“A wish for otherness. A space in which you are surrounded by an
entirely different world aura, transcending the established plane”.[i]
(Judy, Catalogue)
From October 16 to November 11, 2011, thirteen female Loyola
Marymount University painters, photographers, performers, writers, and
historians will gather forty years later to present our very
own Womynhouse. The Thomas P. Kelly
student art gallery will become the site for our own explorations of all things art: installations, spoken word, performances, films, mixed media, poetry, prose, and the uncategorized. The space will become our sanctuary to practice, interact, debate, philosophize, and engage with ourself, each other, and the viewer. Using the Southern California
Feminist movement that swept across the 1970s as our guide, Womynhouse will not only become
the first all-female show at LMU, but it will also cross boundaries by giving voices to a group of passionate and talented students who are interested in spreading this language to the rest of the LMU community with frank vulnerability on pressing female issues today.
In 1972, Judy
Chicago and Miriam Schapiro started the Feminist Art Program where they went on
to create the Womanhouse project with their students.[i]
The purpose of the Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts was to "help
women
restructure their personalities to be more consistent with their desires
to be
artists and to help them build their art making out of their experiences
as
women”.[ii] Using this as our main inspiration, we will be channeling and pumping this inherent female energy into our own projects with a focus on the contemporary gender issues we see in 2011. Some of these themes and ideas will criss-cross and overlap with those of the 1970 Cal Art students yet we hope to bring our own stories, struggles, and celebrations to our peers here at LMU. Although our own project will be taking place in an institutional setting, the ideas and concepts are still genuine, honest interpretations that are happening to females in a Southern California university in 2011. The original 1972 Womanhouse project stems from deep academic roots; it simply could not have existed without the support of the educational system. Similar to our Feminist foremothers, we cannot exist without the support of our own university.
Womanhouse at Cal Arts shows the “pivotal role
of the institution in nurturing the artistic legacy of Los Angeles” by
providing an experiment “in considering institutional boundaries, social
context, and critique”.[i]
In conjunction with Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration taking place in over 60 institutions across Southern California, the Womynhouse project will allow our own LMU community to participate in the celebration and honoring of the "birth of the L.A. art scene." http://pacificstandardtime.org/
Womynhouse will become the opportunity to expose both our campus and our talented art students to the rest of the LA community. Through collaborative forces, our hopes are to generate a campus-wide discussion that invites both men and women to understand the teachings of what it means to be a Feminist through all things art. If you are interested in supporting us! Please email Acourtne@lion.lmu.edu.
Thank you,
Amanda Courtney
[i] McFadden, Jane, “Los Angeles: Then and
Now, Here and There”, LA Artland
(London: Black Dog Publishing, 2005), 46.
[i] Joselit, David.American Art Since 1945 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003),
180.
[ii] Schapiro, Miriam. Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life. (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1999), 10.
[i] Chicago, Judy
and Miriam Schapiro. "Womanhouse" (Valencia, CA: California
Institute
of the Arts, 1971.)
