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The most important ideas for me were that women
artists had value, |
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that the materials women chose to use for art
were acceptable and that
sharing and collaborating with other women artists was a valid way to work. |
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Even though my grandmother and mother are artists,
this society |
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encourages women to be doormats. I am not a
doormat. |
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I already went through my period of political
proselytizing. Mainly I succeed |
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in alienating people and wasting everybodys
time. Most people, especially men,
don't have big attention spans, so you have to teach by example. There are just
too many things to do, and life is short. |
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Over the years, I can see that the program |
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instilled in me a sense of the power of
individuals and groups to make change
and to effect the world around them. |
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The group experience in the Feminist Art Program |
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made me conscious of the unfairness against
women
in the art world and in the world in general.
Sometimes it made me very resentful. |
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My experiences at that early part of my professional
art instruction created |
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a bottomline awareness that a woman artist was
as important as a man artist. |
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In a sense, my acquisitions of "theory
language" in the eighties |
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made me a complete "seventies" feminist,
in the sense of
political activism through editing and writing. |
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Fine art seems to have little or no impact on
people's lives outside |
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the small universe of "the art world".
I am 46 years old now and
still see no evidence to the contrary. |
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What remains of primary importance to me about
the early 70's |
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is the sense that we were connected to a much
larger enterprise
than trying to advance our artistic careers, or to make art for
art's sake. It was preciscly our comittment to the activist politics
of women's liberation, to a burgeoning theory and practice of feminism,
and to a larger conversation about community, collectivity and radical
history, which has given me lasting connections to people, and
a continuing sense of being part of a cultural and political resistance. |
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With both women and men, I feel the need to
defuse |
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certain expectations of feminist representation
that
are so often imposed on women with histories like mine.
I insist on the multiplicitous possibilities of feminisms. |
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