Rachel Whiteread Exhibition at Hammer Museum

The Rachel Whiteread Drawings exhitibion, co-sponsored by SCC NMWA, opens January 31, 2010 and continues through April 25, 2010.  Members have been invited to the Director's Reception prior to the opening and also received exhibition catalogs and temporary museum memberships for the duration of the exhibition.  In addition, on Februrary 2 members can enjoy a docent tour of the exhibition.  The invitation for this event is in the members section.

The Hammer is the first museum retrospective of drawings by British artist Rachel Whiteread. While her sculpture is well known and widely published, Whiteread's work on paper has remained largely behind the scenes.  In this exhibition, Whiteread's drawings will be accompanied by key examples of her sculptural work.

 We hope you will all visit the Museum doing this exhibition and enjoy the other events available at the museum.  For additiona exhibition information go to http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/172.

2009 Holiday Luncheon and Boutique

Our annual Holiday Luncheon and Boutique was held on Tuesday, November 17 at the Luxe Hotel just in time for holiday shopping.  This year the boutique, arranged by co-chairs June Sattler and Annette Seydel, featured fourteen terrific Southern California women artists showing both wearable and decorative arts.  

Everything from endangered animal portraits; greeting cards; vintage textiles; jewelry in silver, gold, ceramic and semi-precious stones; handbags; hand-knitted scarves and shawls; wearable art;  jackets; ceramics; glass animals and much, much more was available!  Many found some very special presents and a few treats for themselves!  Thanks to everyone who attanded and purchased items. 

The artists were Robyn Feeley, Mavis Leahy, Randi Mavestrand, Bertha Quevedo, Julie Feldman, Kara Taub, Dominique Vialar, Vicki Williams, Sandra Zebi, Oreen Zeitlin, Andrea Lithgow, Karen Pester, Anne Sheikh and Lee Silton.

A Day by the Beach

On September 17 members and guests enjoyed a tour of the SPARC (Social & Political Art Resource Center) Gallery.  SPARC was founded in 1976 by muralist Judith Baca, filmmaker Donna Deitch and artist Christina Schlesinger.  SPARC is a community based non-profit arts organization dedicated to producing, presenting and preserving public artworks in Los Angeles neighborhoods.  We learned about the history of their building, SPARC and the projects that they are involved in.   A short film on the mural project was shown followed by a tour of their current exhibition.  A terrific lunch ended the “Day by the Beach.”

A Day in Fashion Island, Orange County

On August 6, 2009, 24 members and guests journeyed to Orange County to the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach.  The exihibition organizer Karen Moss, deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the museum, provided an interesting and infornmative introduction to the exhibition The Paintings of Georgie O"Keef, Agnes Martin, Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller Rice. This was followed by docent led tours of the exhibition.  The exhibition compares and contrasts the similaities and differences between the artist.

Following the tour, lunch was enjoyed at Fashion Island. 

Thank you Sue for organizing this lovely day!

Ventura Studio Trip

On July 15, 18 SCC NMWA members and guests enjoyed a trip to the studios of  scupture’s Lynn Creighton and Michele Chapin.  Lynn works in clay and bronze and Michele works in marble.  Both discussed their work and careers and we toured a selection of their works at each studio.  At Michele’s we also toured the Stoneworks Studio. 

Following the tour, everyone enjoyed lunch at Jonathans where we were joined by the artists.

SCC NMWA's annual Membership Luncheon and Installation of Officers was held on Wednesday, June 3 at the Skirball Cultural Center.  Pam Bolton, Assistant to the President Special Projects and Museum Store Director at the Skirball was  the guest speaker. 

All luncheon attendees were given complimentary admission to the museum after the luncheon.  Marilyn Levin provided a docent tour of the permanent exhibition for interested members. 

An example of the children's art from the Para Los Ninos School which SCC NMWA supports was on view and several faculty from the school attended the luncheon.

Susan Fischer Sterling, Director of NMWA, will be honored during the annual conferences of the Women's Caucus for Art and the College Art Association here in Los Angeles at the Wilshire Grand Hotel on Saturday, February 28, 2009.  She and Catherine Opie will receive the 2009 President's Award.  At this same event, Ruth Weisberg will receive a Lifetime Acheivement Award.

