F213

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Northern California Women's Caucus for Art Arc Gallery & Studios 1246 Folsom Street San Francisco, California 94131 April 13 – May 11, 2019

Catalog Cover Art: Rachel Sager, Red, White, & Blue, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 x 2 inches, 2013

Catalog edited by Karen Gutfreund and Priscilla Otani Catalog cover and logo designed by Sawyer Rose and interior by Karen Gutfreund Copyright 2019 by Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art ISBN: 9781798403631 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

About the Curatorial Team 4 About F213 5 About NCWCA 6 About Arc 7 Note from the NCWCA President Sawyer Rose 8 Drawing Parallels with Large Ambitious Exhibitions by Priscilla Otani 9 We’re Not Gonna Take It! by Karen Gutfreund 11 Fired Up! From Protest to Projust Feminist Artistic Expression in F213 by Tanya Augsburg 14 Artist and Writers 23 Artists and Writer Biographies 115

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ABOUT THE CURATORIAL TEAM

Tanya Augsburg, Lead Curator. Augsburg is a feminist performance scholar, critic, and curator who can be occasionally persuaded to perform. She teaches at San Francisco State University, where she is currently Professor of Humanities and Liberal Studies.

Karen Gutfreund, Co-Curator and Editor. Gutfreund is Exhibition Chair for NCWCA and an “art as activism” artist and curator, creating her own work and exhibitions on themes of social justice with the intention and the motto to change the world through art.

Priscilla Otani, Co-Curator. Otani is Arc Gallery Managing Partner, NCWCA board member and enabler. She identifies as bicultural and her political art focuses on social issues in Japan and the United States.

Sawyer Rose, Co-Curator. Rose is the President of the Northern California Women's Caucus for Art. Her work on The Carrying Stones Project uses sculpture, data visualization, and social practice to explore women’s labor inequity.

Ariana Davi, Curatorial Apprentice. Davi is an up-cycle and found object artist working to take materials destined for landfill and create something that humbly reflects the beauty of nature. “We’re stuck with it either way.”

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ARTISTS PROVIDE THE IMAGERY. WRITERS RESPOND. TOGETHER OUR VOICES WILL BE HEARD. F213 is short for Fahrenheit 213, one degree above the boiling point of blood. This exhibition brings together nearly 100 national and Bay Area feminist artists and writers who are incensed about what is currently happening in the United States.

F213 spotlights strong and bold artistic expressions of feminist protest. While we remain hopeful, we reject “thoughts and prayers” as adequate responses to corruption, demagoguery, state-sanctioned cruelty, social injustice, sexism, racism, white supremacy, sex crimes, relentless undoing of women’s reproductive choice, LBGTIA discrimination, Islamophobia, police brutality, gun violence, environmental assault, unlawful detention, and more. F213 calibrates the boiling points of our outrage against the flagrant disregard of human rights, let alone the destruction of civil liberties, civil rights, and hard-won protections.

F213 brings together a diverse and inclusive mix of multicultural, intersectional, multigenerational feminist artists and writers to not only express their concerns, but to offer insights to all those interested in remedying current injustices and atrocities.

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ABOUT NCWCA Founded in 1972, Women's Caucus for Art is an affiliate society of the College Art Association and founding partner of the Feminist Art Project. The Northern California Women's Caucus (NCWCA) is one of its earliest chapters, formed in the same year as national WCA. It is one of six California chapters and serves members in San Francisco, East Bay, Marin and all parts of Northern California. Our Mission is to create community through art, education and social activism.

We are committed to: • Recognizing the contributions of women in the arts • Providing women with leadership opportunities and professional development • Expanding networking and exhibition opportunities for women • Supporting local, national and global art activism • Advocating for equity in the arts for all Visit www.NCWCA.org

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ABOUT ARC Arc Gallery & Studios is a multi-use building that houses ten artist studios for sixteen artists, two art galleries, Arc Fine Arts Consulting, San Francisco Artist Network, Kearny Street Workshop, and Vega Coffee. Arc is located at 1246 Folsom Street, between 8th & 9th streets in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood.

Arc supports the making of quality art in all media, provides a nurturing environment for artists to create their work, builds a community of artists to encourage exploration of art, provides resources for the professional development of visual artists, and promotes appreciation of the visual arts in the city of San Francisco.

Visit www.arc-sf.com

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Note from the NCWCA President Sawyer Rose

If you want to change the world, tell a story. Storytelling lights up our human brains. Robust narratives, told in words or images or both, have the superpower to spark our imaginations, amplify our emotional empathy, and allow us to see through the eyes of others. Visual and literary stories let us understand each other in ways that fact-based communication simply cannot. For this reason, artists and writers have the power to be significant agents of cultural change.

The works in F213, individually and as a whole, tell a story—that women in America have reached the boiling point on a slew of political and social issues. Some are deeply poignant, personal accounts while others express outrage at systemic issues. The voices sharing the stories come from a wide intersectional cross section of feminist artists and writers. All of them, though, ask viewers to come to new and deeper understanding about current issues that affect women, and artistic expression is the key that unlocks the pathways of communication.

Neuroscientists have found that facts simply can’t flip our switches as powerfully as more creative inputs provided by, for example, paintings or poetry. Even the most astonishing data and the most carefully -crafted key messages only activate two areas of our brain. Interacting with a dynamic, multi -layered artistic work, however, lights up seven regions, creating memorable, meaningful sensory experiences for the viewer that have the ability to speak to the heart, not just the mind.

So if you have big work to do—changing cultural narratives, building bridges of insight between diverse groups—tell a good story. Let visual and literary artists tell it for you, as we are striving to do with F213.

Transport your audience into your world through storytelling and let them see what you see, feel what you feel. Only then will they be able to know what you know.

As President of NCWCA, I’m honored to present this powerful and important feminist exhibition that embodies our organization’s mission of supporting women in the arts and engaging in arts activism on a local and national level.

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Drawing Parallels with Large Ambitious Exhibitions Priscilla Otani

I recently attended a lecture by gallerist and activist curator, Cheryl Haines. She discussed three sitespecific exhibitions, @Large: Ai Wei Wei on Alcatraz, Home Land Security, and Sanctuary, all organized through her nonprofit FOR-SITE Foundation. Haines developed collaborative relation-ships with the U.S. State Department, National Park Service, Presidio Trust and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy to use national park land properties such as Alcatraz and the Presidio as unconventional exhibition spaces for her social justice exhibitions. The exhibitions were ambitious in vision, involved global artists, and visited by crowds of viewers who received both an education and understanding of issues each exhibition highlighted. These exhibitions came together surprisingly quickly through hard work by a small, capable staff, relationship-building with artists and organizations, and timely funding. Inspired as I was by Haines’ vision and accomplishments, I saw similarities in the way we approached our work on F213.

Five NCWCA members formed an NCWCA Curatorial Collective in May, 2018: Tanya Augsburg, Ariana Davi, Karen Gutfreund, Sawyer Rose and myself. Though a small group, most of us had previously worked on exhibitions together and trusted each other’s skills, opinions, and accountabilities. One member, Ariana Davi, was added because she expressed an interest and commitment to learning how curatorial exhibitions are organized. We decided that mentoring a young member was an important part of our job. As a collective, we tackled the multitude of work associated with the exhibition: writing a statement and prospectus, identifying and selecting artists and writers, managing the budget and project plan, interacting with artists and writers, creating the exhibition catalog, interacting with the publicist, using social media and website to promote the exhibition, creating events and programming, and organizing the exhibition of artwork and books in the gallery. This is a lot of work to accomplish in eleven months. But because we were a small group, we could quickly troubleshoot unexpected issues and step in to help when the workload became too much for any one individual. We were comfortable leveraging technology such as Dropbox, Kindle Direct Publishing, Weebly, Facebook, Instagram, and Eventbrite to make up for lack of staff and office. By being responsive and flexible, we stayed on schedule.

Similarly, the FOR-SITE Foundation only employs three staff members, Cheryl Haines being one of them. Haines described how their small organization allows them to be nimble and able to address issues quickly.

Knowing the right artist is vitally important for the success of curatorial exhibitions. It is difficult to imagine an exhibition in Alcatraz with an artist other than Ai Wei Wei. When Haines was asked how she convinced him to exhibit in Alcatraz, a place he could not visit because he was under house arrest, she replied that she had a prior relationship with him through her Cheryl Haines Gallery. Likewise, for F213, we had relationships with many artists through previous activist exhibitions. Gutfreund had organized many social justice exhibitions, Augsburg had many contacts with contemporary feminist artists through her academic career, Rose had a large network of artist friends, and I knew hundreds of artists through my work at Arc Gallery. Because of our connections, and because our artist relationships did not always overlap, we were able to consider a wide range of artists. Over the phone and emails, we discussed each artist and artwork and Augsburg, as the lead curator, made the final selections. One of the strengths of our exhibition is that our artist selections are truly multicultural, intersectional, and multigenerational.

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Despite our best efforts, things did not always go smoothly. We ran into a roadblock with writers because unlike artists, most of them didn’t know us. We were immediately rejected by several well-known feminist writers. This was a blow but we regrouped. We leveraged our personal relationships with a wide range of scholars, essayists, non-fiction writers, novelists and poets. In some cases, the artists suggested writers they wanted to work with. In the end, we found a great writer for each artist and added a new dimension of diversity to the exhibition.

Haines built a relationship with the U.S. State Department and convinced them to allow her to organize the @Large: Ai Wei Wei on Alcatraz exhibition. The success of that exhibition made it easier to get support for the Home Land Security and Sanctuary exhibitions. NCWCA had previously mounted three successful exhibitions at Arc Gallery: A Sense of Place (2011), Choice (2014), and F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way (2016). For this reason, I had no trouble convincing my Arc Gallery partners to donate the gallery space for F213. Connections and past successes matter.

With a timeline of less than a year, it was difficult to secure funding from foundation grants or crowd-sourcing.

We estimated that the exhibition expenses would be comparable to national juried exhibitions we had organized in the past. But unlike juried exhibitions we could not rely on entry fees to pay for expenses. We could hope for art and catalog sales, but neither was guaranteed to bring enough income. NCWCA did not have sufficient funds to underwrite the exhibition.

When asked how FOR-SITE raised money for their exhibitions, Haines replied, “patronage.” It was a surprising answer, yet made a great deal of sense. For a shoe-string organization to mount an ambitious exhibition within a short timeframe, it has to rely on the support of others, particularly the support of others with money. After we wrote the prospectus for F213, I knew that I wanted to help the exhibition succeed through hands-on work and funding. My husband was fully on board as well. We donated funds through our donor advisory fund and matching corporate donations. We aren’t wealthy by any means. But we know the impact of donating to a small nonprofit that matters to us.

