Catalogue PDF - the Women`s Caucus for Art

Transcription

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Mary Adams
Maria Enriquez de Allen
Beverly Pepper
Faith Ringgold
Rachel Rosenthal
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein
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15th Annual Exhibition
The Queens Museum of Art
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368
January 25-April 3, 1994
15th Annual Ceremony, 3:00p.m.
Wednesday, February 16, 1994
Queens Theatre in the Park
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368
for Outstanding
Achievement
in the Visual Arts
e
The Women's Caucus for Art is the major
national organization for women actively
engaged in the visual arts professions.
We are committed:
... to educating the general public about the
contributions to the arts of women , people of color,
and people with disabilities, respecting differences
in age, religion, class, ethnicity and
sex ua l orientation .
... to developing and teaching art curricula
at all levels that is not sex ist, racist, heterosexi st or
anti-semitic .
... to ensuring the inclusion of contributions
of women and people of color and the discussion of
gender based issues in the history of art.
... to expanding cultural dialogues to encompass
all forms of creative expression.
Women's
faucus
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... to promoting a viable system that provides an
opportunity for realistic economic survival in
the arts, including financial parity and equal
access to grants, fundi ng and employment for
women , people of color, and people with disabilities .
... to gaining equal representation and visibility
for the work of all women in the art community .
... to formulating and supporting legislation which
contributes to the goals of the Women's Caucus
for Art.
Welcome and Introduction
Jean Towgood, President
Women's Caucus for Art
Han. Claire Shulman
President, Borough of Queens
Linda Cunningham
Clarissa Sligh
New York City Conference
Coordinators
Sharon Vatsky, Curator
Jane Farver, Curator
Charleen Touchette, Chair
Honor Awards Committee
Introduction of Honorees
Mary Adams
Maria Enriquez de Allen
Beverly Pepper
Faith Ringgold
Rachel Rosenthal
by Katsi Cook Barreiro
by Shifra M. Goldman
by Diane Kelder
by Moira Roth
by Alisa Solomon
by Elsa Honig Fine
Presentation of W CA A wards
Jean Towgood
Reception and Special Viewing
at The Queens Museum ofArt
following the ceremony
This exhibition is organized by
the Women's CaucusforArtand
en's
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Chair's Statement
WCA's Honor Awards recognize the accomplishments of
exceptional women whose lives offer priceless examples to
women working in the arts. Since 1979, ninety-one
outstanding women have received this prestigious honor. For
fifteen years, the Honor Awards Selections have been
instrumental in implementing the goals outlined in our
statement of purpose. Today, WCA is the only national arts
organization honoring women from all racial and ethnic
communities working in a wide range of disciplines. This
unique distinction is especially impressive since all the efforts
on behalf of the Honorees are done by committed volunteers
with a limited budget.
The 1994 Honorees fulfill the Honor Awards Committee's
mandate to choose a group of individuals who have
demonstrated a lifetime achievement of excellence in the arts
that is culturally diverse, represents a wide range of media,
and includes women from the conference region as well as
those who have attained national recognition. Another clear,
although unstated, goal is to recognize the contributions of
active WCA members such as Faith Ringgold and Charlotte
Streifer Rubinstein. The outstanding exhibit at the Queens
Museum attests to the excellent achievements of all the 1994
Honorees.
This year's selections reflect many breakthroughs that extend
the impact of the Honor Awards into new disciplines and
communities. We proudly honor Rachel Rosenthal, the first
performance artist ever to be a WCA Honoree. It is a
pleasure to honor Mary Adams, our first basketmaker, in the
state which is the ancient homeland of her Mohawk people.
Adams is the first Native American Honoree from the eastern
seaboard. Beverly Pepper is the first Honoree who creates
outdoor sculpture on a monumental scale. Her work, is
impressive proof that there are no limits to women's
accomplishments. Marfa Enriquez de Allen is the first .
Mexican American folk artist to be an Honoree. Her umque
installations will challenge people to question the art/craft
distinction and continue WCA ' s commitment to broadening
this critical discourse.
As Chair, I would like to share my parting thoughts on the
recent history of the Honor Awards Committee and my hopes
for its future. In 1988, I was asked to sit on this important
committee to help identify outstanding women in the arts
from communities that had not yet been honored by this
process. It is gratifying that during my tenure, under the
leadership of Patricia Matthews, Melissa Dabakis and myself,
WCA honored Native American, Asian, and Latina artists for
the first time. The Honors Committee has put into action
WCA's commitment to multicultural inclusivity. Since 1990,
we have honored Pablita Velarde, Otellie Loloma, Lucy
Lewis, Margaret Tafoya, Emily Waheneka, Mary Adams,
Mine Okubo, Ruth Asawa, Dona Agueda Martinez and Marfa
Enriquez de Allen, while continuing to honor African
American and European American women.
The Honors Committee has challenged the fine art/craft
distinction in contemporary criticism that places women
artists of all ethnicities outside the mainstream. We have
consistently broadened recognition of artists working in
media besides painting and sculpture, such as pottery,
weaving, headwork, basketry, and performance art. Whe.n
WCA honors their accomplishments, we broaden the cntical
discourse to value these media as fine art.
WCA has maintained the highest standards of excellence in
bestowina these awards and has achieved multicultural
inclusivit;. This process has not been without hard work and
struggle. Unfortunately, there is, even among WCA
members, a small but vocal group of reactionary individuals
who have fought these advances . However, because the
Honors Committee has consistently found the most
outstanding artists deserving this award, the exhibitions are
very impressive and help open people's minds. While
diverse, they are cohesive and powerful. The art Impacts the
viewing public directly, thus convinc ing many of the value of
diversity.
As I leave this position, I am proud of the important advances
we have made during the past six years. As I look to the
future, I am filled with hope tempered by caution. Experience
makes me acutely aware that these gains must be built upon
and guarded carefully. The inroads we have made against
.
bigotry and exclusion are only a beginning. WCA must fight
the reactionary forces in our membership and the art world
that exclude the accomplishments of women outside the
mainstream. WCA must continue to reach out to diverse
communities, identify outstanding artists, and help prepare
nominations. WCA should honor women from the disabled
persons ' and lesbian communities to affirm our commitment
to fighting disaphobia and homophobia. WCA should use the
impress ive history of the Honor Awards to do effective
fundraising and continue to honor a diverse group of six
women with a memorable first-class experience.
Until all women have the opportunity to receive this honor on
the basis of merit, whatever their race, religion, ethnicity,
media, sex ual orientation or disability, until there is no longer
any need to have a "first" Honoree from any group, our work
will not be finished. We must prove again and again through
the Honoree exhibits, catalogs, and ceremonies that there are
great women artists from every identity group. The
achievement of excellence is not limited to any one group.
The recognition of the excellence that manifests itself in the
creative expression of women from the multicolored fabric of
our diverse nation is an honorable goal for the Women's
Caucus for Art. The extraordinary art and scholarship created
by the ninety-one women who have received the WCA Honor
Award is testimony to the indisputable fact that when we
honor and celebrate our diversity, we are all enriched.
Charleen Touchette
Curators' Statement
The Queens Museum of Art is pleased to host the Women's
Caucus for Art Honor Awards Exhibition in conjunction with
WCA's 1994 national conference. Although the process of
selection falls to the Honor Awards Selection Committee, we,
as curators, have had the gratifying the experience of working
with each artist to define the content of the exhibition. In the
process we have discovered the richness and depth of their
artistic achievements.
As in past WCA Awards Exhibitions, the honorees come from
diverse backgrounds. Some have enjoyed many years of high
profile, mainstream and commercial success. Some are less
well known to the general public, but enjoy a reputation for
achievement among their peers, their community and within
their specific discipline. It has been particularly gratifying to
become part of this ongoing WCA legacy that has honored
over ninety women since the tradition began in 1979. This
process has become one ofWCA' s most significant activities,
whereby women of achievement are honored for their talent,
creativity, perseverance, scholarship and for "hanging in
there." Choosing those famous and less famous , schooled and
self-taught, mainstream and alternative, acknowledges that
there are many routes to success, and many ways to contribute
and achieve. It is the very diversity of these six women and
the diversity of the work they have produced that make these
awards so rich and significant. Their cultural diversity is
important, but secondary to their diversity of artistic
expression and vision.
Mary Adams, a Native American of the Mohawk Nation ,
began making baskets when she was ten years old and has
perfected her work over many years. Her baskets begin as
abstract thought, but her experience and skill enable her to
turn her visions into tangible, ambitious realities. Her pieces
are in both private and public collections. We are pleased that
she has created new works for this show which have never
before been exhibited.
Maria Enriquez de Allen is an artist who was born in Mexico
and has lived in Chicago since 1962. Her art utilizes new and
recycled materials to create dolls, flowers, animals, quilts and
crucifixions. Her work has been widely exhibited and has
been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Science and
Industry and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Beverly Pepper's work explores aspects of sculpture on a
human as well as monumental scale. The scope of her
increasingly broad vision has moved her into the field of
environmental and public art. She has designed works which
encompass entire parks in Europe, Asia and North America
and was recently honored by the Public Art Fund. She
continues to create ever more ambitious works for both
exterior and interior spaces.
Faith Ringgold's contribution to the visual arts has spanned
more than twenty-five years and continues to evolve into new
areas. Her highly personal style combines a respect for
tradition, a strong political consciousness and an ability to
weave narrative tales that involve and enlighten. The occasion
of these awards gives WCA the opportunity to acknowledge
her efforts to gain higher visibility for all woman artists.
Rachel Rosenthal is a pioneer in performance art and the
women ' s art movement. Since the 1970s she has created and
presented more than two dozen full-length works . Her
development as an artist of international reputation has
parallelled the evolution of performance art itself and her
dramatic works have dealt with issues surrounding animal
rights, violence, the environment and aging.
As an art historian, writer, teacher and artist, Charlotte Streifer
Rubinstein has used her skills to document the work and lives
of women artists. Her books, articles and lectures have
furthered the research on and lent substance to the contributions of American women to the history of art.
It has been a privilege to have the opportunity to exhibit the
work of these six distinguished women. We acknowledge
their accomplishments, applaud the rich body of work each
has produced and thank them for sharing their life's work with
us. The exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art has been
supported in part with public funds provided by the New York
City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Office of Queens
Borough President Claire Shulman, the New York State
Legislature and the New York State Council on the Arts. We
would also like to thank the ADCO Foundation, Inc., and The
Sister Fund for their contributions to this project.
Jane Farver
Director of Exhibitions, The Queens Museum of Art
Sharon Vatsky
Curator of Education, The Queens Museum of Art
Mary Adams
We honor you, Mary Kawenontakien
Adams, for weaving a remarkable
life which is a story of connection, of relationships to people,
to culture, to history, and to
the land. As a practitioner
of Mohawk culture, you
connect us to our past and
to our future. We honor
and admire you, Mary
Kawenontakien Adams, for
we know that your life and
your art are interwoven; an
intricate unity.
