Art and Guerrillas

I am so happy that we finally have a place like the Florida Museum for Women Artists. I'm also ashamed to say that I had not heard of Dorothy Gillespie before this exhibit announcement. This is why we need more museums like this one. Why haven't I heard of her before? I haven't been living under a rock outside the art world. I've been to galleries and museums. I've read art magazines and spent many, many hours perusing the art sections of book stores. I've done my share of surfing. Yet.... I had no clue this artist has been out there producing art for most of her 90 years. Of course it could be that I just wasn't looking in the right places but why is it that the majority of art students in the colleges are female yet the majority of artists represented in the museums are male?

Well according to the Guerrilla Girls things have improved for women artists since the 80's but not so much at the higher levels of exhibition. Do you remember these feminist masked avengers in the art world? They're still around and doing their thing. Below is a segment from an early interview with the girls that I found on their website.

Q. How did the Guerrilla Girls start?

Kathe Kollwitz: In 1985, The Museum of Modern Art in New York opened an exhibition titled An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture. It was supposed to be an up-to-the minute summary of the most significant contemporary art in the world. Out of 169 artists, only 13 were women. All the artists were white, either from Europe or the US. That was bad enough, but the curator, Kynaston McShine, said any artist who wasn't in the show should rethink “his” career. And that really annoyed a lot of artists because obviously the guy was completely prejudiced. Women demonstrated in front of the museum with the usual placards and picket line. Some of us who attended were irritated that we didn't make any impression on passersby.

Meta Fuller: We began to ask ourselves some questions. Why did women and artists of color do better in the 1970's than in the 80's? Was there a backlash in the art world? Who was responsible? What could be done about it?

Q.What did you do?

Frida Kahlo: We decided to find out how bad it was. After about 5 minutes of research we found that it was worse than we thought: the most influential galleries and museums exhibited almost no women artists. When we showed the figures around, some said it was an issue of quality, not prejudice. Others admitted there was discrimination, but considered the situation hopeless. Everyone in positions of power curators, critics, collectors, the artists themselves passed the buck. The artists blamed the dealers, the dealers blamed the collectors, the collectors blamed the critics, and so on. We decided to embarrass each group by showing their records in public. Those were the first posters we put up in the streets of SoHo in New York .


Here's a piece of an interview that's more current.

So, are things ok for women in the art world now?

Things are better now than they ever have been for women and artists of color and we have helped effect that change. Right now there is decent representation of women and artists of color at the beginning and emerging levels of the art world. At the institutional level however, in museums, major collections and auctions sales, things are still pretty dismal for all but white guys. We believe that the economics of the art market is responsible for this. As long as art costs a lot of money and can be owned and controlled by individual collectors, it will represent the values of those people, not the larger art audience or the culture at large. We are still condemning the art world for its lack of ethics, tokenism and other bad behavior.


It's good to know that things are improving but apparently there's still a long way to go. For now we can keep on supporting not just FMWA but all museums that are including women in there line up of artists. I can't wait to see this show of Dorothy's work. Just the fact that she's 90 years old and still producing and exhibiting is amazingly inspirational. I want to be just like her when I grow up.

Peace, and go look at art somewhere...
Carlynne

If you're in Deland.....

...stop by the museum. Last week Kelli and I got to deliver our work to the Florida Museum for Women Artists. We were accepted to the gift shop so our work and our book is now available at the museum. Here you see a few of my pieces waiting to find their spots on the shelves.


Here's a better view of the shop. If you look at the bottom shelf in the middle of the picture you can see the crows painted by our friend Robin Pedrero. It's nice we get to hang out with her again - kind of. Well, at least our work gets to hang out together.

Check out the museum website for exhibition info. Maybe we'll see you there sometime.

Peace,
Carlynne

Where have I been?

I haven't traveled very far in the physical but mentally and emotionally I've been all over the place. I've been out of this world joyful over my new little grandbaby. She's amazing and lives close by so I get to bask in her super baby-ness on a frequent basis.

I've been learning, reading and meeting people in the adoption world. Meeting another mother of adoption loss can be very healing. It's incredibly sad to know how many other women have walked the same road I have but at the same time it's good to meet and share stories. We had our own therapy session over lunch and wondered what the people around us were overhearing.

In my last post I mentioned starting a painting about the Magdalen Laundries, well here's the start of it....

You might not be able to see it very well in the photo but there's a number carved into one of the stones in the wall, 30,000. That's the number of women that are estimated to have been through the laundries in it's 150 year history. Across the stone wall there will be glass shards and of course hanging above the wall is the Pope's mitre. The design is done in gold leaf, you can see the shine of the gold better below.

I was going to go with a stained glass design in the background with some other symbolism but decided it would be too busy. The sky turned out to be a better idea. Now I'm working on getting the glass shards back in place and I have text to add to the mitre. You'll see the finished piece soon. We'll see if I get any hate mail over this one. If you're not familiar with the story read here

So.... where else have I been? Kelli and I got to take off to the beach for a couple of days. Did I take any pictures while there? No! I brought the camera but never got it out, sorry, no pictures to share but we did have a great time. On the way there we went to the Florida Museum for Women Artists in Deland and met some of the artists participating in the Witness to Creativity exhibit going on there now. As always, it's a treat to talk with other artists, watch them work and get insight into what they're creating. If you're able to get to Deland, check out the exhibit.

With all this running around (a lot of it in my head) I didn't get much painting done this past week so it's time to hit the studio.

Peace,

Carlynne