Despite similarities, there is a major difference between the NCWCA Curatorial Collective and the FOR-SITE Foundation. Unlike the staff at FOR-SITE, none of the collective members are paid for their work on F213. NCWCA is a completely volunteer organization. Each of us have full-time occupations elsewhere and the work we put into F213 is done in addition to those jobs. For Cheryl Haines, her passion for social justice drives her to make ambitious projects happen. Our passion is equally strong. I am confident that our hard work will do justice to F213. Beyond this first edition catalog, we are planning a future edition that also documents events associated with F213. We look forward to sharing our learnings at symposiums and conferences. Most of all, we encourage women curators to be ambitious in their vision and undertaking.

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We’re Not Going to Take It! Karen Gutfreund In the past year while I was working on the Fahrenheit 213 exhibition, the words of a Twisted Sister song popped into my head and have remained there. Now mind you, I am not a big heavy metal fan, but the lyrics are very fitting for how I, and the artists and writers in the exhibition, are feeling about the current state of our country and world at large—and how we want to do something about it.

Oh we're not gonna take it No, we ain't gonna take it Oh we're not gonna take it anymore…

The artists in F213 are fed up, sick and tired, and furious with conditions we are currently facing in regards to misogyny, racism, loss of hard-won civil rights and more. This is an exhibition that is no-holds-barred. Yeah, we’re not gonna take it!

Rewind to the Women’s March in Washington D.C. in 2017, the day after the inauguration of #45—we marched through the streets and chanted “We will not go away, welcome to your first day.” I remember feeling so energized by the crowd. But now, at this writing 776 days later, I have to say I’m a bit fatigued. There seems to be a new atrocity every single day and just when I think the most ridiculous thing possible has happened, something else “trumps” it in terms of malice, lies and corruption. How can this President (and Administration) get away with the statements/tweets, actions and policies, unchecked and unfettered? It is hard to daily keep up the energy of the fight. But we can’t bury our head in the sand, if we are unaware of the atrocities of our world, we are powerless to change them. So, for change—we must bring them to light and in a loud manner to be heard over the fray. And so, as a long-distance runner, I’ve come to realize, this is not a marathon, but rather an ultra-ultra-marathon and one needs to be like the Tarahumara people, from Chihuahua, Mexico, that run up to 400 miles at a time.

And I take hope in “nevertheless she persisted” … And persist we will.

I was so pleased and honored to be asked to be both a part of the curatorial team and a participating artist in the F213 exhibition for NCWCA. As an “art as activism” curator and artist, my motto is “Changing the World Through Art” and this powerful exhibition speaks to that power with 41 artists paired with writers, seeking to make a difference with their artwork and words. I applaud them for their courage to speak up and speak out against injustice. Art changes culture and together we effect positive change. This exhibit focuses on empowering people to become part of the change we need to see in the world.

When we were asked to come up with an issue that pushed us over the boiling point, it was easy for me. The plight of the migrant children, separated from their families at the border, combined with the racist, xenophobic messaging around families seeking asylum, makes me explode with anger and cry in despair. Don’t even get me started on the wall—how can building a barrier structure do anything to help those seeking asylum, seeking a better life for themselves and their families?

The current Administration’s views on immigration contrast sharply with American traditions and ideals: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

American culture is dominant around the globe, and our freedom, prosperity and pursuit of the “American Dream” has been hailed as models for others. Just imagine if our leaders and media coverage focused more on the benefits of immigration to our society and economy rather than depicting the immigrants as “murderers and rapists.” Once a hope for human-rights activists, the US as an example for the world is quickly dissipating. When the world sees what Trump is doing at our borders, combined with the nationalistic rhetoric, their belief in America as a human-rights beacon is shattered. The psychological damage done to these children is incomprehensible with State-sanctioned child abuse. The images and sounds of crying children at the border will echo for a long time.

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Created for this exhibition, my work Suffer the Children (rage/enojadisimo) was initially fueled in response to a Fox & Friends commentator stating, “They’re not our kids.” Have we lost our humanity and our compassion?

How can we turn a blind eye to their suffering? Is it the color of their skin? If those kids looked like the Gerber Baby—pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyed, it be an entirely different story. But “they’re not our kids.”

I was moved by a 2018 documentary titled Looking Across the Border by director Jordi Ruiz Ciera. He asked four migrant children to imagine the life they may have on the other side of the border. Their responses, in addition to everyday things that all kids normally want, detail the wish and hope for freedom from the violence they are fleeing in their home country. These dreams stand in sharp contrast to political rhetoric and the harsh circumstances that brought them to the border, seeking asylum. I was particularly enchanted by Santos in the segment Hopeful 361.6 Santos. He is an eight-year-old from Mexico raised in Guatemala. He was interviewed in Tijuana, Mexico where he was with his mother and older brother. Santos said:

Still Shot from Hopeful 361.6 Santos by Looking Across the Border by director Jordi Ruiz Ciera

Who lives in the United States? Captain America or Spiderman. Guatemala is like this (small) and there are a lot of bad people… That’s why I don’t want to live there, because they could beat me up. Because there are so many evil people here… People get desperate and they leave. That’s why. They want to cross to the other side.

At the border some people might be locked up and others might not. If they don’t have the papers… Jail. But those who have papers won’t be locked up. They lock up some of the kids, but with their parents. They have TV, bed, clothes, a bath. But they treat them very badly, they turn the lights off… But at least they’re given food.

When I grow up over there, I’m going to be working a lot. When they release us, I’m going to talk to Trump. I want to tell him not to kick us out, because I’m not going to do any bad things.

In reaction to what is happening in our country (and the world), activist art is on the rise, particularly in the last two years. While it used to be rare to have galleries and art institutions hosting these sorts of exhibitions, they are now being shown across the country and in locations that even just a few years ago would have seemed improbable. The current Administration’s rhetoric and hyperbole spewing xenophobia, misogyny and racism have galvanized artists into action. This is the bedrock of “art as activism” exhibitions–using the power of the arts to visually document social issues to drive social change. Skeptics have questioned whether art can change the world—but if artists said nothing, the silence would be deafening.” Now more than ever, artists, curators, and art centers are compelled to exhibit activist exhibitions because silence on the issues would suggest complicity and collusion.

Can art really be the vehicle through which we find purpose and meaning in difficult times? I think so. Art can have a major role and responsibility in encouraging transformational thinking. It can move us in positive directions and communicate ideas that transcend language and cultural barriers. The role of the curator and artists is not just to produce exhibitions, but to help shift the way people think about the issues through art, programming and panel discussions.

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Using art for social commentary is not a new phenomenon. Art helps humanize and actualize emotions, injustices, hopes and fears. It can elicit a visceral reaction, provoke and then inspire us to action. Art is not just about depicting beauty, but rather encapsulating and expressing the viewpoint of the artist drawn from their experiences and perspectives into a visual form. Common themes are contextualized through specific imagery and art that reflects the happenings of our time. The art and culture feed into each other and can cause transformation as a result.

My hope is that you, the viewer, will embrace the layers and complexity in this exhibition and confront who we are and where we are going in a culture of exile and alienation between race, religion and political dogma in our turbulent society. You, in the end, may not agree with the ideals or viewpoint of a particular artist, but the exhibition will stimulate dialog to help address and solve societal problems. Art gives us a vision and a means by which to communicate to others in the here and now, and to dream of what could be. The creatives are the soul of a community and reflect society’s best and highest ambitions. They create the manifesto and ask others follow their lead. These messages get absorbed into the culture at large and produces, albeit slowly‌positive change. And I think we can all agree on that!

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Fired Up! From Protest to Projust Feminist Artistic Expression in F213 Tanya Augsburg Founded in 1973, the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) has a long track record of arts activism, which has consisted of supporting artists, making and exhibiting art, encouraging political activity, and campaigning for social justice. A feminist organization, it aims to support feminist causes, equality among all people, and human rights. As stated in its Mission, NCWCA aims “to create community through art, education and social activism.”

I first joined NCWCA not long after I moved to the Bay Area in 2007. I have grown to appreciate its sense of community, its activism, its outreach, and its many activities. I have served on its Board for a number of years, all the while taking for granted that I had a comprehensive understanding of what each of the words activist and activism actually mean. When I finally looked up their definitions and etymologies in the leading dictionary of the English language, The Oxford English Dictionary (hereafter referred to as OED) to write this essay, I discovered that both words are relatively recent. Even as the OED notes the noun activism was used as a scientific term during the 19th century, it credits The Atlantic Monthly as being the first to use the word in the sense of “the policy of active participation and engagement in a particular sphere of activity,” specifically “the use of vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change” in 1920. The noun activist appeared the same year to indicate “a person engaged in or advocating vigorous political activity; an active campaigner.” The primary contemporary meaning for the adjective activist as “of or relating to the theory of activism” appeared three years prior in 1917.

These definitions for activism and activist certainly describe the endeavors of NCWCA and its members for at least the past decade. NCWCA co-sponsored a Pacific Region WCA ecoart exhibition, Blue Planet in 2010, which was followed by its ambitious show Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze in 2011 (that was co-sponsored with the Women’s Caucus for Art); its national exhibition about reproductive decisions, Choice in 2014; and its national exhibition F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way in 2016-2017. Each of these ambitious exhibitions was overtly activist, promoting increased awareness about environmentalism (Blue Planet), gender equity through challenging the “male gaze” (Man as Object), women’s right to choose (Choice), and improved relationality in the era of increased incivility (F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way).

NCWCA’s 2019 national exhibition, F213, is the brainchild of the members of the NCWCA’s curatorial committee, also known as the NCWCA Curatorial Collective. In 2018 the NCWCA Curatorial Collective was chaired by Karen Gutfreund, with Sawyer Rose, Priscilla Otani, Ariana Davi, and myself serving as fellow members. The NCWCA Curatorial Collective conceptualized F213 during the summer of 2018, approximately 18 months after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. Unlike the previously mentioned NCWCA exhibitions, F213 originated as an angry reaction in response to the array of current social injustices that seem to have both multiplied and exacerbated during the Trump administration. F213 focuses more on feminist artistic expressions of protest rather than activism, which raises questions about how this fiercely feminist protest art show fits under NCWCA’s activist mission and goals. For starters, how does protest relate to activism? It seems to me that we are protestors when we dissent against something, usually an injustice, while we are activists when we advocate or even fight for change. So, can protestors be activists? And are activists protestors? In other words, are the words activism and protest ever interchangeable, and if so, under which circumstances?