Mary Adams was born to make baskets. Her life is part of a
yet unbroken circle of basketmakers. In the over 60 years'
journey from the bedside of her ailing mother at the tender
age of ten to this very moment, Mary Adams has woven over
an estimated 25,000 baskets. As a young child of six, at the
feet of her grandmother Mary Thompson and then at the side
of her mother Catherine Jacobs, she practiced with the scraps
of her foremothers' endeavors. At the age of ten this
remarkable child was left alone in li fe without grandmother
or mother. She became self-supporti ng, making a dozen 6inch sewing baskets a week to trade for food for herself and
her brother John. Throughout Mary 's life, sweetgrass and
splints have been her constant companions, providing her
with moments of peaceful contemplation, and with the
livelihood she needed to raise her twelve children. Mary
says, "Making baskets is my medicine. I'll die if I don 't keep
making baskets."
Mary Adams' Mohawk name Kawenontakien translates to
English as "A Voice Coming Towards Us." Indeed, Mary ' s
baskets are her voice, an effective voice in her community
and culture, and an expression of the spirit oflroquoian
survival to the world. The quality of Mary Adams' art and
her work extends beyond the fixed and formal rules of
academia. In 1985, when Mary accepted an award from New
York State Governor Mario Cuomo on behalf of all
basketmakers of Akwesasne, she presented Mr. Cuomo with
her renowned Governor's Basket, an articulation of the skill,
mastery and accompli shment of Mohawk basketmaking.
Mary has been formally instructing a new generation of
Mohawk basketmakers since 1973, when she began teaching
basketmaking classes at the Six Nations and Akwesasne
Mohawk Reservations. In 1974 she accepted her first
invitation to demonstrate her skills and exhibit her baskets at
Brigham Young University in Utah. Since then Mary Adams
has become a recognized leader of Iroquois basketmaking,
teaching children as young as nine or ten , and developing a
large following of collectors, both public and private. In
1984, her Wedding Cake Basket was awarded the Best of
Basketry category at the Heard Museum Guild ' s Native
American Invitational Exhibition. Her work is in the
collecti ons of the Smithsonian Institution, the Heard Museum
in Phoenix, the Vatican Museum in Rome, the New York
State Museum in Albany , the Heye Foundation Museum in
New York City, the Iroquois Museum in Schoharie, New
York, the Turtle Museum in Niagara Falls, the Museum of
Man in Ottawa, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Mary ' s mastery and art are in primary relationship with the
Mohawk environment. The sweetgrass calls to her on the
warm August breezes, its roots yielding to her wizened,
experienced fingers in the heat of sunny August afternoons.
The ribbons of black ash, peeled paper-thin on antique
wooden implements handed down through the generations,
are a medicine for the senses. The delicate fragrance of
sweetgrass and black ash splints fills her home and the cellar
where she works and stores her hand-made basket forms
which have been handed down to her fro m her grandmother.
Come with me for a moment to Mary's home on the south
shore of the St. Lawrence River at Akwesasne. Sign the guest
book filled with entries by visitors from around the world,
from places such as Japan and England. Come sit by the
warmth of her wood cookstove, a great iron sentry which
comforts the body as Mary 's fingers dance across and weave
together black ash splint and sweetgrass, delighting our eyes.
To watch Mary work at her craft is to be as a babe suckled at
its mother's breast; it is to participate in the experience of the
relationship of Mohawk woman to the earth itself. Mary 's
commitment to excellence in her art is a portrait of concentration and the power of ski ll , observation and memory used to
translate thought to innovative form , purpose and use.
basket styles indeed reflect an e loquence of spirit, emotional
and exciting, giving breath and form to thought.
Mary's baskets weave a common thread of continuity,
identity, and appreciation of place. In her community, Mary
Kawenontakjen Adams is herself an institution, a veritable
symbol of Mohawk woman hood. She is great-grandmother,
grandmother, and mother; she is the center of so many lives,
and a wonderful storyteller-teacher. In a video documentary
of her li fe made by Frank Simmons in 1980, we get a glimpse
of the forces that shaped Mary Adams ' remarkable life and
the evo lution of her work . Born January 24, 1917, Mary was
wed to Mike Adams in 1939. She bore 12 chi ldren, all but
one born at her home on the reservation. She del ivered three
at home a ll by herself, a testimony to her independence, selfreliance, and great personal strength. From chil dhood, Mary
supported herself with her baskets, and continued to make
baskets to support her 12 chi ldren. On one occas ion , Mary
received a large order for baskets. She had no black ash log
fro m which to pound the splints she needed to fill the order.
In a true illustration of necessity being the mother of
invention, she remembered that her clothesline pole was
made from a black ash log, so she instructed her eldest son
Morris to pull the log out of the ground and pound the splints
she needed from it. Mary was able to fill her order.
(With thanks and appreciation to Susan Dixon, Art Historian,
Akwe:kon Press, Cornell University, and Trudy Kanatires
Adams Lauzon of Akwesasne, heir apparent to her mother's
gifts.)
From her humble beginnings as a young girl making baskets
to survive, Mary's voice and art developed and now we
benefit from the full tenor of her song, her gift of creating
baskets. Mary states simply, "I always want to make
something new." In 1986, Mary's truly divine Pope Basket
became part of the Smithsonian Institution ' s National
Museum of American Art Henthill Collection of American
Folk Art. In designing her Pope Basket, Mary was inspired by
the image of the Basilica of the Vatican in Rome, and thus
created its dome shaped cover. The Pope Basket features 192
thimble baskets which are individually woven and attached
with tiny splints to the body of the piece. In 1989, her
stunning Wedding Cake Basket was also selected for the
Henthill Collection. In 1990, the Wedding Cake Basket was
included in the "Made With Passion" exhjbition at the
Smithsonian' s National Museum of American Art in
conju nction with a series of basketmaking demonstration s
Mary gave during the five month exhibit. What a fitting title
"Made With Passion" is for Mary ' s work. Her many original
Katsi Cook Barreiro
7
Mary Adams
Mary Adams,
Wedding Cake Basket.
Sweetgrass and black ash splints.
Henthill Collection of American Folk Art,
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum
of American Art.
Photo: Barry Montour
Chronology
Selected Bibliography
1917
Hammond, Harmony, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Women
of Sweetgrass, Cedar and Sage, Gallery of the American
Indi an Community House, New York, 1985.
"TEIONKW AHONTASEN: Basketmakers of Akwesasne,"
The Akwesasne Museum, Hogansburg, New York, 1983.
"TEIONKW AHONTASEN : Basketmakers of Akwesasne,"
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York, 1985.
Johannsen, Christina, and John Ferguson (eds. ), Iroquois
Arts, A Directory of a People and Their Work, The
Association for the Advancement of Native North American
Arts and Crafts, Warnerville, New York, 1983.
Jamieson, Gerald Pete, "A Portfolio of Iroquois Art and
Craft ," The Conservationist, January/February 1976.
Barnes, Barbara (ed.), Basic Splint Basketry, Akwesasne,
The North American Indian Travelling Co llege, Cornwall
Island , Ontario, 1986.
Dixon, Susan R. , Special Issue Editor, Unbroken Circles,
Traditional Arts of Contemporary Woodland Peoples,
Cultural Encounter Edition, Northeast Indian Quarterly,
vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 1990).
1967
1973
1974
1980
1981
1984
1985
1986
1989
1990
1991
Born January 24 at Akwesasne Mohawk
Reservation on the U.S.-Canad ian border.
Canadian Centenni al Year Basket Exhibition,
Expo ' 67, Montreal , Quebec.
Begins teach ing forma l basketmaking classes at
Six Nations and Akwesasne.
Demonstration and exhibition at Brigham Young
University.
Presents her Pope Basket to Pope John Paul in
Rome, where it is housed in the Vatican Museum.
Basket Exhibition at the Lake Placid Hilton,
Lake Placid, New York.
Best of Basketry Award at the Native American
Invitational Exhibition, Heard Museum Guild,
Phoeni x, Arizona.
Presents Governor's Basket to Governor Mario
Cuomo of New York State. Receives Governor's
Art award for Basketmakers of Akwesasne.
Baskets included in "Women of Sweetgrass,
Cedar and Sage," a traveling exhibition of
contemporary art by Native American women.
Pope Basket selected as part of the Henthill
Collection of American Folk Art, Smithsonian
Institution, National Museum of American Art.
Wedding Cake Basket selected for the Henthill
Collection of American Folk Art.
Wedding Cake Basket entered in "Made With
Passion" exhibit, National Museum of American
Art, September 22, 1990 - January 2 1, 199 1;
Mary participates in a series of basketmaking
demonstrations in conjunction with the ex hibit.
Basket Exhibit at Strathearn Gallery in Montreal,
Quebec. Best of Classification and Honorable
Mention , Scottsdale Native American Indian
Cultural Foundation, Arts and Crafts Competition,
Scottsdale, Arizona.
9
Maria
Enriguez
deADen
Florista, Santera,
Artesana
We honor you, Dofia Maria
Enriquez de Allen, for your
lifelong creativity which
has extended and enriched
the traditional arts of
Mexico with new variations
and materials. We honor you
for your devotion to your family
and community as mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and
as teacher and organizer of lifeenhancing festivals and rituals.
We honor you for pursuing a life of
art, and the art of life.
Maria E nriquez's studi o is both crowded and conven ient to
her Chicago home: in fact, it is in her home whi ch, by virtue
of being her workplace as well as her li ving space, is layered
with her multiple forms of art work. Her dining room table
doubles as a work area ; her kitchen stove is used to heat
metal embossing too ls; her oven is a "kiln"; her bed, chair,
and window are covered with a crocheted ensemble
consisting of a quilt, pillow, window frame, and chair
cushions. Her walls are hung with artific ial flowers , framed
embroidery, wall-hung sculptures, drawings and paintings;
and her tabletops are covered with three-dimensional
animals, birds, miniature people, saints, and fantastic
unnamed creatures encrusted with a great variety of fo und
materials. These are the multitudes of her imaginative worldone she shares with her second husband, Harold Allen, a
profess ional photographer.
When I first visited Marfa and Harold in the mid-eighties,
there was another dimension to her activity, one she had to
abandon as her energy began to wane. Every nook and
cranny of her small house overflowed with carefu llyculti vated living plants, while her backyard, down a long
fli ght of stairs, was a forest-garden -a miracle in the working
class districts of cold and overcrowded bi g cities like
Chicago and New York which, more often than not, are
constructed of "wall -to-wall" concrete and brick, with 'nary a
fl ower or even a tree in sight outdoors.
I have subtitled thi s essay "Florista, Santera, Artesana,"
flowennaker, carver of saints, artisan. In the lex icon of
modern art, these terms are subsumed under marginali zing
and loosely applied words li ke " folk art" and "arts and
crafts." ln fact, Marfa Enrfquez cannot correctly be termed a
"folk arti st," though she is an artisan in that she uses varied
materials with skill and imagination to produce objects that
give pleasure and also have utility.
