Vicki Chelf is a strong woman and a powerful artist as well. She knows two sad truths. Strong women make history. But many of their stories don?t make it into the history books.Chelf wants you to remember these women. So she uses the power of her art to fill in the missing chapters. The frequently deleted truth? Women are not the ?weaker sex.” And powerful women change the world. That?s the rest of the story. After glimpsing Chelf?s heroines, you?ll never doubt it again.You can see them now at ?Vicki Chelf,” the artist?s current exhibition at Art Avenue in downtown Sarasota. This show draws from Chelf?s entire body of work. But ?Women of the Resistance” is the exhibition?s heart. It?s a selection of Chelf?s latest multimedia series. Six portraits of strong women. Six of the original anti-fascists from World War II. Each is a profile in courage.These portraits are hybrids of painting and collage. The backgrounds are a patchwork of French newspaper clippings. Chelf painted the portraits in the foregrounds, using photographs of these iconic women as a reference.Josephine Baker is one of these icons. She was an African-American singer and dancer, who made a hit in the Paris nightclub scene in the late 1930s. After the Nazis invaded, she could?ve played it safe and kept a low-profile. Instead, the cabaret performer added ?spy” to her resume. Baker sheltered French resistance fighters ? and worked the Axis party scene, where talkative bigwigs blabbed about troop movements and airfields. She smuggled out the info in her underwear. And got out of the country just in time.In Chelf?s portrait, Baker seems relaxed and unposed. Her mouth is open, eyes cast in a sideways glance. As if she?s deliberately trying to look harmless.Coming soon:Top visual art exhibits coming to Sarasota area this yearNew leader:Art Center Sarasota director wants to build awareness and connectionsHedy Lamarr fought fascists on the home front. In the 1930s, she was a movie star and a pin-up girl ? a ?sex symbol” before the term existed. But Lamarr was a bombshell in more ways than one. Her IQ was at the Mensa level ? and it wasn?t smart to get on her bad side. Lamarr?s family roots were Austrian-Jewish, and she took Hitler?s atrocities personally. When she discovered the Nazis were jamming the Allies? radio-controlled torpedoes, she came up with a frequency-hopping signal they couldn?t jam in 1941. The military didn?t implement her invention at the time; it eventually became the basis for contemporary WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth communication systems.Chelf paints Lamarr with a wry smile and an insouciant pose. A giant tube of lipstick falls beside her. Below that, a torpedo. Lamarr?s hands seem to spark its path with magical sparks. Lee Miller had been an America fashion model during the flapper era. After moving to Paris in 1929, she picked up a camera and became a fashion and fine art photographer. She moved in Man Ray?s surrealist orbit for a time. After Nazi V-2 rockets fell on London, she enlisted her camera in the war effort. Miller documented the devastation of the Blitz, and later captured the atrocities of the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.Chelf depicts Miller draped in a robe, her face in profile, arms delicately poised. The figure could be a classic Greek statue. It?s a defiant assertion of civilization against barbarism. Baker, Lamarr, Miller. These and other female warriors in Chelf?s ?Women of the Resistance” series all fought Nazism and fascism. They had something else in common. Physical beauty, at least as popular culture broadly defines it. Excellent