Such questions led me back to the dictionary. According to the OED, the English verb “to protest” is older than the noun and derives from multiple sources. Partially borrowed from French, protest ultimately can be traced back to Latin. In post-classical Latin, it was used as a verb to utter grievances, and, as early in the 5 th Century, to announce, and to declare. By the 14th century it was used in Portuguese and Italian “to declare” and “to express opposition.” In English it was first used as a verb in 1429 “to petition, advance a claim; to put forward a protestation.” By 1479 the word’s meaning shifted its attention to written texts as it was seen both as a verb to “make a formal written declaration of the non-acceptance or non-payment of (a negotiable instrument, as a bill of exchange)” and as a noun to refer to the written complaint itself.

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The OED notes that less than a century later, the act of protesting began to be regarded as a public act; by 1533 to protest was meant to assert publicly, to make known, and to proclaim. Even so, the verb remained in use to connote an individual’s response to another’s injustice or maltreatment, as Shakespeare would write in 1600 Much Ado about Nothing: “Doe mee right, or I will protest your cowardice” (V. i. 147). In fact, according to the OED, it was not until 1870 when the verb became associated with large groups of people or masses making collective expressions of dissent: “Of a (large) number of people: to express collective disapproval or dissent publicly, typically by means of an organized demonstration; to engage in a mass protest, usually against a government policy or legal decision.”

As already mentioned, the noun protest appeared a bit later in English than the verb. While the noun can be seen circa 1460 in English to denote “a solemn, formal, or emphatic declaration or affirmation; an avowal,” a more definitive use of the noun dates back to 1479 during which it referred to “a formal declaration in writing,” usually by a notary public to settle disagreements or liabilities over payments. The more modern sense of the word appeared during the 17th Century when a protest was seen as “a formal declaration of disapproval or dissent; a remonstrance, a complaint. In later use more generally: any action, act, or statement expressing (emphatic) objection to or dissent from something.” It was not until 19th century, however, that the current sense of the word took hold as “the expression of social, political, or cultural dissent from a policy or course of action, typically by means of a public demonstration; (also) an instance of this, a protest march, a public demonstration.”

Related compound nouns, such as protest meeting, surfaced as early as 1852. Nearly half a century later additional compound words containing “protest” popped up. The OED documents the first use of protest movement occurred in 1898. The OED credits The Oakland Tribune for coining the term protest vote in 1912.

Protest march was deployed two years later in 1914.

The origins of several newer compound words would be of particular interest to feminists and those living in the Bay Area. The OED notes that author Doris Stevens employed protest group in 1920 to reference women voters banding together to get the vote. A year later, The Oakland Tribune featured protest rally in the following headline that described the mobilization of working women in San Francisco (while referring to them as “girls”): “S.F. Dance Hall Girls Will Hold Protest Rally.” Decades later in 1969, The Oakland Tribune would be credited by the OED as the first to deploy the word protest banner in reference to what was going on in Berkeley: “They've got a different kind of protest banner on the Berkeley scene.”

The Culture of Protest: From Literature to Art According to the OED, protest literature was the first of the protest arts named as such in English. Sociologist Edward Byron Reuter included the term in his 1927 book The American Race Problem: A Study of the Negro in reference to African American literature. Protest poetry showed up more than a decade later, also in reference to African American poetry. The term protest music appeared in 1949. Protest song followed a few years later in 1953.

It may come as a bit of surprise to learn that the OED’s first record of protest art in English occurred on March 13, 1966 when it was printed in Lincoln, Nebraska’s Sunday Journal & Star. It is worth quoting the OED’s definition of protest art in light of F213: “Of or designating a literary or artistic medium which seeks to register or portray dissatisfaction with an event, movement, etc.” While protest singer also arrived in 1966, no entry exists yet for protest artist. Then again, there are no entries as of March 2019 in the online version of the OED (OED Online) for either activist art or activist artist. The OED has yet to have an entry for either feminist art or feminist artist. The lack of “authoritative” acknowledgment of these words’ existence in the English language is just another reason why feminist art activism is important and necessary.

Chronological Overview of Feminist Art in F213 I have traced the etymologies of activism, protest and related words in order for the reader to obtain a better understanding of the curatorial decisions informing F213 as a contemporary exhibition of feminist protest art.

Even before I consulted the OED it was clear to me, as lead curator of F213, that the display of visual art in F213 should be accompanied by short written responses from writers selected by the curatorial team members. The idea of exhibiting art and writing together stemmed out of my own scholarship and thinking about the risks xxxxxx 15

artists and writers (including creative writers, scholars, and journalists) face during unsupportive and repressive political regimes. I wrote in my first major publication, Collaboration within the Field, back in 1995 about the growing necessity of artists and writers (or scholars) banding together given conservative political attacks on the arts.1 The incorporation and juxtaposition of visual art with written text provide the viewer with fuller notions of feminist protest during the Trump administration. The exhibition acknowledges the importance of knowing the etymology of protest by including works that foreground vocal and oral expression. For example, Linda Friedman Schmidt titled her 2012 fiber art portrait of a Muslim woman amplifying the sound coming out of her open mouth Protest. F213 also includes five works that document various protest marches: Sheree Rose’s 1993 photograph Blue Takes Washington was taken during the historic 1993 LGBT March on Washington. Favianna Rodriguez’s inspirational 2010 poster Undocumented. Unafraid. was developed from a photograph Rodriguez took during a march that took place after the anti-immigrant SB 1070 bill was passed into law in Arizona. Sheila Pree Bright’s 2016 photograph #1960 Now: “Say Her Name” Protest, Artist Janelle Monáe and Wonderland Record Members Perform “Hell You Talmbout” Protest Song documents protesters in the act of singing a protest song. Bright’s extraordinary photograph is included in her 2018 book #1960 Now that parallels her documentation of the Black Lives Matters Movement and its leaders with past Civil Rights Movement leaders. In her 2017 photograph RISE RESIST UNITE Lenore Chinn documents the 2017 San Francisco Pride March People’s Choice Community Grand Marshal Alex U. Inn in the act of leading protesters. In an interesting twist, Della Calfee documents through a series of photographs a 2013 prolife “protest” in order to expose its many contradictions. Additional works in F213 represent the acts and gestures of individual resistance and protest. For example, Asqa Naveed depicts in her 2018 digital Instagram work, Make America Ignorant Again, an instance of an individual Muslim woman’s silent defiance literally in the face of a white racist and misogynist Trump supporter.

The practice of protest art predates the word. Histories of protest art easily available on the Internet date protest art back to the dates of the avant-garde, more specifically, to the Dadaists. Nevertheless, we can find earlier examples of artists protesting political situations such as the well-known illustration by an unknown artist of the Women’s March on Versailles, 5 October 1789 (Fig. 1), which began as a street protest of women angry about the high cost of bread.

Fig. 1. An illustration of the Women’s March on Versailles, 5 October 1789 (public domain, artist unknown, reworked from the illustration À Versailles, à Versailles le 5 Octobre 1789, circa 1789-1791, Bibliotheque Nationale)

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Rather than rehash history, however, I want to focus on the scope of the exhibition: protest art in the age of the Trump administration, even as a number of the works were made prior to 2017. Ester Hernandez’s original 1981 silkscreen Sun Mad, of which the 2018 painting exhibited in the show is an original remediation, was made to increase awareness of the plight of farm workers while exposing what was at the time little-known environmental hazards of insecticides used in industrial and corporate farming. Sheree Rose’s aforementioned 1993 Blue Takes Washington is a moving portrait of her former slave Blue protesting in front of the White House by simply being herself. In so doing Blue embodies fearless activism in her performative proclamation (and affirmation) of her S&M, queer, and butch identities. Nancy Hom’s 1996 striking silkscreen features an individual speaking out despite their proximity to bloody bullet holes, graphically protesting targeted gun violence against Asians.

Works from 2005-2014 boldly expose hidden social issues. Lorraine Bonner’s powerful 2005 sculpture, Taking Aim, reveals rather viscerally the silencing effects of patriarchal violence on African American women. Jennifer Kim Sohn’s 2010 installation Toxic Habits raises awareness of the hazards of industrial farming and cheap clothing by creating cotton frogs deformed by toxins used in industrial farming. With each frog placed in a twoliter plastic soda bottle, Sohn makes clear the effects of our consumerism on the environment.

The next two works in this chronological overview were mentioned previously. Favianna Rodriguez’s 2010 poster is an iconic image of resistance against discriminatory policies against undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans before the Trump administration. Linda Friedman Schmidt’s 2012 work Protest documents Muslim’s women’s resistance to ongoing Islamophobia. Geri Montano’s 2012 mixed media work Frieda fights back against desexualization of disabled people by portraying the celebrated artist Frida Kahlo as a dominatrix with a Nazigarb fetish. In her aforementioned 2013 series of photographs aptly titled INTIMIDATION, Della Calfee foregrounds the staged strategies of anti-abortion protestors. In one of the photographs, Calfee captures the irony of a man wearing a tee shirt advertising the Bible passage John 3:16 pointing to the viewer in an aggressive manner.

Red, White, & Blue, Rachel Sager’s 2013 red-hot painting of an aerial explosion, can be viewed retrospectively as a prescient visual metaphor for the incendiary anger that is at the foundation of F213. Micah Bazant’s 2013 poster Free CeCe McDonald was created to support trans women of color such as CeCe McDonald, who was unjustly imprisoned in 2011 but was released in 2014. Bazant’s art activism supports trans women of color while simultaneously situating their poster art within both the tradition of protest posters and the history of social protest by highlighting labor leader “Mother” Mary Harris Jones’s celebrated protest slogan, “Pray for the Dead and Fight Like Hell for the Living.” Rather than explicitly depicting protest or rage, Judy Shintani takes another approach to protest art with her 2014 assemblage Pledge Allegiance by subtly eliciting strong emotion. More specifically, Shintani created a reversed weathered flag out of repurposed wood and barbed wire found at the site of the Tule Lake Separation Camp where Japanese Americans, including her family members, were incarcerated during World War II. Shintani’s refusal to forget this American travesty against mostly its own citizens makes for powerful protest. Shintani literally salvaged and made visible what Americans would rather keep hidden or forgotten.