Feminist artists were the most successfu l in reintegrating art
with craft, recogni zing that the domestic sphere was one in
which many women exerci sed their repressed creative talents
with so-called "hobbies," sew ing skills and bricolage.
Feminists aestheticized thi s artistic production: first, by
honoring the women who did qui lts, embroidery, textiles,
clothing and adornments ; second, by drawing on these
sources to develop a new vocabul ary of fine arts. I might
mention Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, and Betye Saar
(whose ki tchen was her stud io for many years) as examples.
To define folk art more close ly, it is that form of utilitari an
and aesthetic production made by artists for whom it is a
fami ly or vi llage tradition, handed down from one generation
to the next. Change and innovation occur slowly, because the
traditional ski ll s must be maintained (for personal, spiritual
and market reasons) even within pre-industrial societies.
Marfa Enriquez de All en learned to be ajlorista within thi s
tradition, and it was for many years one of her marketable
ski lls. However- and this is the point- she had no village
"folk" tradition to restrict her innovations, especially after
she left Mexico. Nevertheless, a great deal of her work is
traditional in its sources; it's simply that she expanded those
sources not only with new designs, but also with new
technology and techniques in her search to repl ace scarce
materials, for greater verity to nature (the flowers) , and with
the appearance of new materials like plastics and commercial
packaging in the United States. An example of the latter is
"Sculpey Clay" which will stick to any surface and can be
"fired" in her kitchen oven, hair curlers, and much more.
balls with wooden handles , cup the petals and frill their
edges. With all these methods, she has revolutionized the art
of flower making. This spirit has extended to all her art
making and given it the verve that has been recogni zed
through exhibitions, prizes, and this Honor Award in 1994.
Shifra M. Goldman
©November 1993
Since space is restricted, I would like to focus on Marfa
Enriquez as jlorista - one of her most developed art forms,
embedded in Mexican cultural customs that predate the
Spanish conquest and that have been revived by Chicanos and
Chicanas as part of their cultural heritage. I refer specifically
to the Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead on November
2nd - a pre-Columbian ritual to honor the dead that has its
counterparts, for example, in Chinese ancestor worship, preimperial Roman ancestor homage, and African ancestor
invocation. To honor the dead is not morbid when the
tradition dictates that the souls of the dead are present (but
only once a year!), and can ass ist the living if need arises.
Flowers are an essential part of many funerary practices as
well as social events and , since real fl owers are often not
available, the custom of maki ng artificial flowers has had a
dazzling history in Mexican artesan[a. During the course of
many years, Marfa Enriquez became a virtuoso maker of
artificial flowers. She streamlined her technique, studied
examples of superior artificial flowers by dissecting them ,
and made her flowers from a spectrum of materials: tissue
paper, crepe paper, linen, silk, ribbons, bread, shells, plastic
egg cartons, styrofoam balls, Swistraw raffia that comes in
forty colors, egg membrane (which feels like real petals),
corn husks, chenille, crocheted thread, typing papers,
Japanese papers, and so forth. The leaves and petals are
colored with vegetable dyes that come from Mexico in
powdered form. These are mixed with small amounts of water
in saucers in which the flower parts are immersed, sometimes
in several colors. Those meant for outdoor graves, or
prolonged use, are waterproofed in melted paraffin. As
Mexican materials became scarce, new colors have been
sought. Flowers are also fastened together with Elmer's glue
in addition to the traditional wood and wire stems.
Finally, Marfa Enriquez uses metal embossing tools which
create bulging petals, hollows, veins, and patterns. Still damp
from the dye dish, leaves and petals are pressed by hand
within the embossing molds, struck with a hammer, or heated,
depending on the material used. Heated cocadores, or steel
11
Marfa Enriquez de Allen,
Quilt Ensemble , 1972-73.
Individually-stuffed blocks,
crocheted together and tie-quilted .
Marfa Enriquez de Allen
Random-dyeing paper leaves, 1989.
Photo: Harold Allen
Chronology
1907
1947
1963
1967
1969
1973
Born Crecenda Marfa de Ia Luz Enriquez Delgado
on June 27th (the same year as Frida Kahlo) on a
ranch in the arid lands of Allende, Coahuila,
Mex ico, about forty miles from the Texas border.
In 1930, (ten years after the end of the Mexican
Revolution during which her father lost his ranch)
she marries Manuel Castillo in San Antonio, but
lives in Mex ico. Both the Enriquez (her father's)
and the Delgado (her mother's) families counted
among their ranks many skilled artisans and selftaught painters - sisters, cousins and aunts .
Castillo dies in an accident when Marfa Enriquez
is forty years old , leaving her with the seven
li ving children of the twel ve she had borne. She
turns to teaching, and sets up a "cottage industry"
making artificial fl owers at night, with her
children ass isting, in order to survive. She learned
thi s trade from her mother at age seven. She also
started to model and decorate clay fi gurines very
early.
Hav ing moved to Texas in 1955, she follows her
children once more to Chicago, settling in the
Pilsen District, the first predominantly Latino
barrio in Chicago. Here, of her two artist sons, the
youngest one, Mari o Castillo, paints Chicago' s
first Chicano murals in 1968 and 1969.
Hired by the Halsted Urban Progress Center
(where Mario painted one of his murals) and
becomes a U.S. citizen as requi red by her job.
Teaches children and adu lts (in Spani sh) drawing,
pai nting, clay modeling, crocheti ng, embroidery,
carpentry and Mex ican dance. Organi zes and
makes costumes, decorations and fl oats for
Mother's Day and Mex ican Independence Day.
Meets (and then marries) Harold Allen at the
School of the Art In stitute of Chicago where her
son Mario graduated.
Reti res from work: with leisure time and space,
her creativity blossoms. Subsequently ex hibits in
many pl aces, and wins a number of prizes. A
selected list includes: (1974) Museum of Science
and Industry, Chicago, "Mex ican American Art
Festival," First Prize; Northeastern fllinois
Uni vers ity, "Alba Festival"; (1 976) Illinois State
[Mormon] Relief Society, "Heritage Quilts";
( 1977) School of the Art Institute of Chicago, "Arts and
Crafts by Marfa Enriquez de Allen"; Moraine Valley
Community College, Palos Hills, IL, "Christmas Round the
World ," demonstrated pinata making; (1 978) Hyde Park Art
Center, Chicago, "The Flower Show"; ( 1979) Columbia
College, Chicago, "Traditi onal Paper Crafts"; ( 1980) Fonda
del Sol, Washington, D.C., "Reliquaries and Icons"; (1 986)
Galerfa Ink Works, Chicago, "Maternidad y Lucha/ Maternity
and Struggle"; ( 1987) Mex ican Fine Arts Center Museum,
Chicago, " Images of Faith/Imagenes de Fe" ; ( 1988) Mex ican
Fine Arts Center Museum, "Dfa de los Muertos" altar/ofrenda
to Manuel and Minerva Castillo (deceased husband and
daughter); (1 989) Fort Wayne Museum of Art, "Celebraci6n!
A Centu ry of Mexican Art"; ( 199 1) David Adler Cultural
Center, Libertyville, IL, "Rites of Passage."
National Bicentennial Quilt Exposition and Contest,
catalogue, McComb County Community College, Warren,
Michigan, 1976.
Ra{ces antiguas/ Visiones nuevas/ Ancient Roots, New
Visions, catalogue fo r traveling exhibition, Tucson Mu seum
of Art, 1977.
" Mu seum of Contemporary Art Exhibits Local Artists;
Work," Westside Times (Chicago), Aug. 30, 1979.
Revista Chicano-Rique1ia val. 7, no. 4 (Autumn 1979), cover
and portfolio.
Arte Hispano-Americano en Chicago! Hispanic Art in
Chicago, catalogue, Chicago State Uni versity Gallery, 1980.
The Wo rld of Mar{a Enriquez de ALLen (Mexican-American
Folk Artist), catalogue, text by Harold Allen, Fonda del Sol
Vi sual Art and Medi a Center, Washington, D.C., 198 1.
Sorell , Victor, "Marfa Enriquez de Allen, Felipe Ehrenberg,"
New Art Examiner val. 9, no. 6 (March 1982).
Ten Chicagoans: Just Plain Hardwo rking , catalogue,
Chicago Hi stori cal Society , 1989.
13
Beverly Pepper
Georgy Kepes. In 1949, she moved to Paris where she
studied painti ng with Andre Lhote and Fernand Leger and
frequented the studios of Brancusi and Zadkine.
We honor you, Beverly Pepper, for
the boldness and breadth of your
artistic vision and for your
determination to create works
that sensitively address the
collective experience of
your audience. Your
distinguished contributions to public sculpture
and your internationally
acclaimed site-specific
projects have earned you a
privileged place in the history
of twentieth century art.
Three years later, she and her writer husband settled in Rome
where she had her first solo exhi bition of painti ngs. She
continued to show these idiosy ncratic, lyrical abstractions in
Rome and New York, and, toward the end of the decade,
began to experiment with small clay and wood sculpture. In
1960, during a trip to the Far East, the compelling physicality
and express ive power of sculpture were revealed to her in the
temple reliefs of Angkor Wat. The disturbing memory of
those monumental forms inextricabl y linked to their natural
setti ng, and the fortui tous levelling of trees in a garden near
her home, prov ided the inspi ration and the materials that
launched her career as a scul ptor.
Si nce her emergence as a sculptor in the early 1960s, Beverly
Pepper has dedicated herse lf to harnessing the materi als and
techniques of her mediu m to innovati ve ends, to challenging
its formal conventions and to restoring its communicative
and symbolic functions. Whi le responsive to the dialectics of
moderni sm, she also seeks nourishment in the mythical and
spi ritual sources that initially informed artistic creation.
Whether intimately scaled or monumental, her sculpture
consistentl y affi rms its physical presence while it seeks more
complete engagement with the beholder. In the last twenty
years, Pepper's remarkable site-specific and environmental
works have accorded her a signal prominence. Al ways
responsive to ex igencies of place and of human activity, she
is especially receptive to projects which contain a spec ific
cultural challenge.
Like many women artists of her generati on, Pepper' s artistic
training was initially conditioned by vocational concerns.
After working for several years as an art director, she
attended night classes at Brooklyn College, studying with
Working with saws and electri c drill s, Pepper first ex plored a
vocabul ary of sinuous, organic shapes rooted, li ke her
paintings, in an abi di ng concern with nature. Later, in such
unorthodox pieces as Laocoon ( 195 I), she combined carved
wood and cast bronze elements that subverted the discrete
procedures and attitudes toward materials ensh rined in
modern ist sculpture.
The circumstances of Pepper's move to steel and to increased
scale reveal much about her character and its impact on her
development. In vited in I 96 I by G iovanni Carandente to
parti cipate in an outdoor sculpture ex hibition for the I 962
Festi val of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, she joined a group
(Al exander Calder, Dav id Smith, Lynn Chadwick, Arnaldo
Pomodoro) that was to produce works in the steel plants of
Italsider. With no training as a welder and only eight months
in which to acquire the requi site skill s, she apprenticed
herse lf to a local artisan and developed the expertise needed
to guide her crew through the arduous phases of fabrication.
