Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980-2006

The Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art and the Southern California Council of the National Museum of Women in the Arts co-organized and co-sponsored Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980-2006, a landmark exhibition in 2007 at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park.

Curated by Dextra Frankel, former gallery director and Emeritus Professor of Art at Cal State University, Fullerton, this provocative survey presented artwork in a broad range of media by a culturally diverse, cross-generational group of 48 women artists who have made their mark in the regional, national, and international art scenes since the 1980s.

Multiple Vantage Points honors and analyzes the different perspectives these artists bring to the experience of gender, identity, community, history, nature and the social as well as the personal body. It also demonstrate how a number of women artists have explored the depths of female experience in their work as a way of consciously or unconsciously challenging the social stereotypes perpetrated by advertising, television, and film.

An exhibition of this breadth had never been mounted in Southern California and was long overdue. It was planned to complement WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, 1965-1980 at the Museum of Contemporary Art / Geffen Contemporary. The two concurrent exhibitions generated considerable dialogue about the contributions of women artists throughout the community—stimulating discussion, scholarship, and critical acclaim.

Multiple Vantage Points is listed with the Feminist Art Project, a national initiative to celebrate women’s contributions to contemporary art and the Feminist Art Movement and to assure that those contributions are included in the cultural and historical record. SCWCA and SCC NMWA are the Regional Coordinators for Southern California activities and their affiliated national organizations (WCA and NMWA) are Program Sponsors.

To learn more about this important exhibition, the participating organizations & related project, visit http://www.scwca.org/event/MVP.php

SCC NMWA News

Santa Monica Studio and Gallery Tour 8-23-2006

On August 23, 1006, 37 members and their guests visited artist Lita Albuquerque’s studio.  Lita talked about her project “Stellar Axis”.  She and a team of four will travel to Antarctica in December to create a replica of the sky overhead on the frozen expanse, a work of art made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation.  It will be the first temporary earthwork installation created on the remote continent under the NSF’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program.  The grant provides transportation and logistical support for the three-week residency but no cash.  The remaining costs for the trip must be raised.

“Stellar Axiis:  Antarctica” will be about 800 feet in diameter and will place blue spheres representing constellations on the Ross Ice Shelf near McMurdo Station, a US government-run research facility in Antarctica.  The installation will remain in place for about a week, after which its disassembled parts will be returned to the U.S., where they are being sold as part of the fundraising effort.

It was fascinating to hear Lita describe how she conceived the project as well as all the planning and logistics necessary to achieve the project.  For those interested, you can find out more about the installation and follow the project at http://www.stellaraxis.com/.

After lunch, the group went to meet artist Joan Tanner at the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design to hear her discuss her exhibition On Tenderhooks, a large-scale installation created by Joan and curated by Meg Linton, Director of the Ben Maltz Gallery. Using raw materials like Blister-Pac, corrugated plastic paneling, galvanized metal, air-duct filters, plywood, industrialized coating, light and video, Tanner assembles a precarious environment to tackle the visual paradox of architectonic order and disintegration—ordering to achieve perfection and humankind’s inability to escape imperfection.  On Tenderhooks expands upon her use of detritus and acknowledges a debt to Assemblage Art while engaging in a larger discussion about consumer culture and representation.

Joan was one of the artist in our exhibition “Generation of Mentors” which was exhibited at NMWA in 1994.

“Women Making It in the Arts” Symposium
Monday, September 13th, 2004

Unique Boutique
Sunday, September 12th, 2004
November 13, 2002

Membership Tea
Sunday, September 12th, 2004
October 23, 2002.

NMWA Director Attends Membership Tea
Sunday, September 12th, 2004