On a more global scale, Sarupa Sidaarth offers an intriguing portrayal of a Pussy Riot member in her 2014 mixed media work Shh. Two Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, served 21 months of imprisonment before being released in December 2013. Sidaarth’s use of craft “googly eyes” implies that performance artists Pussy Riot members offered new ways of seeing that nevertheless as of 2014 had to remain somewhat hidden lest they risk being silenced again through imprisonment. The curatorial team felt that it was important to acknowledge Pussy Riot in F213 since their protests against the Russian President Vladimir Putin alerted the world of his corruption years before Russia meddled in the U.S. election.

Starting in 2015 sexism and harassment of women began to be exposed: Trudi C. Hauptman’s art quilt GamerGate III - Brianna Wu uncovers how GamerGate was a precursor for what was to come. In 2016 the overflow of outrage over U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment inspired fitting “toilet art,” two of which are included in F213. Brenda Oelbaum’s satiric 2016 installation Piss On Me: Trump Toilet Trio is intentionally kitschy, consisting of three latch hook rugs adorning an actual toilet. The toilet tank cover, toilet seat cover, and a rug collectively portray the presidential candidate xxxxx 17

pursing his lips with his unique comb-over. Karen LeCocq’s riotous 2016 painting of Trump toilet paper with its provocative title No Where Near My Vagina also depicts candidate Trump pursing his lips, although she adds red paint to evoke the cliché of putting lipstick on a pig.2 I selected LeCocq’s pièce de résistance months before I heard that actual Trump toilet paper has become available for sale globally. With Trump’s overt disrespect to his marriage vows, it is hardly surprising that Judy Johnson-Williams insinuated that women’s views about marriage were changing with her rather cutting 2016 sculpture, Wedding Shoe.

F213 includes additional works from 2016 that address serious social injustice issues such as gun violence and social injustice. Laura Murray proposes a bold gynocentric solution to gun violence in her 2016 painting Plug It Up. Kristine Mays 2016 modern day lynchings and hashtag memorials wire, ribbon, and rope work is a heartstopping rebuke, making clear that not enough is being done to stop the race-motivated killing of African Americans. Her compelling sculpture underscores the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement. Sheila Pree Bright honors the passion and commitment of Black Lives Matter protesters with her aforementioned 2016 documentary photograph, #1960 Now: “Say Her Name” Protest, Artist Janelle Monae and Wonderland Record Members Perform “Hell You Talmbout” Protest Song. Samanta Tello’s 2016 Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes is a fitting illustration of how the voices of women of color were not heard in 2016. The widespread demoralization that many women felt after Clinton’s “loss” despite winning the popular vote can be attributed at least in part to the realization that as a collective women’s voices ultimately went unheard. Nevertheless, the emphasis of women of color in Tello’s work is highly significant as it reminds viewers of a certain well-established fact. In 2016 53% of white women sided with their husbands, i.e. white heteropatriarchy, thus voting against their own interests and against women of color who overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton. This statistic needs to be stated repeatedly and cannot be forgotten. Tello suggests that everyone needs to listen to all women, but particularly women of color.

After the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, there could be no more pretenses to civil public discourses. The ongoing reality television show that is the current administration subjects us not only to news with each passing day of new scandals and injustices, but also of unprecedented reports of corruption, harassment, and insults. Numerous artists participating in F213 responded by making protest art in innovative or unconventional mediums for protest art. In her vivid 2017 fiber arts or “craftivist” piece Feminist Talks (Amy), Amy Ahlstrom contrasts loving words describing her own self-concept with her experiences of being “grabbed/ stalked/followed/called a bitch.” Indira Cesarine flaunts the 2016 word of the year in her 2017 neon sculpture Fuck, which is interesting since neon was initially a medium used in advertising. Karen LeCocq’s 2017 uproarious sculpture The tRump Garden Gnome ruthlessly zeroes in on the crudeness of the insulter-in-chief by portraying him as an ugly white supremacist gnome. Justyne Fischer’s 2017 woodcut on voile Suspicious Suicide foregrounds the police brutality documented by video from the arresting officer’s own squad car that led to the mysterious circumstances of Sandra Bland’s death while in police custody.

Closer to the Bay Area, several of the works in F213 were made in 2017 with particular attention to the transformation of mediums. Colette Standish’s 2017 concrete-dipped, painted, and roughed up Homeless T-Shirt foregrounds the tone deaf and hypocritical gesture of Airbnb to give away free tee shirts to San Francisco pedestrians while ignoring the wretched plight of the homeless. Airbnb’s business model seems to have enticed landlords to evict tenants or raise rents, thus very likely contributing to the Bay Area’s homelessness problem. By first ripping the tee shirt and adding handprints in paint before “edifying” the tee shirt with a solution that dries like concrete, Standish conflates late 1970s and early 1980s punk fashion with marks of “vandalism” and “graffiti” to accentuate her unbridled anger over gentrification and social injustice caused by heartless corporate greed.

With her 2017 data visualization and social practice sculpture Anna & Hillary Sawyer Rose provides evidence of why women, even women in same-sex domestic relationships, have good reasons to be pissed off in her data visualization piece representing the inequities of paid and unpaid domestic labor. Asqa Naveed exposes white supremacist misogynist microagressions and Islamophobic government policies policy in two 2017 digital artworks printed on paper specifically for F213, her aforementioned Make America Ignorant Again and NiqaBAN. F213 includes 2017 works made in mediums more commonly associated with protest art such as documentary photography, poster art, illustration, and painting. Lenore Chinn documented the gestures of protest during the 2017 San Francisco Pride Parade in her aforementioned 2017 documentary photograph, RISE RESIST UNITE. Micah Bazant created their 2017 Decolonize Puerto Rico mixed media protest poster that expresses the outrage x 18

over the lack of adequate hurricane aid to Puerto Rico and its ongoing status as an American colony by giving tribute to the most invisible and vulnerable, black Puerto Rican mothers and children who turn their backs to white outlines of faceless American soldiers. Kate Kretz isolates where the lies of the current administration come from with her impeccably perceptive 2017 drawing, Liehole. Gigi Salij expresses the blue emotions that come with recognizing and acknowledging deliberate deception in her reflective 2017 painting, Fraud.

While the works in 2017 seem to focus on recognition and exposure, the works in F213 that were created in 2018 are bold, BOLD, and B-O-L-D! Let’s face it: after October 2017 with the revelations of sexual abuse and rape by despicable men such as Larry Nassar, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Roman Polanski, there is no longer any question of why previous societal prohibitions against expressions of anger and exclamations of expletives seem to have largely disappeared. Rosemary Meza-DesPlas acknowledges the necessity of expressing outrage over rape culture in her 2018 work, What You Whispered, Should Be Screamed. The durational process involved in making her works, for which Meza-DesPlas uses her own hair, alone indicates that she has thought long and carefully about this message. Kadie Salfi also emphasizes the depths of emotion, although she focuses on fear and grief caused by actual men who have committed gun violence against women and their creepy cinematic doppelgangers in her 2018 diptych My Mom and Scorpio. Salfi seems to add that films such as Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film Dirty Harry harm women by featuring serial killer characters even if they are based on the actual cases (The character of Scorpio in Dirty Harry was based on the Zodiac Killer in Northern California). In her 2018 surrealist painting The Boat, Sandra Yagi envisions poetic justice with a visual pun. Yagi depicts Vice President Mike Pence on a large plastic Crocs sandal adrift at sea, thereby forced to witness the effects of climate change and oil drilling that he has consistently refused to acknowledge or see.

The threat of losing our legal rights looms large. Indira Cesarine’s 2018 neon sculpture Equal Means Equal asserts gender equality in no uncertain terms. In her 2018 photograph Judgement Parker Day adds a queer twist to Lady Justice, whom she re-envisions as queer with a fabulously unruly body shiny with glitter. Mira Schor’s 2018 painting Justice Bleeding Out visualizes our outrage and prescient worry over the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy painted on Independence Day. In retrospect, Schor’s painting can be regarded as a doleful harbinger of the “bloody” battle over Brent Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Priscilla Otani, who originally had a Trump voodoo doll in the show, decided to make a Brett Kavanaugh piece immediately following Kavanaugh’s Congressional testimony in October 2018 to underscore the prevailing corruption of the old boys network that enabled and ultimately empowered Kavanaugh despite his past shitty behavior. As a multimedia conceptual artist Otani is fond of literalizing metaphors, and in her 2018 Liar Liar Pants on Fire she does so brutally.

In addition to Otani’s piece, a number of works were made especially for this exhibition. Salma Arastu, whose extraordinary paintings promote religious and intercultural harmony, immediately took up the challenge with her 2018 painting Allah O Akbar, a complex, nuanced work that celebrates religious freedom while critiquing the terrorists who incorporated a religious saying for violent ends. Ester Hernandez recreated her aforementioned iconic Sun Mad silkscreen with her 2018 painting of the same title. Kay Kang addresses the ongoing tensions between the United States and North Korea in her derisive 2018 painting made especially for this exhibition, Mine Is Hotter than Yours! Kang focuses on how President Trump’s hyperbolic communication with North Korean President Kim Jong Un impacts the Korean people, who remain divided and separated from family. Karen Gutfreund intentionally provokes with her 2018 Suffer the Children (rage/enojadisimo) by stenciling all the racist statements justifying “the wall” while highlighting the inhumanity of detaining children who are mostly brown.

The white supremacy that values white children more than brown and black children is all too plain to see and cannot be denied—despite what we hear on Fox News daily. Patricia A. Montgomery fabricated and embroidered Wedding Coat: Story about Domestic Violence, an exquisite 2018 conceptual fiber arts work that unveils the secrets of domestic violence. And finally, former NCWCA Exhibition Chair Kelly Hammargren, whose energies are now mostly devoted to anti-gentrification activism in Berkeley, created a 2018 mixed media work that gives us all pause, Democracy Flew Away While I Lie Sleeping.

The Writers Respond

While the NCWCA Curatorial Collective members had a pretty good idea of exactly what art would end up in the exhibition, as we selected specific works for the show, the process for inclusion of the writers was a bit more complex. Some of the writers whom we knew were unknown to the artists. Admittedly, we were unfamiliar with x 19

some of the writers whose names were suggested to us. Whenever we did ask for suggestions, we listened carefully first before doing our due diligence with additional research. We then discussed among ourselves to reach a consensus regarding each potential writer before extending our invitations to participate. As a guiding principle we strived for including writers from a diversity of backgrounds, communities, experiences, and writing styles from a wide range of genres. We are 100% certain that we achieved our goal.