She responded so positi vely to these new worki ng condi tions
that instead of one sculpture she produced fi fteen, and , in the
process, gained a fi rm foothold in the male-dominated world
of welders.
By the mid-1960s, Pepper was becoming more adventurous in
her approach to form and technique. She abandoned her
circul ar confi gurations of thin bands of stainless steel to
investigate irregular geometri c constructions whose edges
and interiors were subjected to torch-cutting and bold color.
Responding to issues rai sed by Minimalist sculpture, she
heightened the conceptual demands of her work . In a series of
open, box-li ke pieces designed for outdoor spaces, she
introduced fi nishes so highly polished that the ex terior
surfaces reflected their surroundings, making them seem
empty while the monochrome enamel of the interiors
rendered them, paradoxically, full.
senti nels and the magisterial "urban altars," metaphors of her
desire to reestablish contact with atavistic beliefs and
activities.
In the early 1970s, Pepper's need to pursue a more expansive
dialogue between sculpture and its env ironment led to a
series of earthbound works that articul ated her concept of
"connective art." In Dallas Land Canal and Hillside ( 197 173), she integrated a dynamic sequence of pyramidal Cor-Ten
forms into a long, narrow, grass-covered site intended to be
seen by motorists driving through the suburban area. For the
headquarters of AT&T in rural New Jersey, she conceived
Amphisculpture ( 1974-76), a circu lar structure of concrete
and grass whose design reinforces and formalizes the
character of its site and also imparts an aura of tranquility
comparable to that of its ancient prototypes.
In 1986, Pepper was invited to create a site-specific complex
(roughly the size of two footba ll fie lds) that would enable her
to combine her experience in earthbound sculpture and her
more recent preoccupation with ritual and symbolic forms.
Taking five years to complete, Sol i Ombra park in northern
Barcelona splendidly realizes her goal of "connective art."
Its title proclaims the opposition of those natural conditions
(sun and shade) that have determ ined the fabric of Spanish
life, and its plan orchestrates these polarities by juxtaposing a
concave element defined by a spiral of trees with a convex
grassy mound from which a serpentine pattern of tiles
programmatically asserts itself. The park testifies to the
coherence of Pepper's development, recapitulating aspects of
Dallas Land Canal, Amphisculptu.re and other works of the
1970s. At the same time, the undulating, reflective surface of
the i1Tegularly shaped blue, white, and lavender tiles pointedly
evokes the indigenous artistic experience, specifically the
dynamic facades of Antonio Gaud f.
While her demanding site works brought Pepper into the
forefront of American sculpture by the mid 1970s, her need
to push beyond the barrier of her own achievements and
measure them agai nst the heroic paradigms of sculpture led
her to reassess former concerns such as the dichotomy of
weight versus weightl essness. She began to emp loy shifting
planes to generate the impression of constantly changing
formal configurations and she cantilevered heavy, triangular
pieces of steel so that they appeared to soar effortlessly into
space. Reviewing her exhibition of these provocative works,
Robert Hughes praised Alpha (1975) as "arguably one of the
most successful pieces of monumental sculpture produced by
an American in the last decade."'
In 1978, after lengthy involvement with ever more complex
and large works, Pepper sought respite and replenishment.
She found it in the simpl e processes and e lemental forms
associated with the origins of her medium, forging small iron
sculptures whose primal shapes and rude surfaces at once
resembled industrial artifacts and ritual objects. These
intimately scaled but powerful pieces were the forerunners of
the towering cast steel columns installed in the princ ipal
piazza of Todi in 1979. In these columns, Pepper created a
perfect equilibri um between her industrial age forms and the
weathered facades of the su rrounding buildings, one that
reaffirmed the connotations of militancy and c ivic pride
inscribed in the piazza's space.
Over the next five years, Pepper indefatigably explored the
vertical ity announced in the Todi column s, refining sca le and
experimenting with patinated and o il painted surfaces. Her
determination to intensify the palpably sacral and ceremonial
dimension of her work prompted the creation of markers ,
Pepper's latest dialogue with nature and cu lture was inspired
by the sloping, wooded terrain surrounding Villa Celie in
Pi stoi a. Here, combining local tufa and grass with cast iron
columns and reliefs, she desi gned an outdoor theater whose
formal and material components sensitively reinterpret a
proud Mediterranean tradition.
As a woman and an American residing abroad, Beverly
Pepper was ostensib ly an outsider when she embarked on her
long and distingui shed career. lt is clear that she never
regarded this condition as an obstac le, but rather cul tivated it
to develop her own , unmistakable voice. She once likened
herself to a nomad who becomes part of a place on ly to move
on. Fortunately, Pepper's passages th rough the global
landscape have left lasting imprints that continue to challenge
and inspire us.
Diane Kelder
1b
Notes
' Robert Hughes, "A Red-Hot Momma Returns,"
T;m, , J""' L6, 1975•51.
Chronology
1924
1940-48
1949
1950-52
1954-58
1960
Beverly Pepper,
The Todi Columns, 1979.
Cast steel, 28'5"-35'7" h.
Installed at the Brooklyn Museum.
1961
1962
1964
Beverly Pepper at Sol i Ombra park,
Barcelona, 1993.
1966-68
Born Beverly Stoll, December 20, Brooklyn, NY
Studies advertising design , photography,
industrial design at Pratt Institute. Works as
commercia l art director and attends ni ght classes
at Brooklyn Co ll ege.
Studies painting in Paris with Andre Lh6te and
Fernand Leger. Marries Curtis (Bill) Pepper.
Lives and paints in France and Italy. Birth of
daughter, Jorie. Fellowship from Italian
Government. Settles in Rome. First solo
exhibition at Galleria dello Zodiaco.
Birth of son, John. Solo and group exhibitions in
U.S. Makes first small clay and wood sculptures.
Travels in Far East where she is deeply moved b~
Japanese funerary monuments and Khmer
sculpture.
First so lo exhibition of sculpture at Galleria
Pogliani, Rome.* Fabricates works at the Italside
plant for an outdoor exhibition in Spoleto.
Participates in Sculpture nella Citta, Festival of
Two Worlds, Spoleto. First solo sculpture
exhibition in New York *
Solo exhibition of stainless stee l and Cor-Ten
sculptures at Marlborough in Rome. * Creates
John F. Kennedy Memorial for The Weizmann
Institute, Rehovoth, Israel.
Works on first sculpture commissions in U.S. In
Water Mill , NY, experiments with chrome
plating. First exploration of the concept of
"connective art."
1969-70
1971-73
1972
1974-77
First traveling exhibition: Marlborough Gallery,
New York; Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago; M .I.T., Hayden Court and Plaza;
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Everson
Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY*
Installation of first env ironmental project Dallas
Land Canal and Hillside, Dallas, TX. Major
commissions for city of Boston, and for the
Albany (NY) Mall. Beverly Pepper: Sculpture
1960-73, Tyler School of Art in Rome. *
XXXVI Biennale d' Arte, Venice* Moves to
Todi.
Begins Amphisculpture for AT&T Headquarters,
Bedminster, NJ. First solo exhibition at Andre
Emmerich Gallery, New York. Four works
insta lled in the Sculpture Garden, Dag
Hammarskjold Plaza, New York. Awarded GSA
and NEA grants. Beverly Pepper, Sculpture 197175 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle
M~seum of Contemporary Art; Indianapolis
Mu seum of Art; Hopkins Art Center.* Creates 130'
earth and steel work The! for Dartmouth Co ll ege,
Hanover, NH. Partic ipates in Documenta 6, Kasse l,
West Germany.
1979
Creates four colossal stee l columns for Piazza
Maggiore, Todi * NEA Award.
1981
Casts twelve ductile iron sculptures at John Deere
Foundry, East Moline, TL. The Moline Markers,
Davenport Art Gallery, lA*
1982
Solo exhibition at Laumeier International
Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO. Honorary
doctorate, Pratt Institute. In stallation of three
markers at Ri chard J. Hughes Justice Complex ,
Trenton, NJ.
1983-85 Honorary doctorate, Maryland College of Art.
Beverly Pepper in situ, Hun tington Galleries,
Huntington, WY. Insta ll ation in Doris C.
Freedman Plaza, Centra l Park, New York.
Completes earthwork, Cromlech Glen, Laumeier
International Sculpture Park.
1986-88 Resident, American Academy, Rome. Beverly
Pepper: Sculpture in Place, Albright-Knox
Gallery, Buffalo, NY; San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art; Columbus Museum of Art; The
Brooklyn Museum; Center for the Arts, Miami ,
FL.* Begins Soli Ombra park, Barcelona, Spain.
Begins The Bedford Project at Ardenwood,
Fremont, CA.
1989-9 1 Creates site-spec ific scul pture theater for Vi ll a
Ce lie, Pistoia, Italy. Beverly Pepper, Contemporary Scu lpture Center, Tokyo* Commission for
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Beverly
Pepper in Nami, Rocca and Castello, Narn i, Italy.*
1992-94 Gotanno Community Park, Neo-Hodos, Adachi
City, Japan. Garden at26 Federal Plaza, sitespecifi c sculpture in progress, New York. Receives
site-specific commi ssion for Credit-Suisse
Communications Headquarters, Horgen- Zurich,
Sw itzerl and.
*Catalogue
Andersen , Wayne, American Sculpture in Process, 19301970. New York, 1970.
Fry, Edward F., Beverly Pepper: Sculpture 1971-1975.
Sa n Francisco, 1975.
Rose, Barbara, American Art Since 1900. New York , 1975.
Hughes, Robert, "A Red-Hot Momma Returns," Time, June
16, 1975.
Krauss, Rosalind E. , Passages in Modem Sculpture. New
York, 1977.
Pepper, Beverly, "Space, Time and Nature in Monumental
Sculpture," Art Journal, Spring 1978.
Munro, Eleanor, Originals: American Women Artists.
New York, 1979.
Foote, Nancy, "Mo nument-Sculpture-Earthwork," Artforum,
October 1979.
Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Artists.
Boston and New York, 1982.
Tuchman, Phylli s, "Beverly Pepper: The Mo li ne Markers,"
Bennington Review, Winter 1982.
Baker, Kenneth, " Interconnections: Beverly Pepper," Art in
America, Apri l 1984.
Krauss, Rosalind E. , Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place.
New York, 1986.
Solomon , Deborah, "Women of Steel," Artnews, December
1987.
Rose, Barbara, "Beverly Pepper in Barcelona: The Park That
is a Scu lpture," Journal of Art, November 1989.
Ratcliff, Carter, Beverly Pepper: Tell Wall Reliefs, Sentinels
and Colwnns. New York, 1990.
Shoichiro, Higuch i. Barcelona Environmental Art. Tokyo,
1992.
