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Reflections
on the 2001 Feminist Art Symposium (Continued)
By Karen LeCocq
The symposium was the brainchild of Jill Fields, a professor in the history department at CSU Fresno. Fields had been researching the 1970's for one of her classes when she came upon the book
Sexual Politics, edited by Amelia Jones. In the volume, there was mention of Chicago's first feminist program. She quickly realized that the 30th anniversary of the program would be coming up in 2001 and it would pass unnoticed, unless she acted quickly. Fields immediately called the head of CSU Fresno's Women's Studies department, Linda Garber, and Joyce Aiken, artist and Professor Emeritus at CSUF, and the copious planning began.
The symposium was a three day event with various affiliated performances, lectures and poetry readings happening throughout Women's Art History month. It began on Thursday night, March 1, 2001, with Judy's keynote address and six art openings in different locations around Fresno featuring feminist art from the original feminist art program and subsequent programs, to feminist art today. The second day of the program featured a panel with five of the original members of the first feminist program: Nancy Youdelman, Janice Lester, Shawnee Johnson, Christine Rush, Dori Atlantis and me. We presented slides of our work back in 1970 and spoke of our experiences in the program. I read an excerpt from my autobiography describing my experience in the program:
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"What was it really like to be in the first feminist art program? Strange,
is the first word that comes to my mind, painful is the next. There were many things that were hard for me to do, frightening for me to see. I did a lot of growing up, a lot of ridding myself of the ideas that were inbred in me by the culture, my parents, my education, my peers, my former and present male friends and my former religious training. A lot of my anchors were being cut. I was entering a strange new world. Every time I entered the feminist studio, I had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, mixed with fear and excitement. We were treading on grounds not yet explored. We were doing things that surely would be ridiculed by the rest of the art world. We were doing and expressing the forbidden. I felt revolutionary and evil at the same time. I felt we could be just one step away from being locked up.
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"The sense of community, the sense of family among the women was great. We had horrid fights and emotional outbursts, but we were a family. We could depend on one another and help one another. I don't think there was one among us that wanted it to go on forever, or could have stood it if it did. I don't think we missed it once it finally ended, because the bad times were too fresh in our minds. But looking back, now that time has past, I can say that I'll never again experience anything remotely close to my experience in the feminist art program. |
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It is definitely something I would not want to relive but I am very grateful for the chance to have experienced it for that one glorious, painful and bizarre time.
Throughout the years since I was part of the program, every now and then, I'll remember and miss that group strength, support, the sharing of ideas, the acceptance and the absolute permission to do the outrageous."
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The evening session began with a keynote address from Joyce Aiken, a pioneer of feminist art studies and the first President of the national organization the Coalition of Women's Art Organizations, which lobbied for women artists in Washington, DC. She was recently awarded an Honor Award at the National Conference for the Women's Caucus for Art for her lifetime contribution to the arts in America. She was followed by a panel of her former students in the second feminist art program: Jackie Doumanian, Jerrie Peters, and Joy Johnson relating their experiences in the second feminist art program.
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