THE LADIES ROOM

   
Art school in the 1970s and lots of art history courses. Something missing though: the mention of a single female artist. Finally, finally in a modern art class she was mentioned: Mary Cassatt from the 1870s, an American artist who studied alongside and held her own with the French impressionists. One woman mentioned. A real bummer.

    During those years I also took a visit to the Pasadena Museum of Art (now the Norton Simon Museum), which is a top rate museum. Unless she was hidden in a back corner somewhere, we didn't gaze upon a single work by a woman artist. It felt like a slap in the face to me as an art student, and I never forgot it.

    But in 1973 as I wandered away from a Picasso exhibit in LA, I came upon some large paintings of beautiful organic designs, and all around the edges of the paintings were writings by the artist which expressed female viewpoints. I read them with much delight! I had accidently stumbled upon the works of feminist artist Judy Chicago. OMG: a woman's work being featured in a major art museum! I always remembered that experience, and years later I was thrilled again when in 1979 her monumental installation, "The Dinner Party" showed at SFMOMA, attracting long lines of viewers that reached out the front door.

    In the years around that time Americans also became fascinated with the exceptional talents of two female artists whose bodies of work were produced in the 1930s and 40s, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keefe. This acknowledgement was certainly better late than never.

    So thank goodness that these women finally opened the flood gates, and now in the 21st century one does not think twice about a woman artist showing in any gallery or museum. Some examples here of fine work by local women artists:

by Sally Baker of Sebastopol

by Mandy Bankson of Santa Rosa

by Wendy Brayton of Sebastopol

by Sylvia Gonzalez of Petaluma

by Jane McDonald of Petaluma