Some of the written responses fall squarely under the tradition of “protest literature” as the writing is polemical.

Critical art writing by Lauren Araiza, Lorraine Bonner, Sandy Butler, Daniel Coleman Chavez, Burcu Döleneken, Sally Edelstein, Audrey Ferber, Likisha Griffin, Khadijah O. Miller, Mira Schor, Tanya Wilkinson, and Ani Zonneveld offer engaged protest writing. Responses by Peggy Phelan, Emily Sano, Maria Elena Buszek, Petra Kuppers, and Yetta Howard fall under more “traditional” academic art historical criticism and commentary.

The more creative responses arguably expand contemporary notions of protest literature (although truth be told, protest poetry has always been paramount in protest literature, something I learned from perusing Upton Sinclair’s 1915 landmark anthology, A Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest). Among the poets and fiction writers participating in F213 are Sandra Cisneros, Meriwether Clarke, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Susan Kirschbaum, Berette Macauley, Anna Mantzaris, Tyler Mills, Janice Mirikitani, Maw Shein Win, Helen Smith -Romer, Bridget Wagner, and Nellie Wong. Among the more creative personal responses are those by Chimine Arfuso, Erica Goss, Christine No, and Brianna Wu, who comments on Trudi C. Hauptman’s textile portrait of Wu. F213 includes a short story by Thaisa Frank as a response, a fictional excerpt by Melinda Alexander, and flash fiction by Shannon Rose Riley. Natasha Boas goes beyond protest and activism to advocacy, offering a list of organizations to help the homeless. And then there are several texts that present enthralling new myths such as Jessica Hendry Nelson’s origin story, Genanne Walsh’s fairy tale, and Karen Crews Hendon’s spoof of Socratic dialogues. While we could not anticipate what each writer would write, the NCWCA Curatorial Collective members are most appreciative of all of the writers for their wondrous responses, which brought to our attention multiple fresh perspectives on the works of feminist art we selected. As a whole the writers’ responses to the artwork in F213 are phenomenal, jam-packed with provocative insights and passion.

On Feminist Anger Passion is ardent emotion. Women avoided expressing their emotions such as anger before the election of 2017 lest they be labeled negatively. Feminists have been called “angry feminists” for decades. Black women have been called “angry black women.” Asian women have been called “dragon ladies.” Latino women have been called “fiery” or “spicy.” Powerful women who express their displeasure have all too often been categorized as “bitches.” It probably goes beyond saying that most if not all working women have been subjected to name calling whenever they dared to express their indignation in the workplace. In my own case I have been heard enough slurs lodged against me over the years to keep a running list. My all-time favorite continues to be “caustic,” which was how my response to some totally unacceptable sexist behavior was described in a confidential document that its author, a male colleague, never anticipated I would read.

The Presidential campaign and election of Donald Trump did much to change our attitudes towards our “ugly feelings”3 of anger and rage, which became undeniably visible with the January 21, 2017 Women’s March—the largest one-day protest to date in American history. The non-stop news about corruption, man-made disasters, inadequate responses to Puerto Rico, gun violence, police brutality and murders of African Americans and trans people, unlawful detention of migrants, the push for “the Wall,” and more guaranteed that the daily outrage against injustice would continue and in a sustained manner. In October 2017 women’s courageous disclosures regarding the sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men such Harvey Weinstein prompted actress Alyssa Milano to promote the #MeToo hashtag, apparently unaware of activist Tarana Burke’s longstanding Me Too movement for black girls. The #MeToo social media campaign quickly became a global phenomenon in which sexual assault survivors acknowledged what had happened to them.

As already mentioned, by the end of 2017 women’s rage was in full display. Not surprisingly, three major books were published in 2018 that addressed women’s anger: Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, by Brittney Cooper; Rage Becomes Her, by Soraya Chemaly; and Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, by Rebecca Traister. Cooper’s Eloquent Rage came out first in early 2018. I read it during the summer of 2018 after we began working on F213. Eloquent Rage in particular was not only lifexxxxxxx 20

changing for me on a personal level but it greatly informed my thinking as I worked with the rest of the curatorial team in developing this exhibition. Cooper helped me understand better the plethora of reasons why many feminists, particularly women of color, queer, and trans women would harbor some serious reservations about participating in this show. I am personally very grateful to all the artists who agreed to participate in F213, and hope that participation in F213 will be beneficial to each and every one of you.

Mindful of my own privilege, I need to state unequivocally that F213 is the result of collective vision, decisionmaking, and labor. Karen Gutfreund, Sawyer Rose, and Priscilla Otani and I each suggested artists and writers for F213, and made curatorial decisions together every step of the way. An early product of collective curatorial decision making is the exhibition’s intentionally enigmatic title. F213 is short for Fahrenheit 213, which happens to be one degree above the boiling point of both water and blood. F213 is somewhat of a nod to the title of Ray Bradbury’s famous dystopic 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451, which anticipated large flat video screens, fake news, endless wars, and even weaponized robotic dogs. But the “F” in the title alludes more to the big “F” word that is feminism. The jury is still out regarding how much it alludes to an even more notorious “F” word, which, insofar as it does, links F213 to NCWCA’S previous show, F*CK U! In the Most Loving Way. In other words, our refusal to clear up all the confusion over the “F” in the exhibition title is intentional. We want to make clear that we really don’t give a fuck anymore about the types of decorum that have historically held women back.

Another key moment in organizing the F213 was when the Curatorial Collective members collaborated over email in writing the exhibition description and proposal. We then brought to the NCWCA Board and chapter members for their approvals. Throughout the entire process of planning F213 the rest of the curatorial team and I have tried our best to insure that all voices of feminist dissent, from as many communities as possible, would be included. Given that we pulled off this show with a shoestring budget with an entirely volunteer staff, we are pleased with the results. We hope that all the F213 participants and visitors to the show will be as well. We anticipate that the exhibition as a whole will serve as a platform for raising awareness about the utility of protest to prompt social activism. As a celebration of contemporary feminist and transfeminist protest, F213 reifies rather than challenges NCWCA’s primary mission of art activism.

A Modest Proposal As a final note, I should say that perhaps what surprised me the most when looking up the word protest was that the etymology of the root -test was not exhaustively provided. (The OED traces back the verb protest to the Latin prōtestārī, and subsequently breaks that word down to its prefix prō- and the verb testārī.) In general, English words with the root -test such as testimony, testament, testicle, and testes can be traced back to the Latin verb testārī, indicating the act of bearing witness or giving a solemn oath. Such acts were originally associated with masculinity since ancient Hebrews and Romans were commonly believed to have held their male genitals or the genitals of other men when making a solemn declaration or oath. Hmm.….

Think about it: the origins of the word protest recall ancient solemn oaths that could only be made by those with certain male genitalia. Quite frankly, I would bet my last dollar that I am not the only one who thinks that using the word protest in the year 2019 with its lingering association to cismen’s sexual anatomy, is a bit problematic.

Thus, I wish to conclude this introductory overview by proposing an alternative word for thinking about F213: projust. To me, this neologism suggests the promotion of social justice for all sentient beings as well as the environment. I believe that this word substitution not only projusts the legacy of patriarchy in language—it can make a big difference in its linguistic march towards social justice.

Notes ___________________ 1 Tanya Augsburg, Collaboration within the Field, TDR (The Drama Review) T148 (1995): 166-172.

2 See Mira Schor’s textual response to LeCocq’s work in this volume (p. 66).

3 For more on “ugly feelings,” see Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

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BIOGRAPHY Tanya Augsburg Tanya Augsburg is a humanities-trained, interdisciplinary feminist performance scholar, educator, arts writer, and curator who can be occasionally persuaded to perform. She teaches at San Francisco State University, where she is currently Professor of Humanities and Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University. She is a proud member of NCWCA, serving on the board as Art Historian in Residence. She served on the Executive Exhibition Committee as Featured Artists Curator and Programming Chair for NCWCA’s 2016 national exhibition, F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way. Dr. Augsburg is author of Becoming Interdisciplinary: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, 3rd Ed. (Kendall/Hunt, 2016) and co-editor of The Politics of Interdisciplinary Studies (McFarland, 2009). Her survey book chapter on the interdisciplinary arts is published in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd Edition (2017). Her book chapter, "Ars Eroticas of Their Own Making: Explicit Sexual Imagery in American Feminist Art," appears in A Companion to Feminist Art edited by Hilary Robinson and Maria Elena Buszek (Wiley, 2019). Her many other publications have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review; Text and Performance Quarterly; Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies; n.paradoxa: International Feminist Art Journal; World Futures; Colorado Critical Review; The Art Section: An Online Journal of Art and Cultural Commentary; and Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture. Her current scholarly projects include completing a book-length manuscript on the interdisciplinary arts and a booklength manuscript on what she is calling feminist ars erotica.

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Amy Ahlstrom San Mateo, CA Artist Statement: Over the last thirteen years I have been making urban quilts and textiles inspired by street art, signage, and graffiti. Utilizing hundreds of digital photos of found images, I designed collages by computer, made patterns, and created hand-cut and sewn quilts. The resulting quilts re-imagine the urban landscape and re-invent quilting as a pop art medium.

Currently, I am creating a new series about increasing women’s visibility.

The goal of this project is to quilt “double portraits” of women: to show their view of themselves versus how they are viewed and treated in society. Women are looked at, but rarely seen. The quilts feature images of strong women alongside their own words in order to “talk back” to the viewer.

The process is collaborative; the woman depicted provides images and text. I edit and arrange the images and text, then hand-cut and quilt two mirror-images, creating reversed portraits. The portrait is a striking graphic image, while the text serves as both a compositional and informational element. My goal is to create a room full of portraits to spark conversation and connection, and to provide a variety of diverse perspectives on what it means to be female.

Jessica Hendry Nelson Columbus, OH Writer Response: Origin Story In the beginning, there was one woman. She was light and dark and warm and humming and I did not know where her body ended and mine began. Love had physical form then. Love was literal; bodily. It was the two of us, but as onebody. We laughed and the woman traced circles on my face and we slept.

Before long, I grew larger. I sat up. I learned to chew, walk, repeat words, and turn doorknobs. We fled the apartment and the father.

We read stories about birds, apples, women. Stories were tangible.

There was no difference—in this beginning—between the physical world and my imagination. Stories comprised a larger body into which we fit perfectly. We were safe there, held, and this body was feminine because I did not know another kind of body. There was the woman, stories, love, and me, and together we were one aggregate form. Her cigarette smoke curled around us, but even the smoke was not separate, but extensions of the sounds we made.

