Asia, and The Journal of Vaishnava Studies. Her poems, translations, reviews, and essays appear in Ploughshares, POETRY, Agni, American Poetry Review, Best Literary Translations 2026, Sierra Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and the Anne Frydman Prize in translation, as well as residencies from Hedgebrook, the Vermont Studio

Center, and SWWIM. She is assistant editor for Beloit Poetry Journal and poetry editor for The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Learn More about Martinez at https://www.chloeavmartinez.com/about.html