" Art and Feminism in the 21st Century"
January 26, 2002

co-hosted by Linda vallejo, Artist/Dealer & Judy Baca, Founder and
Artistic Director of SPARC/The Public and Art Resource Center
"Art and Feminism in the 21st Century" is a salon dedicated to an evening of sharing and dialogue.

ART AND FEMINISM: SALON 1600 Women have been gathering in salons to present and discuss art for centuries. Especially in France, during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women's salons were significant cultural forces. In the early twentieth century, women like Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney held salons in Paris to engage artists in dialogues that  shaped the avant-garde. With the rise of the mass media, particularly newspapers, as the sites of cultural discourse, the late twentieth century saw the virtual demise of salons, with notable exceptions being the Woman's Salons held in New York in the 1970s and 1980s.

Los Angeles artist Linda Vallejo has re-instated the salon at her spectacular Topanga Canyon home. Her second salon met on Saturday, January 26, 2002. The event started at four in the afternoon, thereby allowing participants to enjoy the mountain-limned view before hunkering down to the "work" of conversation, wine and hors doerves. Five women made presentations about their lives and work, presentations punctuated by animated comments, questions, and—sometimes—challenges.

First to speak was Judith Francisca Baca, who used her laptop computer to illustrate her description of the mural project she has created through on-line collaboration with diverse teen groups from Durango, Colorado. Entitled "La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra," the mural is based on a panoramic photograph of Durango. An image of the mythic Mother Mountain is painted in the background. She seems to embrace the city, which is in turn encircled by a disc resembling the Northern Paiute Circle of Life form. Set into the disc are several pictographic images derived from drawings the Durango teens sent Baca over the Internet. Surrounding the disc are several portraits taken from historic photographs, also provided by the teens. In short, Baca has used the Internet and her not inconsiderable painting skills to collaborate on a mural that both reconciles and empowers once conflicted youths. Her presentation led to questions about the identity of Chicanas, indeed to interrogation of the validity of the very term Chicana. This dialogue in turn led to questions about the meaning of feminism. Towards the end of the evening, salon participants returned to feminism, and Baca asserted that to deny the term "feminist artist" is, like denying the term "Chicana artist" or "muralist," to allow those who create the term to have the power of language, which is to say, it is allowing those in power to define women, Chicanas, and artists.


Artist Judy Baca presenting her work.

Martha Ramirez spoke about her work in Mexico City. Born in Pacoima (like Baca) and a graduate of Cal State Northridge (also like Baca), Ramirez traveled to Mexico thirty years ago. There, she both continued her work as a painter and became involved with the Mascarones Theater Group, which is conceptually related to El Teatro Campesino. Ramirez brought in several photographs and posters created of her paintings, including a large poster of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the culture hero of the Aztecs. On the back of the poster was an extensive text describing the symbols of the painting and recounting Quetzalcoatl's history in the Pre-Columbian world. The Nahuatl University, named for the Aztec native language and dedicated to honoring the indigenous past, has grown out of the Mascarones Theater Group. As a climax to her presentation, Ramirez recited an ancient poem in Nahuatl, which she translated to her entranced audience.

Artist Martha Ramirez presenting her work.

The third presenter was Gloria Orenstein, who spoke of the Women's Salon she founded and led in new York City throughout the 1970s and 1980s (until she moved to Los Angeles.) She showed two large scrapbooks documenting the salon, impressively laden with photographs, programs, and press accounts. The list of women who presented at the salon reads like a Who's Who in U.S. feminist history: Kate Millett, Meridel Le Seur, and Judy Chicago are only a few of the powerful women who became involved with Orenstein's salon. She also spoke of a salon she initiated in Paris, while running a university study-abroad program in France. Orenstein concluded by describing a parlor game invented by one of the women who ran a salon in eighteenth century France. Entitled "The Country of Tender," the game was played on an imaginative map that Orenstein interpreted as a metaphor for the female body.

Critic and educator Gloria Orenstein presenting (right) and artist Cheri Gaulke assisting (left).Cheri Gaulke spoke of her two most recent public art projects: a metro stop at Twenty-Sixth Street on the Pasadena "Gold" Line and an outdoor installation for an East Valley library. The metro stop will be comprised of two elements. First is a copper fence on which are etched three narratives: a Native American tale of the coyote, a statement from Vera Rocha about the significance of the Los Angeles River to local tribespeople, and a quotation from a poem by an eco-activist. The second component of Gaulke's metro stop is a stairwell sculpturally transformed into a dry river bed, at the top of which a bronze figure of a Native American woman appears to pour water from a tall basket. For the Lakeview Terrace library installation, Gaulke has been inspired by the Native American sentiment that one should act with an awareness of how it might affect the people seven generations from now. She will erect seven tall cedar poles, on top of which will be sculptural forms, each symbolic of stories about the area she has learned from local residents.  When asked what made her work feminist, Gaulke replied that she feels it is her commitment to giving voice to those who live in the communities served by the sites of her public art: the people around the metro stop, those living near and using the library. Rather than imposing her own ego needs, Gaulke facilitates artworks that allow the communities to self-represent their histories and heritage.

Artist Cheri Gaulke presenting her work (right) and artist Sue Maberry assisting (left).The final presenter was Maggie Parr. A graphic designer by trade, Parr paints powerful iconographic images of mythic women. She brought in an impressive image of a creative female, whose Shiva-like six arms hold artistic tools. A photograph of a tandem piece showed another Hindu-inspired woman with black skin, who was brandishing several knives. Parr also showed images of a series of "Trans-Gender Super Heroes" and of a grid of images related to cosmic phenomena. Parr was careful to point out that she does not call herself a feminist. In her case, this is at least in part because her mother is an outspoken feminist and Parr has been taken aback by what she perceives as inconsistencies in her mother's words and deeds. 

