Betsy Odom: Sis Boom Bah June 19, 2011

Odom's sculptures and drawings explore the possibility of extreme-gendered sports.

Double whistles, flower-adorned baseball mitts, baby blue satin-lined football pads; these hybrid sporting accessories suggest the softer, prettier, and more ambiguously sexual side of organized competitive games. In Sis Boom Bah, Odom investigates the possibility of organized sports as a way to defy social constructions of gender, identity and sexuality.

Drawing from the tradition of extreme craft - or the mixing of craft techniques like leather tooling, airbrushing, and stitching with art formats of sculpture, painting or drawing - Odom produces objects that aim to subvert gender roles and question how we stereotype queer culture. This merging of Americana and contemporary issues, much like her re-appropriation of materials, is a way to question the phenomenon of sameness and difference that pervades American society. The work calls attention to the notion that women can move past their social boundaries and blur the lines defining gender expectations. Sport is an appropriate venue for this because, according to Odom, “no one is really watching in the big scheme of things, so women can behave in sometimes shockingly and inspiringly un-ladylike ways.” Odom presents us with organized sports as a realm in which gender defiance is encouraged and entertaining.

http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/2011/03/betsy_odom_sis_boom_bah.php