At night, we tucked ourselves beneath the quilt of ourselves and were whole. This was before the cleaving, before I learned my holes were for filling.

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Amy Ahlstrom Feminists Talk (Amy) Silk and cotton quilt. 60 x 20 x 1.5 inches each. 2017

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Salma Arastu Berkeley, CA Artist Statement: “Allah O Akbar” It is the call to my prayers.

Allah O Akbar, Allah O Akbar Allah O Akbar I pray every Morning, every day, every night With gratitude in my heart and in my mind God is great, God is great, God is great The terrorist comes and hijacks this phase of mine Seeking Allah’s help for an action not right Allah O Akbar, Allah O Akbar Allah O Akbar And media picks up, Interprets Killer God is Great!

Who is giving permission to kill the innocent?

We respond with fear, hatred and violence Leaders rise to ban the Muslim call to pray Creating more chaos!

All this happening because of our ignorance Allah O Akbar, Allah O Akbar Allah O Akbar

Ani Zonneveld Los Angeles, CA Writer Response: As a practicing Muslim dedicated to eradicating extremism, Salma Arastu’s piece, Allah O Akbar deeply resonates with me.

At first glance, the soothing colors and floral patterns are aesthetically pleasing–but the drip from the sword dominates the narrative. Paired with the artist’s statement, one will quickly pick up on the intense political message in the medium. The sharp sword-like image fading into a trickle of paint resembles the weaponizing of “Allah” by the terrorists who have been drawing blood in the name of Islam for decades. Arastu words “The terrorist comes and hijacks this phrase of mine/The media picks up, Interprets Killer God is great!,” signifies the identity struggle Muslims in the West have faced with their faith since 9/11. Despite the outward noise, in the painting, “Allah” or “The God” faintly covers the surrounding background, reflecting the quiet and encompassing presence it has in the artist’s and my consciousnesses.

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Salma Arastu Allah O Akbar Acrylic and paper on board. 48 x 22 inches. 2018

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Micah Bazant Berkeley, CA Artist Statement: The image was created in October 2017, immediately after Hurricane Maria and US government neglect devastated Puerto Rico.

It was a collaboration between myself, the organization Forward Together, and AgitArte, an organization of Puerto Rican artists working for liberation, while the Trump administration and mainstream media whitewashed the catastrophe. AgitArte was seeing thousands dead and a human-made crisis caused by US forces.

In the weeks after the storm, on sketchy phone connections, we created this image to amplify their urgent demands and support grassroots mutual aid on the ground.

Daniel Coleman Chavez Greensboro, NC Writer Response: Decolonize Puerto Rico: Commonwealth is merely a fancy name for colony. Denying access to basic resources after an environmental disaster under the auspices of national security constitutes an ongoing act of terror.

Puerto Rico: a mixed-race nation where some of the most likely to experience neglect and resource deprivation are Afro-descendant and indigenous people. Bazant renders present the mothers, babies, and community members of color who most tangibly feel the strikes of militarization and neocolonization.

The Black mother and her babies in the foreground stand in dignity, with the barbarism of imperial forces behind them.

Decolonization is a survival need, not a utopian thought-experiment. To decolonize means to return agency, land, and decision-making back to those most affected by environmental and governmental devastation.

This mother—leader, freedom fighter, power builder, and wisdom holder, of the value of durational performance, portrays the will to survive. Isla linda y preciosa, fabulosa, maravillosa, decolonization is your birthright.

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Micah Bazant Decolonize Puerto Rico Giclee print originally in watercolor, pencil, and photoshop. 19 x 13 inches. 2017

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Micah Bazant Berkeley, CA Artist Statement: I made this image to support CeCe McDonald and all trans women and femmes of color who are fighting for their lives.

It was created on Transgender Day of Remembrance 2013, to reframe this event towards supporting the survival and leadership of trans feminine people of color. It includes a variation on the quote, by labor leader Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, who said, “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

As Janet Mock wrote in 2013: “It’s a state of emergency for trans women and trans feminine folk of color...We can’t only celebrate trans women of color in memoriam. We must begin uplifting trans women of color, speaking their names and praises, in their lives.” Five years later, it is still a state of emergency. Although this epidemic is mostly unacknowledged by white mainstream gay and lesbian movement and society at large, trans women and femmes of color are still being attacked in record numbers every year. CeCe McDonald was released from prison in 2014, but she continues to fight to live and thrive as a Black trans woman and revolutionary. All sales of this artwork benefit her.

Daniel Coleman Chavez Greensboro, NC Writer Response: Free CeCe. We honor our queer ancestors while holding strong to our collective responsibility to ensure our people do not become ancestors before their time. Framing the head of Bazant’s sketch of CeCe McDonald is a call to align with the simultaneity of these accountabilities.

Our capacity to organize is the endurance of survival.

The warm colors dancing across McDonald’s smiling face and torso, her left palm that ushers in a call to stop/pause, and her right hand cradling her heart, seem to signal the grace with which so many trans women of color inhabit the world. Honoring McDonald in this way figures her existence through humanization, juxtaposed against the criminalization she survived. McDonald is presented with the agency to determine the terms of our engagement with her existence. The trap of visibility is clear: there is a direct correlation between the increased visibility of trans women of color and their premature murders.

I echo Assata Shakur in honing in the essence of this work: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Long life to CeCe McDonald.

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Micah Bazant Free CeCe Giclee print originally in watercolor, pencil and photoshop. 14 x 11 inches. 2013

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Lorraine Bonner Oakland, CA Artist Statement: When you are little, things happen that you don’t understand, and sometimes you might think that you were the cause of those things (your world is small). Even as you grow up, terrible things may happen and you might think, “I must have done something wrong”, or “Maybe I really was asking for it.”

That person in the mirror. If only they would just (a long period of actual earning-a-living life) (despair) Then something changed (what?)

The world was filling up with sisters telling stories of their lives. Dancing stories. Painting and singing stories. Dressing and adorning stories.

Braiding stories.

I received clay, and the clay told my stories, the ones that had no words.

The world got bigger.

I am laying the mirror aside. I have re-aimed my slaying voice.

Sandy Butler Emeryville, CA Writer Response: Who placed the gun in her throat?

Was it her abuser when he said that if you ever tell what I have done to you, I will kill you?

Did she try to close off her own words for fear of not being believed or punished for the violence of her abuser? Did she place it there to keep her words trapped in her throat?

What keeps our words locked inside our hearts? What silences us?

What does each of us need to speak? What do we see when we look into our own mirrors?

Finding and insisting upon our own voices requires terrifying risks and very real dangers. Yet they lead to the freeing power and connection that disclosure brings. Simply to speak the truth heals.

The blood of the wound heals the wound.

Bonner gazes directly into an unflinching mirror that allows us to recognize ourselves and the violent world we struggle to navigate. She and her work are a challenge and a gift to each of us, still readying ourselves to look into our own mirrors, our own histories, our own lives.

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Lorraine Bonner Taking Aim Sculpture. 16 x 12 x 16 inches. 2005

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Della Calfee Houston, TX Artist Statement: One summer I was feeling too poor to donate to a cause so I volunteered twice a week at my local low-cost health clinic.

My job was to walk patients and those accompanying them through the parking lot from their cars to the entrance. In the spirit of a physician’s good bedside manner this practice was instituted as a matter of both safety and comfort as often there were several men in costumes or with big video cameras yelling ugly comments even at the littlest kids. “Don’t go in! They kill children!”

I was instructed to pay kind attention to the visiting patients and ignore the men completely. I never pried but usually the patients told me their reason for visiting. Almost never was it the reason the protesters assumed. One woman was having her heart checked. Another told me she was there because her long -awaited precious fetus had died inside her and she was there to have it removed. “If you kept your legs closed this wouldn’t have happened!,” the men yelled.

Erica Goss Eugene, OR Writer Response: Choice. I’m sixteen. School thinks I have the flu. I tell the doctor to knock me out. In the alley behind the clinic, men wait in cars.

They leave their engines running. Backseat speakers rumble. My mother drives me home. I’m thirty-seven. Work thinks I had a miscarriage. I tell the doctor to knock me out. At the hospital gift shop I buy myself a bouquet of roses. Classic rock plays from the radio. My husband drives me home. I am not sorry. I am not ashamed. I saved one from a teen-aged mother. I saved the other from her damaged body. There’s no music for that. No songs.

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Della Calfee INTIMIDATION Photography. 10 x 10 inches each. 2013

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Indira Cesarine New York, NY Artist Statement: Fuck, 2017, is in response to the ongoing corruption in our political system, and is an expression of protest against social injustice, sexism, racism, and disregard towards human rights we have seen since the election of President Donald Trump.

Pink pursed lips, to speak only when spoken to Little pink bows, to tie up loose hairs, While holding pink pom-poms to cheer on the men The men who liked to Fuck To Fuck, Or (just) to Breathe, So free for men Came with a price for a gal She can only be paid her sum of what’s fair, Not fair in numbers, but as fair as they find her These men in blue Blue suits Blue jeans Blue balls, when she refused them, Sometimes she shot up like an electric cobalt surge Fuck!

Sometimes She did Not Want To FUCK.

Susan Kirschbaum New York, NY Writer Response: FUCK In this Club called Life, She lit up Those blue eyes made her Want To Fuck To Fuck Him, Or even others, White-Black-Brown-Green-Yellow An exploratory bright light Where just like a man She could Fuck whom she pleased She could opt for the blue blanket In lieu of the pink, which signaled the submission of Little pink slippers, to walk silently 36

Indira Cesarine Fuck Neon sculpture, limited edition 1/6 + 1 ap. 6 x 12 x 3 inches. 2017

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Indira Cesarine New York, NY Artist Statement: Empowering feminists—these are often a point of departure for my multisensory series which challenge the status quo and shed light on oppressive narratives. This is a crucial time in history to stand up against discrimination, sexism and abuse of power. We must fight for our future. My neon light sculpture, EQUAL MEANS EQUAL, created in 2018, emphasizes the importance of equal rights for all humans, regardless of gender, which should be guaranteed in our constitution. Enough is enough. It is time for discrimination and the abuse of power to end.