17
Faith Ringgold
We honor you, Faith Ringgold, as an
artist, writer, teacher and activist.
We honor the originality of your
art in its diversity of subjects,
narratives and media.
Finally, we honor you for
enriching contemporary
American art and for
your leading role in the
women 's art movement
of the last twenty-five
years.
Faith Ringgold 's 1988 five-part story quilt series, Bitter
Nest, which presents a fi ctiti ous story about a mother and
daughter, exemplifies many of her concerns in life as well as
in art. The images and tex ts of Biuer Nest tell the story of
Celi a Cleopatra Prince, a young bl ack doctor. The series
fo ll ows her love affair in Pari s, the birth and upbringing of a
child born out of wedlock, love letters di scovered in an
Atlanta atti c, and a grand homecoming as the fin al scene. It is
also the story of Cee Cee, Celi a's deaf, eccentric, imaginati ve
mother. In the " Harlem Renaissance Party," Part H of the
Biller Nest seri es, we see Cee Cee as she dances (to the deep
embarrass ment of her daughter) in front of dinner guests who
include Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes , W. E.B.
DuBois and Meta Warrick Fuller. In the quilt's handwritten
text, Ringgo ld writes: " Dressed in her oddly pieced and
qu ilted costumes, masks and headresses of her making, she
[Cee Cee] moved among her illustrious guests to mu sic onl y
she could hear. .. .What was Cee Cee doing? Was thi s art?"
Over the years, Ringgold has examined black history and life real and fabricated- freely inventing new hi stories in which
women can play key roles. She is interested in women's
stories and women' s li ves, and relati onships of women with
their families and their work. She is intri gued with the notion
of creati vity and with what constitutes art. Most of all , she is
fascinated with the possibilities as to what an artist can say
through her art.
Ringgold was born in 1930 in Harlem (where she continued
to live until last year). Thus, as a child she grew up among
people who had just witnessed the extraordinary Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s when, as Langston Hughes wrote,
" Harlem was in vogue." Although no longer in vogue during
the Depress ion , the mu sicians, writers and artists of the
Renaissance remained producti ve, just as its legendary sites
continued to ex ist - the theaters, churches, clubs, bars and
restaurants. C ulturally, Harlem was a rich world for the
young Ringgold; later on, its people, hi story and sites
appeared frequentl y in her work. Other childhood experiences, too, influenced her art-making. That quilt-making ran
in the family and her mother was a Harle m fashion des igner
undoubtedly inspired Ringgold ' s interest in fabrics and
sewing, and equall y, she was affected by both parents' li ve ly
storytelling of personal and family hi stories.
In 1948, Ringgold entered college to study art. In 1950 she
married, and in 1952 gave birth to two daughters - Barbara
and Michele Wallace. (Ringgold later divorced Robert Earl
Wallace, her fi rst husband, and in 1962 married Burdette
Ringgold, her present hu sband. ) In 1955 she received her
undergraduate degree and in 1959 her graduate degree in
studio art. Thus by 195 9, she had been co llege-trained as an
arti st, and was about to embark on a long career as a
professional arti st.
In Lowery S. Sims' essay, vividl y entitled "Race Riots,
Cocktai l Parties, Black Panthers, Moon Shoots and
Feminists: Faith Ringgold ' s Observati ons on the 1960's in
America," the author describes Ringgold ' s work of this
decade. She writes of Ringgold ' s vo icing her politica l
messages through the utili zati on of "the fl ag, the poster, the
commemorative stamp, the map, the group encounter, and
iconic fi gures." I Indeed, in her studio activities as well as
through her involvements with acti vist groups, Ringgold
plunged into the artistic and political frays of the 1960s. She
protested against the racist and sex ist po licies of major New
York museums, coll aborated with the Art Workers Coaliti on,
and was one of the "Judson Three," a group of arti sts who
organized the American Fl ag Show in 1970. Equally active
as an arti st, Ringgold produced some of the most powerful
artistic icons of the period. Between 1963 and 1967 she
painted her first major series, The American People: scenes of
encounters between blacks and whites with titles such as
Neighbors , Cocktail Party, Civil Rights Triangle and The
American Dream. She ended the series with three mural-size
works: The Flag is Bleeding, its white and black male
protagonists held apart by a small blond woman; Die, a
spraw ling mass of blood-stained men, women and children
against an austere grid of blacks and grays; and U.S. Postage
Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power.
Ringgold has a lways li ked to produce ambiti ous series as
well as explore a wide range of media - painting, sculpture,
fabrics, quilting, performance and posters. She has a lso
enjoyed experimenting with writing- as texts in her art and
her children's stories, catalogue essays and autobiographical
accounts . In the later 1960s and 1970s, she created series
upon series: Black Light, Family of Women, Slave Rape,
Windows of the Wedding , Couples, Portrait Masks and
Women on a Pedestal. In 1972, she experimented with
language- handwritten poems and phrases in her Political
Landscapes and Feminist Landscapes. In the same year, she
began to collaborate with her mother (this collaboration
lasted until her mother' s death in 1981), to frame her
paintings with tankas (soft cloth frames) and turn to fabrics
with which she created " masks" and "dolls. " In an unpubli shed text, she wrote musingly about thi s period of her life:
" I already had several crosses to bear. Being black, a woman
and a feminist were enough . Did I need to be further
eliminated on the grounds that I was doing crafts instead of
'fine arts?"'
Far from being "eliminated," Ringgold achieved growing
recognition. In the 1970s she exhibited all around the
country, and by 1986 she was represented by the highly
successful Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York. Thi s
provided her with increasing mainstream visibility and gave
her a market in which to sell her work . From 1983 onward,
beginning with Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima ?, the first of
her now-famous story quilts, she eliminated not only
traditional distinctions between art and crafts but also
between image and language. Generally, Ringgold likes to
challenge and cross borders including those separating the
mainstream from femin ist and commun ity structures. For
example, since the mid-1980s she has taught at a distingu ished avant-garde art department (the Visual Arts
Department at the University of California, San Diego) and
for several years she was on the Board of Directors of the
College Art Association, where she initiated the Directory of
People of Color in the Visual Arts. At the same time, she has
been a highly active and loyal member of the Women 's
Caucus for Art, has founded Coast to Coast (a women-ofcolor organization), and curated a series of feminist
exhibitions including the "The Wild Art Show" (a response to
the 1982 killing of children in Atlanta). She is a formidab le
adversary, a wonderful ally and a tireless inventor of
strategies, both artistic and political.
Recently, Ringgold has entered the theoretical di scourses
around visual representation, appropriation and authorship in
a highly original way. In 1990, she in vented Willia Marie
Simon, an American expatriate artist, model and cafe owner.
" I escaped the cotton fie lds of Georgia and the side streets of
Harlem to live as une artiste in Pari s," Simon explains in one
of the texts for The French Collection, a twelve-story-quilt
saga about the heroine ' s life, relationsh ips and adventures in
such sites as the Louvre, Giverny, Aries, the homes of
Gertrude Stein and Josephine Baker, and the studios of
Mati sse and Picasso. In 1992, Ringgold exhibited the series '
first eight quilts together with a publication containing their
texts and two short essays -one by Michele Wallace,
Ringgold 's daughter, entitled "Whose Looking Now," and
one by myself, called "Upsetting Artistic Apple Carts."
For three decades now Ringgold has been looking at hi story
and society, always informing us boldly as to what she sees.
Simultaneously, she has been upsetting not only artistic app le
carts, but also history. In Dinner at Gertrude Stein 's, part of
The Fren ch Collection , Ringgold placed the young Willia
Marie Simon among a mixture of people, some who attended
these famous so irees , (such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest
Hemingway and Richard Wright) and some who in reality did
not (Zora Neale Hurston and other black writers). In an
interview, Ringgold said: "My process is designed to give us
'colored folk' and women a taste of the American dream
straight up. Since the facts don ' t do it that often, I decided to
make it up ... .In the process, it made me feel included. That is
the real power and joy of being an artist. We can make it
come true. Or look true. "2
Moira Roth
Notes
I Published in Eleanor Flomenhaft (ed.), Faith Ringold: A 25 Year
Survey, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, 1990, p. 17.
2 Moira Roth, "Dinner at Gertrude Stein' s: A Conversation with
Faith Ringgold," Artweek, February 13, 1992, p. 10.
Chronology
1930
Faith Ringgold, Self- Portrait, 1993.
Faith Ringgold,
"Harl em Renaissance Party," Bitter Nest II, 1988.
94" x 82". Acrylic on can vas, printed,
tye-dyed, and pieced fabric. Pri vate Collection.
Born in Harle m, New York C ity; li ves with father
and mother and two siblings, Andrew and Barbara.
1948- 1959 Studies at City College of New York (B.S . and M.A.).
196 1
First trip to Europe.
1963- 1967 Creates The American People eries.
1965- 1970 Represented by the Spectrum Gallery, a coop
gallery on 57th Street, in New York; gallery gives
Ringgold her first one-person ex hi bition in 1967,
and a second one-person ex hibi tion in 1970.
Begin s lifelong acti vist work on behalf of women
1968
artists and artists of co lor.
1955- 1973 Teaches in New York C ity public schoo l system;
in 1970 she also beg ins to teach art classes at
Wagner Co llege and Bank Street Co llege.
197 1
Uses a ll -female imagery for the firs t time in The
Women's House. In the same year begins to work
with soft cloth frames (tankas) and shortly
afterward with "soft" sculpture (mas ks and doll s).
1973
Ten-year retrospective exhibition, Rutgers University.
1975- 1976 Works with multi-medi a masked perfo rmance
pieces; creates trave ling perfo rmance, The Wake
and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro ( 1976).
1977
First visit to Afii ca (Nigeria and Ghana, West Africa).
1978
Receives National Endowment for the Arts award.
1980- 1983 Begi ns work in qu ilt medium and evolves idea of
story quilts; in 1980 coll aborates with W ill i
Posey, her mother (who dies in 198 1) on Echoes
of Harlem; in 1983 creates first story quil t, Who's
AjiYt id of Aunt Jemima ?
1984
Retrospective ex hib ition and first catalogue, Faith
Ringgold: Twenty Yea rs of Painting, Sculpture
and Petfo rmance, 1963- 1983, The Studio
Museum in Harlem.
1985
Appointed Professor of Art, University of California,
San Diego; and since then, divides her time between
Cali fomia and the East Coast. (Moves from Harlem
to Engelwood, New Jersey in 1992.)
1986- 1992 Represented by Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York.
Three one-person exhibitions in gallety: Change:
Painted St01y Quilts ( 1987); Changes 2: Painted Quilts
( 1988) and The French Collection ( 1992).
1986-1 993 Awarded seven honorary doctorate degrees.
1987
Receives Guggenheim Fellowship.
1989
Receives Nationa l Endowment for the Arts award
in painting.
1990
Receives La Napoule Foundation award for a
September-December residency in the south of
France, where she starts painting The French
Collection.
