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Reflections
on the 2001 Feminist Art Symposium
By Karen LeCocq
Professional artist and lecturer Karen LeCocq is a mixed media sculptor who has shown nationally and internationally in galleries as well as major museums, among them The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), The Armand Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA), and The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has gained international recognition through its use in the Absolut Vodka Signature Artist advertising campaign.
LeCocq was one of the founding members of the original feminist art program created by Judy Chicago at California State University - Fresno in 1970, and continued in the program at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, under the direction of Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in 1972-73. LeCocq, along with eighteen other women artists under the leadership of Chicago and Schapiro, received international attention for
Womanhouse, a collaborative project in which women worked together and transformed an abandoned mansion into an environment reflecting the dreams, ideas and emotions of women.
Her work has been pictured in numerous publications, among them
Art in America,
Art News, Artforum, Art and Antiques,
Manhattan Arts, and Time Magazine and has been reproduced in the books
The Power of Feminist Art, Sexual Politics,
The Absolut Book, California Artists, Through the
Flower, By Our Own Hands, and in her autobiography,
The Easiest Thing To Remember.
Her website
is www.karenlecocq.com.
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The year was 1970. Armed with little more than an idea to give young female artists a chance to express themselves in a safe environment, Judy Chicago came to Fresno, California and created the first feminist art program. The hostility, fear, reluctance and total resentment she encountered in 1970 was in direct opposite to the enthusiasm, praise and adoration she received some thirty years later delivering the keynote address for the Feminist Art Symposium at California State University - Fresno in March of 2001.
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The symposium began as a tribute to mark the 30th Anniversary of the Fresno Feminist Art Program created by Chicago and it went on to celebrate the wide scope of feminist art since that time.
As one of the founding members of that first feminist art program, I was initially surprised when I was contacted about the plans for the symposium. I felt history, for the most part, had forgotten about us and we, the members of the program, tried to forget as well. It was not a time that most of us in the program could look back to without a lot of pain. It was a time where we were asked to examine our true feelings, not those put into us by our families or society, but what was deep inside us as women. We were told to express them in words and in our art, no matter how ugly or painful.
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It has taken me a good thirty years to truly appreciate what Judy had done in starting such a radical program in the conservative climate Fresno in the 1970's. Only now, I can comprehend what this woman created for herself and countless other women who would be influenced by her innovative teaching methods, her viewpoint and her courage. This influence was definitely seen in the faces of the men and women who sat in the audience the opening night of the symposium listening to her lecture, "Feminist Art Education: Made in California." She spoke of creating the first program of its kind in the United States (undoubtedly, the world) for women students to develop themselves as artists and realize themselves as women. (For those of you on the East coast saying, "No, that can't be." I must answer, yes, feminist art education began on the West Coast with Judy Chicago, like it or not, it's part of history now. Why should we quibble about such things? What is important is that women are beginning to receive the recognition they deserve, the education and the awareness to live out their lives to their full potential and not in someone else's shadow. So let us remember and give credit to the women who made it possible.)
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