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1727 Nonh Spring Stree1, , CA, 2004.Photo: Kaucyila Brooke. detail, 1727 North Spring Street. Photo: Kaucyila Brooke.

Book Launch for Teny Wolverton's InsurgentMuse In the gallery of the former Woman's Building, 2002. Photo: Kaucyila Brooke

20 HER-STORIES energy-clearing practice called Ho'oponopono is cond In 1973, artistJudy Chicago, graphic designer Sheila Levrant to save the building from its demise. The Natalie B de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Ravenl establish the Collective conducts The Art Project to desj Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Initialy it includes the educational program and to produce "beautiful, el co-op galleries Grandview 1 and 2, Sisterhood Bookstore, events"; members of the FSW haul artist Kate Millet's the Los Angeles chapter of N.O.W., Womanspace and the statue of a woman to the roof of the building, and the Feminist Studio Workshop. Young women come from all over produces the poster "Will You Help?" which shows s the country to be students of the FSW and arrive to build up naked white women of different sizes asking for help the program literally one floor after another. First lessons funding and donations for the building; they prese include scraping, painting, building walls, wiring,plumbing, exhibit of Nancy Fried's bread dough sculptures sho cooking, washing dishes, designing posters, sending out lesbian domestic scenes, a "Sizzling Disco," a "Fam· bulk mailings, hauling folding chairs and finding resources. Women Dance," " of your Dreams Day Dance," From there they move on to feminist theory, , art a series of Lesbian Create-Hers Salons, then the Na history and criticism-all of this achieved through traditional Barney Collective burns out; projects and performa methods and consciousness raising groups. CR groups are at the building include ·� Oral of Lesbiani held on such topics as violence, sex, money, work, class, "Feminina: An IntraSpace Voyage," GALAS - the "G racism, and incest survival. American Lesbian Art Show," ·� Intimate Dinner for Celebrating Eleanor Roosevelt and All Great Lesbi During the Woman's Building's years of operation, all "The Passion; Heaven or Hell," "Combat Billboredo students and faculty establish different relationships to the "Bedtime Stories: Women Speak Out About Inc process over their time at the building. Some students are "Gentleman's Choice," "Madre Tierra," "Cross Pollinati thrilled to be a part of the FSW; other students complain that and such publications as Manteniendo El Espiritu e the year they arrive there is not one visual artiston the faculty. by Aleida Rodriguez, and Women for All Seasons, edited Students in 1976 think that too few are represented Wanda Coleman and Joanne Leedom-Ackerman; out of or participating in the workshop; students complain that the Feminist Studio Workshop come such groups as Mother faculty are never there; students are critical of the fancy cars the Feminist Art Workers, , and the Siste that the founders drive; and students are mesmerized by the Survival; the building hosts performances by Lily To charismatic personalities of the faculty. Susanne Lacey, Phranc, , Eleanor An Martha Rosier, , Carolee Schneeman The building's participants have love affairs, renounce their , to name a few. backgrounds, embrace their backgrounds, smoke dope, drink, practice witchcraft or Wicca, open a thrift store, have fashion REPETITION FOR EMPHASIS shows, learn typography, learn and even To day a big, school-bus-yellow sign hangs above the seco try painting and drawing; lovers get together, lovers break floorwindows on the brick facade of 1727 North Spring. It up, some who meet here are still together now; students ''.American,Available, 323-581-7774" in bold, black type. sleep with faculty, other faculty disapprove. Friendships break up over whether or not it is right to accept funding This is the site of the former Los Angeles Woman's Buil from the Playboy Foundation; years later funds from the owned by Poloma Properties and now functioning as city are secured when the director learns that a particular studio building for artists who rent space independent city councilman never says no to cleavage; when she goes any identification with a political or cultural agenda. Th to City Hall she makes sure to end the meeting by leaning are very few remnants of the program that existed here fr over his desk strategically. White women sit in anti-racism 1973-1991. On the second floor is a hand-painted sign o study groups and strategize bow to open up the building to hallway wall that quotes a text written on the occasion of women of color, women of color are hired, women of color opening of another. previous Woman's Building at the Wo are fired,women of color resign from the staff of the building Columbian Exposition on May 1, 1893 in Chicago. The si as do white staff members; white women are the architects was painted in 1976 for an exhibition about the 1893 worn of the building's programming, white women form the long­ art exhibition. Now the wall is part of a hallway that leads term core staff; while receiving an award from the Woman's studios. The sign is frequently obscured by large canvas Building a former Latina member of the board of directors stored against it by the artist who works in an adjace publicly denounces the organization for not being inclusive studio. I have a studio on the same floor. I sometimes ch of issues and structure relevant to women of color; straight on the sign to see this vestige of the former occupants. A f feel uncomfortable at events because lesbians years ago I invited some Danish feminist artists to see are aggressively making out in front of them and they feel sign. I hope that it is in.eluded somewhere in whatever th excluded: everyone feels like they are not "in" the "in-group" made from the video footage they gathered while they we except those who are "in" the "in-group," and a Hawaiian researching feminist art-making in L.A.