Susan Kirschbaum New York, NY Writer Response: EQUAL MEANS EQUAL Cast in her ballet pointes Girls ascend to their toes They bleed to perfection On stage, publicly yet no one can see The monthly shedding (privately) Another lost chance at motherhood A tiny death While men in pink cease to be seen As virile; confident; worthy of male A solicitous shade, Mixing red and white, The whore and the virgin, Yet, His arrow points upwards, While Female drops her cross A burden to bear In utero and beyond Time to Break Free.

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Indira Cesarine Equal Means Equal Neon sculpture. 14 x 11 x 3 inches. 2018

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Lenore Chinn San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: RISE RESIST UNITE pictures People’s Choice Pride 2017 Community Grand Marshal Alex U. Inn, founder of the hip-hop drag troupe Momma’s Boyz and KINGDOM! Drag King Club. An advocate for justice and equality she was leading that year’s parade and march with a resistance contingent which stood in defiance to the policies and actions of the current Administration.

In solidarity with the resistance movement, that began with the Women’s March in 2017, San Francisco Pride—born out of protests and a fight for LGBTQ liberation, this was an opportunity to respond to threats against the most vulnerable members of the community and allies under the thematic umbrella “A Celebration of Diversity.”

Nellie Wong San Francisco, CA Writer Response: RISE RESIST UNITE Rise, can’t help but rise, loving and fighting together Raising our children, ourselves, our ancestors watching from distant shores U-turns, no, paths rocky, seas turbulent, tsunamis, wars against humanity, our skin and bones No surrender! To you who hide behind closed doors legislating the separation of immigrant families Justifying incarceration, waterboarding and torturing, exclusion Values. What American values, Mr. President, you, the One Percent?

Always we rise, losing our homes, begging for coins on the street Yes, we resist an economic system that throws us into corporate prisons Bowing not to brutality against our very lives, our material needs, our creative thunder Listen to the roars in our bodies, black brown red yellow multi-hued, and our genders, human and wise Mustering with hearts of passion, our working hands, our collective rage, our brilliant minds Now, as did workers fought for the eight-hour day, women who left abusive men Believing in a life without domestic violence, without hunger Uniting now, marching, organizing, drowning out poison of white supremacy, murders of indigenous women, Trans folk of color Rising against the seeds of all violence Building that society of socialist feminism, that verdant spring

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Lenore Chinn RISE RESIST UNITE Modern archival print. 13.4 x 20 inches. 2017

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Parker Day Los Angeles, CA Artist Statement: Judgement is from my Possession series, which looks at our shared experience of possessing a body and the potentialities and limitations we share. Judgement of bodies is all too common, both judgements of ourselves and of others, which is really a reflection of our own prejudices. In my work I strive to show power and unity through diversity. Lizard Golden, who I photo-graphed for Judgement, is a queer artist whose pronouns are they/them. For them to pose nude is to show vulnerability, perhaps opening themselves up to judgement. But their pose and props signify power and control. There are motifs of Lady Justice and also Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god who weighed the dead’s heart against a feather. I chose the spelling “Judgement” not the more prevalent “judgment” because the spelling with an “e” is what you’ll often find on tarot cards. The Judgement card refers to a time of resurrection and awakening, a time when a period comes to an absolute end making way for dynamic new beginnings.

Thaisa Frank Oakland, CA Writer Response: Outside the Café Chance the road to the forest is strewn with breadcrumbs. Inside I manage the bar and have made an art of never mixing the same drink twice. Once I told fortunes with a traveling circus. The ringmaster made me talk in a foreign accent, his mouth over mine so I’d shape words the way he wanted. He cooked me pancakes from the old country and asked why I held a grudge against him when an unforgiving attitude makes you sad. As soon as the circus folded, I put the dress he made me wear up for auction. It was a tight black dress with dark green seams and hot fortune embroidered on the bodice. I felt sorry for it on the block—it had been through so much and I didn’t know where it was going. Still, I was glad for the money and used it to get a silver patch for the eye blinded by a clown’s fake gun—as if plastic roses aren’t lethal at the speed of light. One night a woman came in to Café Chance wearing the dress. I remembered it as a violence of hooks and eyes, but now it was fastened with velvet buttons. The embroidery had faded so all you saw was fortune on the bodice. I didn’t tell the woman who I was, but I wanted to raise a glass with her, as if both of us could toast the courage of the dress. It was the only time I ever mixed the same drink twice.

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Parker Day Judgement Digital chromogenic print. 24 x 36 inches. 2018

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Justyne Fischer Washington, DC Artist Statement: Through the use of bold and simplified, yet complex imagery, Fischer uses the medium of woodcut to illustrate specific unjust events involving unarmed Black men, women, and boys. These works are meant to memorialize these moments and create awareness that can possibly lead to resolution. Each piece tells a story revealing Fischer’s interpretation of what occurred or what may have occurred specifically in veiled instances. Suspicious Suicide reveals the possible circumstances and unanswered questions surrounding Sandra Bland’s death while in Texas police custody.

Lauren Araiza Granville, OH Writer Response: We say her name. Justyne Fischer’s woodcut harkens back to African and African American traditions of painstakingly, lovingly carving wood by hand to honor and commemorate. This homage thus places Sandra Bland among the ancestors, among the countless Black women and girls who have been the victims of racial and gendered state violence and then made to disappear. We honor Sandra Bland and so many others— too many—who came before and after for their strength, bravery, and refusal to be controlled, diminished, or silenced. The police are shrouded in anonymity, their bodies and faces turned away from the viewer and concealed by the apparatus of the state as they consider their instruments of death. Meanwhile, Sandra stares ahead defiantly, confidently, knowingly. She confronts the viewer and challenges us to see and expose what others wish to remain hidden. Vines climb around her, evoking the movement that has grown in her memory and calling to mind the paraphrased words of Dinos Christianopoulos, “They tried to bury us.

They didn’t know that we were seeds.” We say her name: Sandra Bland.

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Justyne Fischer Suspicious Suicide Woodcut on voile. 34 x 50 x 2.5 inches. 2017

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Linda Friedman Schmidt Franklin Lakes, NJ Artist Statement: PROTEST highlights women’s anger fueled by racism, discrimination, bigotry, and injustice. Muslim women who came to America seeking safe refuge, human rights, and a better life have reason to be furious. They are faced with the Islamophobia of the Trump administration and its political agenda designed to discriminate, criminalize, and suppress Muslims. First there were plans for identifying, tagging, and registering Muslims, now there is a ban on travel from Muslim countries. The President’s disrespect for women, his contempt for immigrants and minorities, his politics of hate continue to stoke anger.

Women are no longer silent; they have discovered the power of their rage and are unafraid to cry out. Change is looming.

There is a need to reweave our social fabric as it is being torn. Discarded clothing is my paint; hooking my technique; cutting, tearing, unmaking, and remaking are part of my process. Rags and rugs are metaphors for the unwanted and the downtrodden. I take rugs off the floor, reinvent, and rescue rags, elevate and celebrate them on museum and gallery walls.

Feelings and subjects shoved under the rug are depicted on its surface, now a vehicle for expressing outrage and confronting social, cultural, and political issues.

Audrey Ferber San Francisco, CA Writer Response: Whore. Dogface. Floozy. Cunt. Grab ‘em by the pussy.

Makes me want to cover. Shroud. Disappear.

The Birth of Venus on her scallop shell, radically naked. Yet modest, hand shielding pubis and breast. A set of instructions. A behavior primer for women and girls. But her hair fights restraint, wild, ungovernable, golden tresses.

Hair shorn. Wigged. Shrouded in cloth to show modesty, piety.

Or sovereignty. Self-containment, cultural identity, self-respect. In resistance to Islamophobia. An encouragement of Islamophobia.

A forced confrontation; you will see my mind, not just my body.

Venus’s handmaiden offers a sprigged robe for cover as she emerges from the sea. On the threshold to freedom or conformity.

What do we wear?

What do we cover?

What is worship?

What is control?

Who speaks?

Who is silenced?

Who decides?

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Linda Friedman Schmidt Protest Discarded clothing. 22 x 22 x 1 inches. 2012

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Karen Gutfreund Saratoga, CA Artist Statement: There are stories of women lifting cars, somehow becoming a superhero to save their trapped child. To save and protect their children, leaving everything behind, migrant women are walking thousands of miles, hoping, praying, for some help, to escape to safety. Arrive and your child is ripped from your arms and put into cages? It’s unfathomable the anguish they must feel. Who is holding them as they cry and are scared and lonely—who tucks them in at night? The psychological damage being done to these children is incomprehensible with state-sanctioned child abuse. But they’re just “murderers, rapists, diseased, terrorists”—as we are fed a lie “we have to break up families” from our xenophobic, racist President. I see RED, a red-hot fury of anger, I have “zero tolerance.” Is this my America, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” to treat them as sub-human; are they 3/5 of a person? “They aren’t our kids.” Just as with the brown, Muslim children in the Middle East, living a nightmare that seems will never end, these brown kids at the border, they aren’t ours. If those kids looked like the Gerber Baby—pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyed—it’d be an entirely different story. But these aren’t our kids.

Sally Edelstein South Huntington, NY Writer Response: The browning of America is making white nationalists turn pale as a ghost with fright. For others, Trump’s draconian measures regarding immigration and the “illegal invaders” are making us see Red with rage.

I want to scream.

Hearing the plaintive crying of these children makes me want to scream.

Hearing the lies perpetrated by Trump and his heartless enablers on an hourly basis makes me want to howl.

Feeling helpless at the sight of youngsters languishing in cages makes me want to cry out.

What are we doing to these immigrant children cruelly taken from their parents who are seeking asylum?

Would we do this to fair-faced, blonde tots, and their parents?

The screaming will die down in time but the impact of this unspeakable trauma will be long-lasting.

If someone thinks the tender 2 year old will be too young to remember this trauma they are mistaken.

The 3 year old terrified, cries for his papi will never forget The 6 year old with night terrors and no one to comfort and hold her will never forget The 8 year old feeling forsaken, desolate and confused will never forget The panic-stricken 7 year old looking for his mother will never forget These children will never forget And neither shall we.

We must never forget we are Americans and have zero tolerance for this policy.

Now is the time for all of us to scream.