Luz Valverde, Espi Valverde
and Anita Holguin

Parr's comments led to further discussion of the term feminist. Many of the women attending the salon do not call themselves feminists. Others do. It was a discussion that continued far  into the night. If any resolution was reached, it was that we all need to respect--indeed honor--our personal, political and creative differences.
-Betty Ann Brown, educator, historian and writer
January 27, 2002
 
Betty Ann Brown is an art historian, critic, and curator. She was trained in Latin American art history, receiving her B.F.A. in art history and painting from Southern Methodist University in 1971, her Masters degree in art history from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973, and her Ph.D. in art history from the University of New Mexico in 1977.  Brown has curated several major exhibitions, including "Muses," a pairing of nine women artists with nine women writers, Pasadena Armory for the Arts, November 1995; "Family Album," views of alternative families, Cal State Fullerton, September 1994; and "Utopian Dialogues," twelve installations by artists responding to conversations about utopia, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, September 1993.

" I enjoyed the opportunity to meet with old and new firends and 
acquaintances. The presentations were impressive as was the 
conversation that made the evening hours fly by. Thank you for hosting 
this event in your lovely home and for the hospitality extended."
-Anita Miranda, collector

"...thank you for the absolutely wonderful evening I had at the Salon! You are the most gracious, warm, generous hostess I have met in a long time, and you are the perfect Salon Woman--probably very much like the women in the tradition I presented--in terms of generosity of spirit."
" ...it was a sheer pleasure to be there---both completely enjoyable and also very educational.  I think it is important to keep doing it.....and as a Jewish woman, hearing the discussion about Chicana feminism led me to understand how many parallels different ethnic groups find in discussing the evolution of their movements, the generations and the changes that have occurred, and the nature of the discrimination."
" Thank you again so very much for such an inspiring and spiritually elevating evening."
-Gloria Orenstein, critic and educator
University of Southern California

Gloria Orenstein received her Ph.D. in 1971 from NYU, a Masters in 1961 from Radcliffe, and a BA in 1959 from Brandeis. She is a tenured professor in the Deptartment of Comparative Literature at University of Southern California, where she also works in Gender Studies. She has previously taught at Douglass College ofRutgers University, and organized the NYC Women's Salon in the 1970s. She is active in the field of ecofeminism, and has published numerous articles on literature, art, ecofeminism, shamanisn and religion Her books published include Multicultural Celebrations: The Paintings of Betty LaDuke (1993), The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990), Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (1990), and The Theater of the Marvelous: Surrealism and the Contemporary Stage (1975).

"THANK YOU LINDA! What an enjoyable evening. And what a treat to experience your wonderful new house in its spectacular location! I will look forward to the nextone."
-Maria Luisa de Herrera, cultural affairs manager
Santa Monica Cultural Affairs

"Thank you so much for inviting me to your salon and your home, I had a great time."
-Maggie Parr, artist

Maggie Parr has been living and painting in the Los Angeles area since 1985, after escaping the confines of central Ohio. She maintains a successful commercial illustration and design business in order to paint freely, exhibiting her oil paintings in group and solo shows. Recent exhibits include "Survivors Art" at Hofstra University in Long Island, and "Slippery When Wet: Locating Lesbian Art in the Los Angeles Cultural Landscape" at the Ed Gould Advocate Gallery.

Martha Ramirez Oropeza's professional work is as a mural painter, performer and creator of indigenous/popular theater and a researcher into ancient Nahuatl manuscripts called codices. She serves as vice-director of the Mascarones Theatre Group, with which she has worked for 30 years; and as co-founder, administrator and designer of the pyramid campus of the Nahuatl University that Mascarones and its supporters created in Ocotepec, a small community close to Cuernavaca, in the Mexican state of Morelos. She also teaches at Nahuatl University and promotes cultural exchange with faculty and students from universities based in the United States.

Artist Judy Baca is known for her brilliantly colored urban murals, especially Great Wall of Los Angeles, a dynamic depiction of California ethnic history that stretches half a mile long. For this work and others she enlisted the help of many scholars, kids, artists, and other helpers, combining art and community organizing. Baca has directed several Los Angeles-based murals programs, which have produced hundreds of murals in that city.

Artist Cheri Gaulke has presented her work at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), in a Smithsonian-touring exhibition, and in settings all over the world including buses, churches, and prehistoric temples. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and the Brody Arts Fund.  Her work has been written about in numerous books and publications.

Our guests included:

Judy Baca, founder & artistic director, the Social and Public Art Resource Center
Betty Ann Brown, educator, historian and writer
Maria Luisa de Herrera, cultural affairs manager, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs
Mary and Adeli Duron, fine art collectors
Cheri Gaulke, artist
Julie Howell, owner, Howell Green Gallery
Sue Maberry, artist
Anita Miranda, collector
Gloria Orenstein, critic and educator, University of Southern California
Maggie Parr, painter
Leticia Quesada, president and CEO, Mexican Cultural Institute
Martha Oropeza Ramirez, artist, muralist and director, Mascarones Theater Group
Dorothy Randall Gray, writer and spiritual counselor
Audrey Sandoval, educator, Santa Monica City College
Espi and Lucy Valverde, collectors