1990-1993 Three-year traveling exhibition and catalogue,
Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey, curated by
Eleanor Flomenhaft.
1991
Starts ongoing series of children's books (text and
illustrations): Tar Beach (1991), Aunt Harriet's
Underground Railway in the Sky (I 992), and
Dinner at Aunt Connie's House (1993).
1993
Among Ringgold's current projects are more
children' s books and story quilts; her autobiography,
We Flew Over the Bridge, to be published by Little,
Brown and Company in 1995; and public commissions
including two 25-feet mosaics for the !25th street
IRT subway station in New York; a quilted mural
about the life of Eugenio Maria de Hostos for the De
Hostos Community College in the Bronx; and a story
quilt containing twelve local cultural histories for a
public school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York.
Selected Collections
The American Craft Museum; Boston Museum of Fine Arts;
Chase Manhattan Bank Collection; Clark Museum; High
Museum of Fine Arts ; Metropolitan Museum of Art; The
Museum of Modern Art, New York; Newark Museum; Philip
Morris Collection; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Studio
Museum in Harlem; and private collections.
Rose, Barbara, "Black Art in America," An in America, September/
October 1970.
Wallace, Michele, "For the Women's House," Feminist An Joumal,
1972.
Fine, Elsa Honig, The Afro-AmericanAnist. New York, 1973.
Lewis, Samella, An: African American. New York, 1977.
Lippard, Lucy R., "Faith Ringgold' s Black, Political, Feminist Art,"
in From the Center: feminist essays on women 's an. New York,
1976.
Munro, Eleanor, "Faith Ringgold," in Originals: American Women
Anists. New York, 1979.
Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Anists from
Early Indian Times to the Present. Boston and New York, 1982.
Ringgold, Faith, "from Being My Own Woman." In Confinnation:
An Anthology ofAfrican American Women. Edited by Amiri Baraka
(LeRoi Jones) and Amina Baraka. New York, 1983.
Robinson, Charlotte (ed.), The Artist and the Quilt. New York, 1983.
Wallace, Michele (ed.), Faith Ringgold: Twenty Years of Painting,
Sculpture and Perfonnance ( I963-I983) . New York, 1984.
Catalogue contains essays by Mary Schmidt Campbell, Freida
High-Wasikhongo, Lucy R. Lippard, Eleanor Munro, Moira Roth,
TerrieS. Rouse, and Michele Wallace, together with chronology
and bibliography.
Gouma-Peterson, Thalia, and Kathleen McMannus Zurko, Faith
Ringgold: Painting, Sculpture, Performance August-October 1985.
Wooster, Ohio, 1985.
Ringgold, Faith, Change: Painted Story Quilts. New York, 1987.
Catalogue contains essays by Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Moira
Roth, together with texts of Change: Faith Ringgold's Over 100
Pounds Weight Loss Pe1jonnance Story Quilt and The Lover's
Quilt, #l-3.
Sills, Leslie, Inspirations: Stories about Women Anists. Edited by
Ann Fay. Morton Grove, lllinois, 1989.
Flomenhaft, Eleanor, Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey.
Hempstead, Long Island, New York, 1990. Catalogue contains
interview by Flomenhaft, essays by Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Moira
Roth and Lowery S. Sims, together with chronology.
Grudin, Eva Ungar, Stitching Memories: African-American Story
Quilts. Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990. Contains excerpts
from text of story quilt, JOO Hundred Years at Williams College
1889-1989.
Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Sculptors. Boston,
1990.
Witzling, Mara, (ed.), Voicing Our Visions. New York, 1991.
Ringgold, Faith , Lo Collection Franraise, The French
Collection. New York, 1992. Contains texts of Part I (the first
eight story-quilts), together with essays by Michele Wallace
and Moira Roth.
Turner, Robyn Montana, Faith Ringgold. Boston, Toronto
and London, 1993.
Video
Freeman, Linda, Faith Ringgold: The Lnst Story Quilt. Distributed
by Home Vision.
21
Rachel
Rosenthal
We honor you, Rachel Rosenthalteacher, rabble-rouser, ecofeminist, stand-up shaman.
You expand the form of
performance art, reaching
beyond its autobiographical
constraints to take in, and
take on, politics, science,
human interaction, the
universe itself. Creating a
compassionate theater of
cruelty, you sound a warning that
both frightens and inspires, offering a
vision of what we might become. You
make art to heal the world.
"We are not free . And the sky can stillfall on our heads. And
the theater has been created to teach us that first of all. "
-Antonin Artaud
As a child growing up in Paris in the 1930s, Rachel
Rosenthal had to give a ballet recital every year on her
birthday for ISO guests in her parents' magnificent home. In
between these annual performances, she' d put on puppet
spectacles for the servants, animating her 50 teddy bears into
raucous characters, using as her setting the salon where
Monets and Chagalls adorned the walls, where Jascha Heifitz
and Vladimir Horowitz regularly entertained the Rosenthal s'
high-society friends. But among her performances, Rosenthal
most identified with the Bad Queen from Snow White. She
loved nothing more, she remembers, than "putting on a
shmatte and running down the stairs," cape flowing as she
glided to the bottom of a two-storied grand staircase. She was
so taken with the Disney film, she says, that throughout the
trauma of fleeing the Nazis in 1940- running first to Spain,
then Portugal, then Brazil, and finally New York- all she
could think of was getting to America so she could see
Fantasia.
Now, at 66, Rosenthal is one of America' s most politically
committed and challenging performance artists. She lives far
more modestly , in a Los Angeles apartment with three dogs,
two cats, and two rats- "companions, not 'pets"' - prolifically creating Zen-tinted works about the connections among
all forms of life. With her shaved head, elegant stature, and
voice that chants warmly or growls from unseen depths, she
still plays one hell of a Bad Queen.
Among the numerous personas Rosenthal inhabits in her
solo, multi-media pieces - ranging from Koko the gori ll a to
Marie-Antoinette- the most striking is a spiteful, even
vengeful female power who chides human ity for its crimes
against animal s, the earth, and itself. Whether as the Earth
who craw ls out of a rubbish pile to bark out her role as both
nurturer and destroyer (Gaia Man Amour, 1984), as the
demonic diva who crouches into animal howls of despair
(Death Valley, 1987), or as the crone who inscribes her age
onto her bald head and then pours hot wax over it (L.O. W. in
Gaia, 1986), Rosenthal is an Artaudian snake charmer,
coaxing the audience, as he wrote, "by means of their
organisms to an apprehension of the subtlest notions."
Indeed, Rosenthal claims Artaud as one of her early
influences as she was developing the Instant Theater, an
improvisational company, in California in the 1950s. Havi ng
danced with Merce Cunningham, and having struggled as a
painter, she found Artaud's writing "so liberating at that time
because he insisted that you could have an expression that
used all artistic means in a seamless way. " But beyond her
careful blending of music, word, image, and movement,
Rosenthal ' s ferociously moving work is Artaudian in spirit:
like the theater he envisioned, her gut-grabbing performances
are "the revelation, the bringing forth, the exteriorization of a
depth of latent cruelty by means of which all the perverse
possibilities of the mind , whether of an individual or a
people, are localized." But unlike Artaud' s, Rosenthal' s
theater of cruelty is born of love. For all its fearsome
intensity, it is unsentimentally hopeful, witty, full of pleasure.
The development of Rosenthal's work reads like a description of the evolution of performance art itself. With roots in
movement and visual art, she began performing autobiographical pieces while she was being awakened and spurred
by the women 's movement, then broadened into more
expansive themes. "For a long, long time," she says, "I li ved
under the absolute paradigm that to be an arti st was to be
male. But every now and then it cropped up that I wasn't
male, so therefore I must not have been an arti st." Rosenthal
remained tortured by this confusion (which now seems
hil arious to her) until the early ' 70s, when she attended the
Cal Arts conference organized by Judy Chicago and Mi riam
Shapiro. She recalls, "For three days they showed continual
slides of women's work. Thi s outpouring of images by
women just blew my mind. The light bulb went off. I began
looking at things in a completely different way and found
myself in a state of turmoil."
Rosenthal found performance almost by accident. "Judy and
Mimi wanted to create a women's space and invited me to
participate in a di scu ssion," she explains. "I thought it was a
CR group, so when I was called on to speak, I gave a
complete run-down of my development. It came off like a
performance." But no one complained. Rosenthal helped
found Womanspace and other femini st galleri es on the west
coast, and was onstage in her own pieces by 1975.
" By the earl y '80s," says Rosenthal, "I had done quite a few
pieces that recreated an autobiography and I reali zed that I
hadn ' t changed my life one iota. Havi ng done all this art did
nothing but give me a body of art. The long, personal
exorcism was over. I began working on global issues."
But what Rosenthal sees as a major shi ft in focus looks as
gradual and natural as a change of seasons. Works about her
childhood, such as Charm ( I977), were certainly more
centered on her self than pieces li ke The Others ( 1984 ), in
which she shared the stage with snakes, goats, dogs, and
monkeys, or KabbaLAmobile (1 984), where, fro m a pl atform
in a parking lot, she dec laimed text from the Kabbala and
from hot-rod magazines while a team of stunt dri vers zoomed
intricate patterns around her. Still, the autobiographical
pieces always reached out of her psyche toward myth, while
her most recent work takes on animal rights, the environment,
the enti re cosmos, by orbiting around personal experiences.
In L.O. W. in Gaia she used her own ag ing body to describe
the aging earth, connecting the hi story of the planet to the
hi story of a person. lnfilename:FUTURFAX (1992) she
enacted the personal ravages of an America in the throes of
apocalypse.
Many of the issues Rosenthal expl ores - the destructiveness
of the mind/body duality, the inevitability of violence in a
commercial world, the assumption that technology equals
progress- are familiar as ideas to debate and analyze. But
Rosenthal, say ing she feels call ed to make art that is healing
to the earth, is the only performer to address these issues with
such astoni shing emoti on, as if every toxic drop is a personal
affron t. "There's just too much waltzi ng around issues," she
says. "One of the ways the human mind works is that we can
do that waltzing. But unless our noses are rubbed in the
merde ri ght now, we' re head ing for di saster."
To avoid creati ng despair- "whi ch is paralyzing" - Rosenthal
relies more and more on humor. Her demonic stage presence
is balanced by witty turns and ditzy moments; the fin ale of
Rachel's Brain ( I 987) is downright hil ari ous, though it
doesn' t exactl y leave its audience on a high note. ''I' m getting
less and less inclined to let people off easy," Rosenthal
expl ains. " ! would Jove to think I could create a revolution
with my work. I don' t know if art can operate that way now
that it is so commodified, but I do want my audiences to
thin k, every time they breathe in and out, about how
e verythi ng affects everything."
Alisa Solomon
Adapted fro m "Signalling Through the Diox in," Village
Voice, October 4, 1988.
23
~r.l
Rachel Rosenthal,
Rachel's Brain, 1987.