X-TRA. VOLUME SIX. NUMBER THREE. SPRING 2004. The first time I show my work in Los Angeles is in the main INSURGENT MUSE gallery of the Woman's Building in 1988 in the exhibition Fortunately,this history is not lost but has been documented "Image and Text" curated by Susan Robinson. Excited and will continue to be revisited in exhibitions, catalogues,Art to be showing in the place where I'd read that the West art historical books and essays and most recently in Te rry Coast started, I visit Los Angeles for Wolverton's valuable memoir, Insurgent Muse: Lile and the exhibition. Concurrently with the show, the Woman's at the Woman's Building, published last year by City Lights. Building organizes a conference at UCLA called "The Way This achingly candid book gives a detailed interior picture We Look, The Way We See: Art Criticism for Women in the of not only one young woman's journey through the feminist 90s." This conference is meant to bridge the gap between counterculture movement of the 1970s but also the success 70s and 80s-era feminist theory and practice and the late and failure of a seminal (or as s.ome ''wimmin" called it 80s feminist art production that is informed by academic, "ovular") art institution of the 70-80s. Wolverton's important poststructuralist theory. My work is included to reference document traces a narrative of the effect of government the latter, which seems strange to me because my own ideas policies and economic pressures under which the women about and culture are drawn from my experience who directed the building thrived, struggled and eventually and analysis of living in a west coast lesbian community not folded. so dissimilar from the generation of feminists that constructed the Woman's Building. In the 1970s, Wolverton observes, many young people engage in "alternative" culture by working for little or no pay in I can see the wall where my work once hung in the context various organizations. They live in subsidized housing, or of other feminist artists. It is the only room that I have ever with cheap rent in large collective households in the inner known as a part of the Woman's Building program. Like city that hold no charm for suburban families, buy groceries everyone else, I read and hear about the rest of the activities with food stamps, get free health care that is available that took place here. The gallery is an empty foyer now and from the free clinics, go to hippie dentists who practice in the Woman's Building is no longer a center for feminist art, unusual places (in Eugene, Oregon the dentist worked out but the artists renting studios here still call it the Woman's of a converted flower-painted school bus), and get mental Building. When I move to Los Angeles in 1992, the Woman's health care from professionals who have sliding fee scales. Building project is already defunct. The "garage sale" was In the middle-to-late 70s, the CETA IV [Comprehensive held the year before. In Chicago in 1991, Vanalyn Green and Employment and Tr aining Act) employment and training I invite Catherine Lord to give a talk at the School of the Art program pays for most staff salaries in the Woman's Building, Institute and she reads from a text about attending this last and consistent and generous grants from the NEA support act of the building as it closes its doors. She writes: exhibitions and the Women's Writers Series, as well as provide scholarships to the Building's education programs. ·�ct there were the miscellaneous boxes. One contained In 1981 Ronald Reagan becomes president and eliminates a cache of goddess statuary. Another held jewelry, not the CETA, reduces the NEA budget and in his "new " economic stuff but rather necklaces made out of eye bolts agenda of privatization cuts into the budgets of many social welded to nuts to form the sign for woman and hung on a programs (including food stamps, unemployment benefits, steel chain. Each necklace came in its own little Ziploc bag, and mental health programs) which makes life on the margin with a silk-screen card explaining that the necklaces had more difficult for the many un- or under-paid workers on the originally been designed by Sheila de Bretteville, a symbol cultural left. Feminists and young women, no longer seeing "saying strength without a fist," as a gift for art historian clear strategies for long-term survival in the feminist art and artist when they all founded movement, seek more legitimate professional credentials. the Feminist Studio Workshop in 1972 .... In 1978, in order to The Feminist Studio Workshop closes in 1981. -raise money, the members of the Feminist Studio Workshop produced an edition of 500 ...."1 The Building almost calls it quits but is saved by a core group including Terry Wolverton, Sue Maberry and Cheri Metal women's symbols on steel chains-to hear of these Gaulke. They receive a federal grant from the Fund for once precious objects cast aside for petty cash is disturbing. the Improvement of Post-Secondary Educations (FIPSE) I am alienated from my own past. I feel squeamish at the which enables them to launch a profit-making typesetting idealism that led so many women to wear the symbol as a business which they call the Woman's Graphic Center , badge of honor, thinking that they were ushering in a new (WGC) Typesetting and Design. The six-thousand-square­ era. With their gender identity hanging around their necks foot performance space is broken up into studio spaces and they are doubling their cultural definition with the cultural rented to individual artists, and men become tenants for the · symbol. As performance artist Vaginal Davis once said, first time since the establishment of the Woman's Building. "Repetition for Emphasis! Repetition for Emphasis!" A board of directors is formed. The board of directors is removed. New directors are recruited to reflect changes in