SCC NMWA will sponsor a congratulatory announcement in the 2009 WCA Awards Catalog and a table at the awards banquet.

During the conference there will also be  Feminist Art Project panels and other special events that SCC NMWA members may be interested in attending.

The WCA website contains additional information on theWCA Conference.

Congratulations Susan!

 The annual Holiday Luncheon and Boutique featuring Signatures, The Artist's Studio of the Palos Verdes Art Center with a fashion show and boutique of Wearable Art was held Deceber 3, 2008 at the Luxe Hotel, 11461 Sunset Boulevard, Brentwood, CA.  Members and guests enjoyed the luncheon and fashion show . 

 At the Board Meeting on May 6, 2009 the board for the coming year was announced.  Kathy Todd has agreed to serve another term as president, with Janet Barnet as Vice-President.  The new board will be installed at the Membership Luncheon June 3 at the Skirball Cultural Center.  The board approved the following officers:

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2009-10

President – Kathy Todd                                   

Vice President - Janet Barnett

Recording Secretary - Donna Sussman, Michele Boyer

Corresponding Secretary - Judy Jones

Treasurer - Barbara Cheyne

Membership - Diane Braverman

Roster - Nan Yoshida

Board Hostess - Ellen Seidman, Bonnie Goldstein

Programs - June Sattler, Stefanie Fisher-White, Phyllis Berger

Education - Joan Mills,   Annette Seydel

Art Exhibition/Acquisition - Marilyn Levin, Barbara Joannes

Publicity - Eva Fremont

Historian - Pat Marshall

Photographer - Angie Whitson

Web Site - Mary Zinser

Committees:

Holiday Boutique - June Sattler   Annette Seydel

Membership Luncheon - Ellen Seidman, Diane Braverman

Members at large to be announced.

Members-at-large will be requested to either participate in planning one program a year,

hosting a board meeting or helping with the telephone tree.

On August 23, 2006, 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.

2003-04 News In Review

2003 was especially exciting year for the Southern California Council of the National Museum for Women in the Arts under the keen leadership of our President, Mary Zinser, and the council’s enthusiastic program chairs, Beverly Haas and Sue Tsao.
Among these stellar activities was the visit to the Skirball Cultural Center where the SCC-NMWA spent several hours with Los Angeles photographer Lauren Greenfield who guided us through her exhibition of over 40 color photographs and taped interviews called “Girl Culture.”

“Girl Culture” is a highly charged and intimate examination of the social and emotional lives of modern American girls and women who turn to popular culture to give them a standard by which they measure their self-worth.  In not too unsubtle terms, Greenfield invites the viewer to witness the grueling “body projects” her subjects include in their personal grooming including make up, fashion, plastic surgery and dieting. 

Before Girl Culture there was Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood an award-winning book of photographs that explores the media’s influence on young people. During an interview, she stated,  “I realize that, as a photographer exploring the media’s influences, I walk a fine line.”  

A fine line with an artist’s edgy honesty and a journalist’s zeal for truth. “From the beginning, I taped interviews with my subjects. Directly and indirectly, they told me what to photograph and what was important. Their candid and perceptive words educated me about their experience and guided me through confusing territory. By the end of the project, I had traveled through worlds I could have never imagined.”
Throughout the four-year germination of “Fast Forward” Greenfield came to realize that young people in Los Angeles are motivated by the entertainment industry, specifically MTV, to create a like-culture that they can project themselves into such as “gangsta” rap and hip-hop. “Kids from all sides of the tracks idealized the images of gangsta rap and mimicked those that were missing in their own lives.”
Girl Culture zeros in on this theme again, when, her subjects
seem to spend more time garnering social values from each other and the media rather than previous generations, their own families, or local neighborhoods.

Many of the photos for Girl Culture were made by Greenfield while on assignment for the New York Times Magazine, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, and W.  The book Girl Culture serves up 100 color images, most of which are posed shots with subjects looking directly at the camera.  Some photos document subjects examining their own faces or bodies. All of the photos leaves one feeling voyeuristic of the lives and physical personas of these dressed-up children, athletes, strippers, debutantes and actresses who obsess on what the popular culture dictates they should be, partly because of the way Greenfield chooses to use the full photographic frame and partly because this is intimate stuff. Surprisingly, we can’t help but try to imagine what these females are thinking, or hoping for, or dreaming of.  The fact that we slip into such private considerations indicates we can somehow and some way understand, and maybe even empathize with, the subjects’ motives. 
The SCC NMWA is sponsoring this exhibition and the associated educational tours and discussion groups for teenage students.  A selection of Greenfield’s work can be seen at the Stephen Cohen Gallery in West Hollywood, California.