Photo: Mary Coll ins
Rachel Rosenthal
Photo: Thomas Fusser
Chronology
1926
1945
1945-47
1947 -48
1956-66
Born in Paris, France.
Naturali zed, U.S. c itizen.
New Schoo l for Soc ia l Research, New York.
La Sorbonne, Pari s.
Creator and arti stic director of Instant Theater,
Ho ll ywood, CA.
1973
Foun ding member, Board , and Co-chair
Womanspace, Los Angeles.
1975
Replays, Orlando Ga ll ery, Encino, CA;
Thanks , W ilshire Plaza West, Los Ange les .
1977
Chann, Mount St. Mary' s Gallery, Los Angeles;
The Head of O.K. , Institute fo r Dance and
Ex perimental Art, Santa Monica, CA ; The Center
fo r Music Ex periment, UC-San Diego.
1980
My Brazil, Wordworks, Inc. San Jose; UCIrvine; l.D .E. A. , Santa Monica.
1980-83 Creator and director of Espace DbD, a space fo r
Non-Static Art, Los Angeles.
198 1
Soldier of Fortune, Art Institu te of Chi cago;
1982-83
1983 -84
1984-86
1987
1987-89
1986-9 1
1988-92
1989
1992-93
Newport Harbor Art Mu seum, CA; Tortue
Gallery, Santa Monica; Taboo Subjects , Sushi ,
San Di ego; Vehicule Art, Montrea l; Espace DbD,
Los Angeles; ARC, Toronto; Metromedia,Vancouver.
Traps, Women in Focus, Vancouver; Espace
DbD, Los Angeles; Sushi , San Diego; Center for
Idea Art, Denver; Weber State Co ll ege, Ogden,
UT; Crossroads School, Santa Monica; Uni v. o f
Wisconsin-M adi son; Randolph Street Gallery,
Chicago; Franklin Furnace, New York; Allen
Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; On the
Boards, Seattle; Washington State Uni v., Pullman,
W A.
Gaia, Man Amour, The House, Santa Monica;
Film in the Cities, St. Paul, MN ; Boston Film &
Video Foundation ; Hal wall s, Buffa lo, NY ; SAW,
Ottawa; Portland Center for the Vi sual Arts, OR;
Sushi , San Diego; UCLA.
The Others, Japan America Theater, Los
An geles; Museum of Contemporary Art, La Joll a,
CA; Uni v. o f North Carolina, Raleigh.
Death Valley, Creative Time/Central Park
Summerstage, New York City.
Rachel's Brain , Festi val de Theatre des
Ameriques , Montrea l; Bie lfeld , West Germ any;
Los Angeles Festi va l; Documenta 8, Kassel, West
Germany; Kaaitheater, Brussels; Dance Theater
Workshop, New York; Festi val lnternac ional de
Teatro de Granada, Spa in ; Walker Art Center,
Minneapoli s; Jacob' s Pillow, MA; Contemporary
Arts Center, New Orleans.
L.O. W. in Gaia, The Kitchen, New York Ci ty;
Marquette Uni v., Mil waukee; Belluard/ Boll werk
Festi val, Fribourg, Switzerland; Zagreb Theatre
Festi val, Yugos lav ia; LACE, Los Angel es; U.S.
Time Festi val , Belgium.
Pangean Dreams, Uni v. of Ari zona Museum of
Art ; Portl and State Uni v., OR; Kala Institute,
Berke ley, CA; Los Angeles Festi val, Santa
Monica; UC-Santa Barbara; Sushi , San Di ego; U.S.
Time Festival , Ghent, Belgium; Serious Fun,
Lincoln Center, New York City; He lsinki Festi val,
Finland.
OBIE Award, Village Voice, New York City.
filename: FUTURFAX, Wadsworth Atheneum Hartford
CT.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City:
Cleveland Perfonnance Art Festival ; I.C.A. , London;
Sushi, San Diego; New Orleans Contemporary Arts
Center; Museum of Contemporary Art, Honolulu;
Perfonnance Space, Sydney, Australia.
Rosenthal, Rache l, "Taboo Subjects: Performance and the
Masochi st Tradition ," High Petjormance, Winter 198 1-82.
Rosenthal , Rachel , "KabbaLAmobile," Spectacle Magazine
(Los Ange les, CA) , 1984.
Rosenthal, Rache l, "L.O.W. in Gaia," Petfo rming Arts
Journal 30, vol. I0, no. 3 ( October 1987).
Durl and, Ste ven, "Rachel Rosenthal," High Petjormance,
vol. I 0, no. 39 (November 3, 1987).
Lampe, Eelka, " Rachel Rosenthal Creating her Selves," The
Drama Review, Spring 1988.
Forte, Jeannie, "Women' s Performance Art : Femini sm and
Postmoderni sm," Theater Journal, va l. 40, no. 2 (May
1988).
Fi scher, Mary, "Oh Rats, It 's Rache l," Life Magazine,
September 1988.
Brown, Betty Ann and Arlene Raven, Exposures: Women &
Their Art. Pasadena, CA, 1989.
Fuchs, Elinor, "New Women's Perfo rmance," Brooklyn
Academy of Mu sic, Nex t Wave Festi val catalogue, 1989.
Boffi, T. Adam, "The Performance Art of Rachel
Rosenthal," Venice Magazine (Ven ice, CA), June 1990.
Sawahata, Lisa, " Rachel Rosentha l: The Grand O ld
Androgy ne of Avant-Garde," Exposure Maga zine (Los
Angeles), October 1990.
Downey, Lowe ll and Jann a W. Joseph son, "Rache l
Rosenthal, Real Time, and Real Li ving: Arti st as Hea ler,"
VOX Art Magazine, Winter 1991.
Leabhart, Thomas, " Rachel Rosenthal," Mime Journal
199 1/92, Cali fo rnia Performance vol. 2, Pomona College,
Claremont, CA.
Rosenthal , Rachel , "Statement for the Congress ional
Record," NAA O Bulletin (Washington, D.C.), November,
199 1.
Meo la, Deni se, " Rache l Rosenthal ," OMNI Magazine,
August 1992.
Charlotte
Streifer
Rubinstein
We honor you, Charlotte
Streifer Rubinstein, for
your outstanding contributions in art history,
art education, and the
dissemination of knowledge about women artists.
We agree that everything
you have done-the writing,
the studio art, the exhibiting, the
teaching-has come together for you,
and it is to our benefit. Truly, as you
have said, nothing in your life experience has been wasted.
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein's place of bi rth proved
fortuitous; the timing at fi rst seemed not. Born in 192 1, she
grew up just around the corner fro m the Brooklyn Museum .
Her older sister, Helen, now deceased, li ved the conventional
upper-middle-cl ass life, the kind her parents wanted for both
their daughters. Charlotte's introduction to the creati ve life
began with her after-school wanderings through the Brooklyn
Museum galleries and attendance at Saturday morning
children's art classes there, where she sketched from the
collections. From age nine she took the subway (alone) to
Manhattan, where she explored the 57th Street galleries and
the great museums. And during her high school years, which
coinc ided with the Depression, she studied painting and
sculpture with Works Progress Admini stration artists. The
discuss ions in those W.P.A. art centers, which covered the
fi elds of art, philosophy, and politics, aroused her social
consciousness and encouraged her political activi sm - she
joined a delegation to Washington, D.C. to persuade Congress
to admi t to the U .S. more Jews fl eeing Nazi persecution and to
urge passage of civil rights leg islation. Daum ier, Goya, and
Kollwitz became her favored artists because of their astute
combination of the aesthetic with the political. Her creati ve
self continued to develop, too, during these years: she wrote
poetry (whi ch she illustrated), book and play rev iews, and she
edited her school newspapers.
After earning a B.A. in art from Brooklyn College in 1941 and
an M. A. in art and art education from Teachers College of
Columbi a Universi ty in 1946, Rubinstein taught in New York
C ity ' s secondary schools. Like many of the war and postwar
brides of her generation, she foll owed her hu sband to hi s army
and educati onal posts, reestabl ishing households, bearing
children, taking courses, and worki ng to help "Put Hubby
Through," earning a "PHT," as McCall 's magazine condescendingly put it in articles urging women to stand by their
men after the war. This peripatetic ex istence lasted about
twenty years, during which her career was put on hold. Her
activism continued, however, with protests against McCarthyism
and the Vietnam War. She also became involved early in the
femini st movement.
After settling in Southern Californi a in 1952, Rubinstein
wanted to work toward a Ph.D. in art history at the Uni versity
of Cali fornia at Los Angeles, but when she found that the
department would accept none of her extensive studio credits
(the faculty saw no advantage for an art historian to be
grounded in studi o ex perience), she enrolled instead in the
Otis-Parsons Art Insti tute's M .F.A. program. For the next
fi fteen years she taught the whole range of art courses at
various community colleges in Southern Cali forni a. Four years
after organi zing "Women U.S.A. ," a national juried women
arti sts' exhibition in 1972, she introduced at Saddleback
College a pioneering course on women artists. Also in 1976
she began research for her now-famous book on American
women arti sts. It was a six-year labor of love.
As Carolyn Heilbrun observed in Writing A Woman's Life,
women are often reborn after they reach the age of fifty. So it
was for Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein. As she wrote to me
recently:
Looking back I realize that I wrote as well as drew
right through my earl y years as editor of my
school papers, so that when I began the surveys, it
was like a sy nergistic "coming home." Everything
I had ever done came together - the writing, the
studi o art, the exhibiting, the teaching, and yes the 20 moves around the country. Nothing was
wasted.
American Women Artists from Early Indian Times to the
Present begin s with a chapter on Native American arti sts and
inc ludes entries on arti sts of African, Latin , As ian, and
European descent, many little kn own previously. Since its
publication in 1982, Am.erican Women A rtists has received
numerous honors including the prestigious Best Human ities
Award , a prem ier award in the scholarl y and professional
category. While preparing the book, Ru binstein was struck by
the unique hi story of Ameri can women sculptors, who, since
the mid- 19th century, have been creating public monuments
in small and large cities throughout the country. For several
years Charlotte, sometimes with her husband Bill on hand to
act as photographer, traveled throughout the country
photographing these monuments and in vestigating the artists'
li ves. In American Women Sculptors: A Histo1y of Women
Wo rking in Three Dimensions, published in 1990, Rubinste in
ex panded the defi nition of sculpture to inc lude ceramics,
three-dimensional weavi ng, furni ture, even performance.
While others were writing inte rnati onal surveys, Rubinste in
honed in on what is best about the American experi ence, the
creati ve energy in abundance throughout thi s land. Her two
books add to our know ledge and understanding of American
art, American women, and ourselves. No one else could have
persevered through these daunting tasks, and no one has
atte mpted to supersede them. American Women Artists and
American Women Sculptors re main unique.
Elsa Honig Fine
Chronology
192 1
1930s
194 1
1943-47
1948-49
1949-52
1953
1965-69
1969-71
Born to Lilli an Kaufman and Aaron Stre ifer,
Jewish immigrants from Austri a- Hungary, in
Harlem, New York City. Raised in Brooklyn.