X-TRA. VOLUME SIX. NUMBER THREE. SPRING 2004. directions of the programming and fundraising strategies. listings for Visual Arts, Craft Arts, Film and Video, Perfo They rent office space to the Committee in Solidarity with Arts and Women and Music. In the section on Visu the People of El Salvador and end up on the FBI surveillance there are listings for sixteen women's art galleries, list. They establish a Public Relations Committee and begin two organizations for women in the arts, four visu to craft a public image. They receive a grant from the James programs and courses specifically for women, and Irvine Foundation to provide professional opportunities for feminist art journals. While living and working in a 1 women artists. They attend The Fund Raising School in San feminist community in Eugene, Oregon from 1976 to Francisco. They drop the word "feminist" from promotional I participate in several collectives. At the time, Eug material and exchange it for "women's art" hoping to attract such a hotbed of feminist activitythat ideas about coop more donors. Some women say they are selling out. They work find their way into all aspects of our lives. The think they are trying to survive. They produce fundraising women's collective press (Jackrabbit Press), wo dinners and award ceremonies. They make plans to buy collective restaurant (Gertrude's Cafe}, women's coll a building, discover they owe back taxes, sell the WGC newspaper (Women's Press), women's collective na Ty pesetting and Design to pay off the debt, loose core staff foods distributing company (Starflower), women's colle members, and go through bankruptcy. In 1989 Wolverton bookstore (Mother Kali's), women's collective dance leaves the building to pursue her writing career, and the (Wallflower Order). women's collective political therapy NEA budget suffers more major cuts and no longer supports (Eugene Radical Therapy), women's collective kung fu s individual artist fellowships or centers for contemporary art. (Amazon Kung Fu). women's collective radio program The Woman's Building holds a garage sale and closes its The Woman Tu rns}-which I co-ordinate, women's coll doors in 1991. carpentry business (Crescent Construction), and, of coto various study groups and theory collectives. Similar s Insurgent Muse is extremely useful for those studying the organizations develop in major cities and university effect of politics on the production of culture. Wolverton across this country. Research will yield similar documen clearly states the change in the feminist agenda during the the feminist cultural phenomena in other countries. dates of the building's operation. "In the 1970s we had been a women's organization about art: in the 1980s we became The feminist project has much in common with o an arts organization about women. "2 programs for change that have interrupted the dom· master narrative of culture and history by introdU In the introduction, Wolverton states: "For ... thousands of personal narratives to counter the so-called "neu women, the Woman's Building provided an unparalleled masculine-unified-subject." Wolverton's conviction opportunity: to experience oneself as both woman and artist, woman's "authentic voice" fails to consider whether and to explore the potentialsignificance of those intertwined telling of individual women's experience is unavoid� identities in a context in which the value of such investigation scripted in the language of patriarchal culture. There ma:y; was understood-ait." woman was encmuaged not only to speak, no separate place outside the system of languagefrom but to find her authentic voice and cultivate an audience eager we can have and retell an "authentic" experience. Fe to hear [my emphasis]3 artists such as Mary Kelly, Nancy Buchanan, Martha R d Millie Wilson and Adrian Piper make work that has bo In fact, there were parallel develo))ments in feminist deep commitment to the importance of the personal communities in the US, North and South America and in details of experience (as mothers, women, family meml Europe. Feminist culture was developing in large cities and lesbians, incest survivors, feminists etc.) and simultaneo university towns throughout the seventies and producing unpacks the culturally determined process of identifica all the cultural artifacts that are now housed in numerous with these roles through linguistic systems. Many of th archives designed precisely to preserve the documents works recognize the power of the speaking subject w of this extensive movement. For example, in 1974 I am acknowledging the limitations of the language that fo coordinating the feminist radio program at the anarchist our thoughts. ':.\uthenticity" is problematic if it convinces radio station KOPN in Columbia, Missouri and I routinely speaking subject that her experience is somehow unique a compile the news portion of the three-hour magazine format true and that of other women, for example those who co program from over 15 monthly feminist newspapers and later, is inauthentic and academic. periodicals that the station subscribes to along with other leftist publications. In 1973, just one year after A.LR., the first women's co-op gallery, opens in New York City, other women's co-op galleries in Chicago (Artemesia Gallery and ARC) and New York (Soho 20) and the Women's Building in Los Angeles are all established. A brief glance in the New Women's Survival Sourcebook published in 1975 includes

X-TRA. VOLUME SIX. NUMBER THREE. SPRING 2004.