Thanks to longstanding SCC member Lanie Bernhard  the council was also privileged to have a private tour of the Lee Bontecou Exhibit at the UCLA Hammer Museum led by director and co curator Ann Philbin. This vast retrospective of drawings, lithographs, paintings, and sculpture introduced many of us to East Coast based Bontecue for the first time. She is a seminal artist who had chosen to refrain from the public for nearly 25 years because, as she says in her artist’s statement, “In the past when I tried to express my thoughts, eyelids drooped and other agendas were doled out. As a result I stopped trying and spoke only through my work.”  
That is not to say the public did not see Bontecue’s work, for as Lee Bontecue – A Retrospective -- the catalogue indicates, her work has been exhibited in some 120 venues around the world, many of which were private art galleries. Disappointingly, the work exhibited at only three California museums before this exhibition. In 1964 at the Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, in 1982, and in 1984 at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. Luckily for us, the UCLA Hammer took the initiative to break a pattern.

Lee Bontecue A Retrospective offered up an opportunity otherwise not available.  It was simply an exhibit representing a single period of her career, and especially not within the proverbial “recent work” format.  This exhibition included art dating from 1957 and enabled us to grasp the scope of Bontecue’s intention within a vast framework of material. The viewer could glimpse into the genius of the artist’s insights she created over the years and, as with any good retrospective, enjoy a sense of discovery and wonder that might have been part of her process.
According to the scholars, Bontecue has always taken the position that there are no fixed meanings in her work and prefers to have viewers make their own interpretation.  The editors and scholars who have contributed to the stunning retrospective catalogue frame the artist’s inquiry so well: Bontecue has a fascination with the natural world and its’ organic beauty, as well as its’ grotesqueness. Bontecue’s dexterous and ingenious use of everyday materials, (retrieved from dental laboratories to factory floors and machine refuse), enables the viewer to see organic beauty unfold in the form of the inorganic. In such creations the viewer recognizes how man-made devices can reflect the wonders of nature and conversely, enhance the horrors of nature, and the nature of “man” himself as the creator of such devices.  Critic Charlotte Willard is quoted in the catalogue, “… her sculptures have the quality of having been born rather than made.”

The confluence of welded steel, bronze, porcelain, wire mesh, silk, vacuum-formed plastic, wood, and wire make the evolution of the natural world happen all over again. 

“Women Making It in the Arts” Symposium

Monday, September 13th, 2004

September 4 - January 4, 2003
This exhibition of over 40 color photographs offers an intimate glimpse into the social and emotional lives of modern girls and women, boldly portraying such "body projects" as grooming, make up, fashion, plastic surgery, and dieting. The photographs and related interviews in the subjects' own voices -- on view and in the accompanying exhibition catalogue -- present a powerful indictment of contemporary American society in which a girl's worth is often measured by the size and shape of her body.

Los Angeles-based photographer Lauren Greenfield has received acclaim for her studies on youth and her award-winning book, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood. Her work is in many museum and private collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the International Center for Photography, and appears regularly in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Harper's, Time, and other periodicals.

June, 2003.  The Southern California Council of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (SCC-NMWA) celebrated their annual Membership Tea at the Beverly Hills Hotel with Ilene Gutman, Director of National Affairs from the Washington D.C. Museum as their honored guest. 

Membership Chair, Beverly Hass, introduced twenty-five new members, and Ms. Gutman made an exciting and impressive presentation regarding the current happenings at the Museum in Washington.

Mary Zinser, President of SCC thanked the outgoing Board of Directors and introduced the new Board.  Then, the sumptuous High Tea was served.

High Tea with women artists who make art not just to look at but to wear was the theme of our very successful fundraiser held in the glamourous Astra Lounge of the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. From one of a kind jewelry to hand woven scarves, hand made garments, and purses - it was an array of shopping items and nibbling fun.