Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation stands for the bodily autonomy of every person; for the decision to make choices about when to procreate and when to terminate a pregnancy. We stand for every person’s right to express their own religious beliefs, but not to place their own beliefs on fellow humans. We stand for every person’s right to privacy.

The History of Hera Gallery is inextricably tied to the second wave of the feminist movement, the movement that brought us the rights given by Roe in 1973. At the time of its founding in 1974, the lives of women were becoming more expansive. Roe gave us the opportunity to choose when to (or not to) become mothers, to dream of careers and family, or just careers, or just families. Roe offered us the pleasure of sex without the life altering experience of unwanted pregnancy and Roe also gave us a way to terminate such pregnancies without fear of death or future infertility.

Now, almost 50 years later, the future feels less bright for people who can become pregnant and to those who care about them. The future feels scary, and we are disheartened and angry. We are worried about the lives of our sisters in states where they can no longer access safe abortions. We are worried about the LGBTQIA++ community, religious freedom, and all the children born into a country where healthcare, housing, clean water, and safe schools are not an equally available right to all. A country where parental leave is pitiful in comparison with other countries and universal Pre-K initiative is fizzing away. We are worried about what will happen in the midterm elections and how that will impact those of us in states where we hold onto our reproductive rights, but not if a federal ban on abortion is enacted by a conservative congress.

So what do we do at this moment? We cry, we rage, we fight. We make art. We use our creativity and need for expression to connect with other people. We share our art with the hope that it brings a moment of insight, or deep feeling, or thought or beauty and connection. These are dark days and we need all the rays of light we have to get through this. We hope that Hera Gallery can be a ray of light in this darkness for our community, other artists and our country. We open our space, we welcome your suggestions on ways that we can be of service for the long road ahead of us.