A few years back, Bishop Dwenger High School art chairwoman and Motherlode co-founder Marcy Adams struck up a conversation with a fellow partygoer who revealed that she too was an artist.

This partygoer had a tale of woe to tell that involved an art show she’d gotten mixed up in that turned out to be full of “pornography.”

The woman described to Adams one piece in particular that offended her.

“It took me a little while to figure out that the piece she was describing was one of mine,” Adams says.

The journey of the Motherlode Women’s Art Collective has been marked by such unanticipated spans of broken pavement.

It was founded seven years ago to give area female artists who might have felt shut out of other local art shows (or art scenes) a place to show (and strut) their stuff.

The latest exhibit, “Big Ideas in Small Packages,” opens today at the Jeffrey R. Krull Art Gallery at the downtown library.

Part of the problem has been good old small-town values, which tend to hold that anything depicting nudity must necessarily be pornographic.

Most of the rest of the problem has been the perception among some local female artists that Motherlode hasn’t been nearly as inclusive as it promised to be.

Adams and Motherlode co-founder Karen Thompson acknowledge they have heard tell of such grumbling out there.

Thompson says being rejected for shows is just part of every artist’s process. She likens it to getting one’s milk or baby teeth.

“If they are angry about it, let them come and see what did get in,” Adams says.

Adams says all artists have to learn what work is appropriate for which show.

“I am not going to bulldoze my head in (to a show where my work doesn’t belong),” she says.

She acknowledges that when she helped launch Motherlode, she never expected that inclusiveness would become a major issue.

“I never expected it would turn out to be the bitch it has been,” Adams says. “We put it together for fun, and we made it work. It did surprise me.”

Adams says exhibits that aren’t curated, a process by which some material is chosen and some is culled, can’t really be called serious or professional.

Thompson says she suspects that some people believe Motherlode is basically just a bunch of “crazy ladies,” a description that Cara Wade, a University of Saint Francis professor and Motherlode committee member, says enticed her more than it put her off.

Adams and Thompson say Motherlode made an effort with this latest exhibit to connect with some younger and student artists.

“Big Ideas In Small Packages” refers both to the size of the art (not bigger than 8 inches by 8 inches) and the size of some of the artists.

Adams brags on an accomplished figure study by one of her students, 15-year-old Megan Wittwer.

If one did not know Wittwer’s age, one might peg her as a college student or older just based on her apparent artistic maturity.

For Adams’ part, she is working on a series of manipulated photos of utility poles that manage to be visually arresting and sociologically significant.

Adams makes a point of emphasizing that utility poles consume all of her artistic focus these days.

“No vaginas!” she insists, with a grin.

spen@jg.net