Attends Works Progress Admini stration art
classes at nearby community center.
B.A. in art, painting maj or, Brooklyn College.
Marri es William Rubinstein , whose mother was a
pioneering pedi atrician. Husband enlists in Air
Force; travels with him to Phil adelphi a, Fort
Lauderdale, New Haven, and Boston. Studies
briefl y at Boston Museum School.
M.A. in art education, Teachers Co llege,
Colu mb ia Uni versity . Teaches art in New York
City secondary schools.
Attends Yale Art Schoo l whil e hu sband works on
Ph. D. in Engli sh literature. Son Arthur born.
Moves to Mad ison, Wi sconsin , where husband
teaches Engli sh at Uni versity of Wi sconsin.
Daughter Joan born . Paints, sc ulpts, and creates
fashi on adverti sements for local newspapers.
Moves to Los Angeles for warm climate after
hu sband almost dies of bul bar polio. He loses hi s
voice and has to give up teaching, and becomes
involved with research and development for Cable
TV. Daughter Elaine born .
Completes M.F.A. program in printmaki ng and
design at Oti s-Parsons Art Insti tute, Los Angeles.
Teaches Pepperdine Uni versity extension classes
in art fo r e lementary school teachers. Ex hibits
three-dimensional Plex iglas sculptures and prints
at Downey M useum and Co msky Ga ll ery in Los
Ange les, and elsewhere.
Teaches des ign, draw ing, and art appreciation at
West Los Angeles College and Valley College,
both in Los Ange les.
Cover, Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein,
America Women Sculptors: A History
of Women Working in Three Dimensions,
published in 1990.
AMERICAN
WOMEN
SCULPTORS
CHARLOTTE STREIFER RUBINS T E I N
,.
•
:1
•
1971-73
1973-74
1974
1974-84
1976
1982
1984
1987
1990
1991
1983present
Teaches art history, design , and drawing at
Fu llerton Co llege. Elected president of Orange
County Art Association and serves on Board of
Muckenthaler Cultural Center, Fu llerton.
Organi zes "Women U.S.A," a national exhibit
juried by Jane Livingston for Laguna Beach Art
Museum .
Spends sabbatical year traveling throughout
Europe.
Moves to Laguna Beach in Orange County (where
she still lives).
Teaches art hi story , art appreciation, and design at
Saddleback College. Member of interdi sciplinary
program that correlated the teaching of art with
hi story , philosophy, science, and literature.
Introduces and teaches Women in Art course at
Saddleback College; begins research for
American. Women Artists.
American Women Artists from Early Indian
Times to the Presell/ published; receives
numerous awards, inc ludin g Best Humanities
Book (professiona l and scholarly category) from
the Association of American Publishers.
Awarded individual research grant from American
Association of University Women for work on
Currier & lves printmaker Fanny Palmer.
A keynote speaker at sculpture conference
"Works by Women," University of Cincinnati.
American Women Sculptors: A History of
Women Working in Three Dimensions published.
William Rubinstein dies after lengthy illness.
Lectures on various aspects of American women
artists at Pennsy lvania Academy of Fine Arts,
United Nations, Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, Detroit In stitute of Art, National Museum of
Women in the Arts, and elsewhere. Chairs panels
at various conferences and receives many awards .
Publications
Books:
American Women. Artists from Early Indian Times to the
Present . Boston and New York, 1982.
An1erican Women. Sculptors: A History of Women Working in
Three Dimensions. Boston, 1990.
Book Reviews:
Emi ly Cutrer, The Art of the Woman: The Life and Art of
Elisa bet Ney; Charlotte Moser, Clyde Conn.ell: The Art and
Life of a Louisiana Won.wn.; Myrna Eden, Energy and
Individuality in the Art of Anna Huntington, Sculptor, and
Amy Beach, Composer, Woman's Art Journal, Spring/
Summer 1991.
Dolly Sherwood, Harriet Hosmer: American Sculptor, I8301908, Woman 's Art Journal (forthcoming).
Thalia Gouma-Peterson (ed.), Breaking the Rules: Audrey
Flack, A Retrospective, Woman's Art Journal (forthcoming).
Articles:
"The First American Women Artists," Woman 's Art Journal,
Spring/Su mmer 1982.
"The Early Career of Frances Flora Bond Palmer ( 18121876)," American. Art Journal, Fall 1985 .
"Hildreth Meiere," entry in Chris Petteys, International
Diction.my of Women Artists Bam before I 900. Boston
1985.
'
"Chris Petteys: The Dr. Johnson of Women Artists"
Woman 's Art Journal, Spring/Summer 1986.
'
"Scul pture in the 1990s," Art Today, Winter 1991 .
"Frances Flora Bond Palmer," entry in MacMillan International Dictionary of Art. Eng lewood Cliffs, NJ (forthcomIng).
Exhibition Reviews:
"Florence Arnold and Lawrence Jones," Artweek, 1977.
"A Mythic-Constructivist Trio," Artweek, May 12, 1984.
"The Soft and the Hard of It," Artweek, August 11 , 1984.
"A Diverse Trio," Artweek, June 28, 1986.
29
Washington, D.C. 1979
Isabel Bishop
Selma Burke
Alice Nee!
Loui se Nevelson
Georgia 0 ' Keeffe
New Orleans 1980
Anni Albers
Loui se Bourgeois
Caroline Duri eux
Ida Kohlmeyer
Lee Krasner
Washington, D.C.
1980 Alternate A wards
Be ll a Abzug
Sonia John son
Sister Theresa Kane
Grace Paley
Rosa Parks
Gloria Steinem
San Francisco 1981
The WCA Honor Awards
were instituted in 1979
en's
faucus
fi.rt
Ruth Berhnard
Acle lyn Breeskin
Elizabeth Catlett
Sari Dienes
C laire Falkenstein
Helen Lundeberg
Toronto 1984/
Los Angeles 1985
Minn a Citron
C lyde Conne ll
Eleanor Raymond
Joyce Treiman
June Way ne
Rachel Wi schnitzer
New York City 1986
Nell Blaine
Leonora Carrington
Sue Fuller
Lois M ai lou Jo nes
Dorothy Miller
Barbara Morgan
Boston 1987
Grace Hartigan
Agnes Mo ngan
Maude Morgan
Elizabeth Talford Scott
Honore Sharrer
Beatrice Wood
Houston 1988
Margaret Taylor Burroughs
Dorothy Hood
Miri am Schapiro
Ed ith Standen
Jane Teller
New York City 1982
Berenice Abbott
Elsie Driggs
Elizabeth Gilmore Ho lt
Katharine Kuh
Charmion von Wi egand
Claire Ze isler
Margret Craver
Clare Leighton
Same lla Sanders Lew is
Betye Saar
Bernarda Bryson Shahn
Philadelphia 1983
New York 1990
Edna Andrade
Dorothy Dehner
Lotte Jacobi
E ll en Johnson
Stella Kramrisch
Lenore T aw ney
Pecolia Warn er
San Francisco 1989
li se Bing
Elizabeth Layton
Helen Serger
May Stevens
Pablita Ve larde
Washington, D.C.1991
Theresa Bernstein
Mildred Constantine
Otellie Loloma
Mine Okubo
Delilah Pierce
Chicago 1992
Vera Berdich
Paula Gerard
Lucy Lewis
Louise Noun
Anna Tate
Margaret Tafoya
Seattle 1993
Ruth Asawa
Shifra M. Goldman
Nancy Graves
Gwen Knight
Agueda Salazar Mmtfnez
Emily Waheneka
New York 1994
Mary Adams
Marfa Enriquez de Allen
Beverly Pepper
Faith Ringgold
Rachel Rosenthal
Thanks and Acknowledgements
I have been very fortunate to have a wonderfu l committee
who have all contributed greatly to our work . Special
thanks to Janet Goldner, our New York Conference
Liaison, who has done an excellent job planning the
Honors events and coordinating the many volunteers who
have worked to make the Honorees feel respected and
honored. I also want to offer my deepest thanks to Sharon
Vatsky and Jane Farver of the Queens Museum of Art, cocurators of the exquisite exhibition and reception. Thanks
to Deborah Sperry for her consummate graciousness and
attention to detail in making the Honorees ' Luncheon so
special.
A million thanks to catalogue editor Melanie Herzog who
with scho larship, expertise, and dedication has created an
impressive catalogue worthy of our esteemed Honorees.
Thanks to Joanne Schilling for her striking graphic design.
Editing the catalogue is an enormous job that requires the
utmost sens iti vity and organizing abilities and Melanie has
been an exemplary editor. In addition we thank the
impressive group of presenters selected by the Honorees:
Sh ifra M. Goldman for Marfa Enriquez de Allen, Katsi
Cook Barreiro for Mary Adams, Diane Kelder for Beverly
Pepper, Moira Roth for Faith Ringgold , A lisa Solomon for
Rachel Rosenthal and Elsa Honig Fine for Charlotte
Streifer Rubinstein. I want to express WCA ' s appreciation
for the Presenters' generos ity. Each of these women wrote
the essay, chronology and bib liography included in this
catalogue and provided the photos of the Honorees and
their work. In addition, they make the oral slide presentation at the Honoring Ceremony and come to the conference
at their own expense. All of the Presenters' efforts are
voluntary donations of their time, money and experti se.
Since I edited the Honor Awm·ds ' catalogues in 1991 and
1992, I have lobbied the WCA Board of Directors to
budget money to compensate the Presenters and acknowledge their professional efforts. I sincerely hope that
sometime in the near future, WCA will be able to fulfill our
commitment to supporting all women in the arts by
budgeting money to give these outstanding art historians
and critics an honorarium for their efforts on behalf of the
Honorees.
Charleen Touchette
31
Honor Awards Selection
Committee 1993-1994
Special Events Planner:
Committee:
Linda Stein
Deborah Sperry
Awards Calligrapher:
Charleen Touchette, chair
Melanie Herzog
Janet Goldner
Judith A. Beckman
Judith Brodsky
Judith Wil son
Juana Guzman
Ga ines Clore
Carmen de Novais Guerrero
Barbara Bruch
Conference Liaison:
The Women's Caucus for Art wishes to give thanks
to the following individuals and organizations:
ADCO Foundation , Inc.
The Sister Fund
New York State Council for the Arts
Elizabeth A. Walker
Judith A. Beckman
Susan Grabel , President, WCA/NYC
The New York City WCA Chapter
The New York City WCA Honor Awards Comm ittee
Janet Goldner
Advisor:
Annie Shaver-Crandell
1994 Conference Coordinators:
Linda Cunn ingham
Clarissa Sligh
Exhibition Curators:
Jane Farver
Director of Exhibitions
Sharon Yatsky
Curator of Education
Catalogue Editor:
Melanie Herzog
Catalogue Design:
Joanne Schilling
for Outstanding
Achievement
in the Visual Arts

Catalogue PDF - the Women`s Caucus for Art

Transcription

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