Now is the time for all of us to see Red. 48

Karen Gutfreund Suffer the Children (rage/enojadisimo) Mixed media on canvas, book pages, acrylic, vellum, vinyl and epoxy resin. 40 x 40 x 2 inches. 2018

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Kelly Hammargren Berkeley, CA Artist Statement: By the time you read this the week of August 12, 2018 will be history. It was a week when President Trump moved past name calling and demonization of his critics to punishment, with John Brennen being the first to lose his security clearance, when editorial boards of newspapers across the nation pushed back against calling the press, “Enemy of the People,” when news leaked that voter registration of Florida Democrats dropped by 2% while Republican voter registrations stayed steady, when an 11 year old hacked into a replica of Florida’s voting system in 10 minutes, when 14 states still using voting machines with no paper trail, when threats to the Judge in the Paul Manfort trial forces US Marshall protection, when 565 children seized at the US/Mexico border remain separated from their families. Decline into an authoritarian dictatorship is not possible without a cadre of enablers, a Congress that declines to act, and with 40% of the country who are eligible to vote but don’t. Every aspect of our lives is impacted by who is elected to all offices not just President. So much rides on whether we exercise our right to vote. Without participation even that right slips away.

Writer Response: the halls are getting colder now children not sleeping cement floors

silver sheets on tiny

bodies

quick breathing

turning

Maw Shein Win

some

collective sorrows

El Ceritto, CA

a blanket a chamber panopticon orphans in cells how do we hold how do we open the halls are getting colder now we are not sleeping 50

Kelly Hammargren Democracy Flew Away While I Lie Sleeping Mixed media. 52 x 30 x 7.5 inches. 2018

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Trudi C. Hauptman Sebastopol, CA Artist Statement: Brianna Wu owns Giant Space Kat, a company of mainly female staff, in a field where women are 3%. It develops games for the phone and creates positive female characters. She is a blogger writing responses to GamerGate culture. Brianna had to move her family out of her home because the GamerGate activists released her home address and personal phone number, followed by emails threatening her and her family.

Brianna continues to work with authorities to catch those causing these problems and pushes technology publications to stand up against this harassment. She continues to work with press and social media to deal with the personal Internet harassment happening to women. Brianna Wu recently lost her bid for a Boston, Massachusetts congressional seat but plans to continue pursuing a political position in 2020.

Brianna Wu Boston, MA Writer Response: When we look back at Gamergate, it was a dark premonition of what was to come in our politics. This piece is much like my memories of those two years. Disparate and fragmented, moments that were happy and challenging.

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Trudi C. Hauptman GamerGate III - Brianna Wu Art quilt made from quilt and interior design cottons. 31 x 26 inches. 2015

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Ester Hernandez San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: I was born and raised in a small farming town at the base of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1981 I created my Sun Mad image after my mother told me about the contamination of the water table in my hometown, a grape-growing, raisin industry region in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Although this art has always been censored in the San Joaquin Valley, Sun Mad has been exhibited in many national and international venues, museum collections, and printed and referenced in a variety of publications. Sun Mad is as relevant today as it was when I created it over 37 years ago. The public response to this piece, especially from children, has been tremendous and uplifting. I revised this familiar image on farmworkers, consumers and the environment. I am grateful this print has given voice to the concerns of many people. May it continue to bridge our different and diverse communities to work toward a healthy and just world.

Sandra Cisneros Shohola, PA Photo credit: Keith Dannemiller

Writer Response: Pledge of Allegiance to the Earth To read this poem by Sandra Cisneros, please purchase the F213 catalog on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/F213-Northern-California-Womens-Caucus/dp/1798403633/ref=sr_1_1? keywords=f213&qid=1553962640&s=books&sr=1-1

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Ester Hernandez Sun Mad Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 30 x 1.5 inches. 2018

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Nancy Hom San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: I created No More Violence Against Asians to express my outrage over a rash of physical attacks against Asians in the 1980s and 90s.

During those years there was a surge of anti-Asian violence. Asians were being harassed, beaten, or killed in schools, work places, bars, and restaurants. The news was full of racially-motivated incidents, from Vincent Chin’s fatal beating in 1982 to the 1992 shooting of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student who was going to a Halloween party and knocked on the wrong door. In both highly publicized cases and many others like them, no justice was served. I made this image as a call for the violence against Asians to end. Sadly, attacks against Asians have escalated in today’s trying political climate. This piece marks the first time I introduced paint directly onto a silkscreened poster, making it a one-of-akind artwork. This extreme close-up view and splattered paint highlights the urgency. I made the image larger in scale than my other works on paper to show my magnified anger. The graphic was later used for the cover of a document on violence against Asian Americans, part of a nation-wide campaign to stop the brutality.

Janice Mirikitani San Francisco, CA Writer Response: What Form of Madness You build walls to divide us. It’s madness.

We who served your table, cooked your food, harvested your sugarcane, We have worked your canneries, picked your crops, built your railroads, You claim war against trade agreements, incite more race hatred.

It’s madness.

You beat us with baseball bats, jail us in concentration camps.

You kidnap our women and sell them as sex slaves, You tell us to go back where we belong, call us enemy aliens, You rip our children from us and cage them like animals.

You lynch us, run us out of our homes, tell us to go back to “shitholes” where we came from.

You call us “jap, chink, slope, tonto, flip, spic, spook, raghead” to cage our humanity. The hate crimes rise. Killings keep mounting.

Madness Do you think you can purchase our apathy?

Look about you and see all our mouths.

We will not be driven out because of your hate, We will tear down the walls of fear and build bridges of love.

We know all acts of compassion are victories in our war for justice.

We defy your lies, ignite the light of truth in our throats.

We stand up against violence. We are not alone.

We won’t dwell in your cages.

It’s our form of madness.

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Nancy Hom No More Violence Against Asians Silkscreen and paint. 30 x 26 inches. 1996

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Judy Johnson-Williams Atascadero, CA Artist Statement: Shoes reflect what we do and what we are. The ultimate and most traditional is the wedding shoe, so I set out to make the most filly, feminine torturous shoe I could. When considering how to make the heel, I flashed on my tool-of-trade the exacto blade—how painful is that image but also how real.

Marriage, itself, is such a trap for most women and we enter into it (mostly) willingly, knowing that we’re giving up our most authentic self.

Lorraine Bonner Oakland, CA Writer Response: The poet who wrote “beauty is truth, truth, beauty” must have been a person of great privilege. Ugly truth, and beauty in the service of lies, surround us: plastic in the Pacific, commercials for cars or fast food, the endless traumatic reality that is inequality, corruption and impunity.

It is natural to want to turn away, to find some small beauty, some tiny unassailable truth. But life is not a cat video. The role of the artist is to bring the truth before us in all its ugliness, to show the lie embedded in the embroidery of beauty, and, with skill, wit and bravery, to share the urgent need for change.

Judy Johnson-Williams is such an artist. In her piece Wedding Shoe, she displays a shoe of exquisite design, bringing to mind all the beautiful paraphernalia and hope of weddings. But just as the external beauty of marriage hides, for many women, the painful truth of submission, loss of identity, and even the threat of death, Johnson-Williams’ shoe is held high on the point of a knife. You can feel that sharp steel, her bravery in showing it. Her courage is contagious: will you share it?

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Judy Johnson-Williams Wedding Shoe Vellum paper, acrylic paint, found exacto knife. 9 x 7 x 4 inches. 2016

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Kay Kang San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: Let’s get serious.

Why is the Korean peninsula still divided? Who was responsible for the division?

My blood boils as the United States and China treat South Korea like a pawn in a casual chess game. Meanwhile Korean people anxiously await peaceful resolution and reunion of long lost relatives after nearly 65 years of division and uncertainty.

Korean people are suffering while US and the North Korean leaders beat their chests! In my work, I express frustration, anger and humorous disbelief at the childish and reckless games Trump is playing and his disregard for humanity.

Christine No Oakland, CA Writer Response: F213: MY GRANDMOTHER DREAMS In her dreams I am her granddaughter, I am her child, her Final Masterpiece. In her mind I go to church with the suitors she has dreamt for me—their slick, combed hair and black suits—in her mind we are in the sixties, her love is alive and she hasn’t gone mad for another forty years— In her dreams my Grandmother is a small girl, annexed; a woman, a halffinished country. She is beside herself at the playground with her granddaughters, watching them play, such joy and contentment. Her eyes are dark and sharp, not milky grey, and she remembers each detail; weaves the world a story as she has taught me to do— She remembers how long her braids how bent her spine how picked over the bodies alongside the road: the whine of an air raid, her eyes closed tight, just her hands and God to guide her. How the heart can be halved by a fence, a demarcation. how a mother knows the outline of her dead son, so still. How each passing decade, the world burns indiscriminate, hotter; and her body shrinks, less a shield. How her past is rootless, ruthless. How she worries for her children, and their children and— In her dreams there is time and place and reason; there, my Grandmother is a child again, an ancestor, an amalgamation of all lives lived—woman after woman—each wondering when she stopped having the answers, believing that things would work out in the end.

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Kay Kang Mine is Hotter Than Yours!

Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 inches. 2018

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Jennifer Kim Sohn Sacramento, CA Artist Statement: These cotton frogs are fashioned after actual deformed ones found near industrial cornfields in Minnesota.

Monocrop farming of crops like corn and cotton generates massive amounts of toxins and pollution from its dependency on chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides. Processing of these crops also yields carcinogenic byproducts. In addition, copious quantities of water are used in every aspect of manufacturing a garment. For example, 500 gallons of water are used in the production of a single pair of jeans. Our habits as consumers drive the demand for these high yield cash crops.

By displaying deformed frogs in 2-liter soda bottles, I aim to direct our attention to the causality between our consumer habits and their far reaching environmental ramifications. A small shift in our consumer habits could bring a much needed paradigm change: environmental health over convenience and sustainability over disposable fast fashion choices.

back up. Outside, the sheen of sun reflects against these plastic graves, big enough to hold at least one hundred eyes.

Hide them in an old coat pocket instead. Wrap yourself in a shawl and watch the moon

rise up. Each night a question is this the last?

Meriwether Clarke Los Angeles, CA

breaks open in your hands.

Writer Response: UNMAKING Absence of care turns the unlikely into submarines.

Bottle tops close like fists and do not open

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Jennifer Kim Sohn Toxic Habits Cotton remnants, soda bottles. Installation variable. 2010

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Kate Kretz Silver Spring, MD Artist Statement: Creating the Lie Hole series of drawings helped me retain my sanity through 2017. I would not normally be interested in making work that is so nailed down to a specific person, but, this time, I couldn’t help myself. I was compelled to draw our new leader’s mouth: swollen with self-importance, and hyper-articulated in 12 different ways.

An orifice, disembodied… from truth, from decency, from potential consequences. A slimy, aggressive tongue that has forced open countless lips, slithering out of a throat that reeks from decades of undigested beef.

A blustering, bragging hole, spouting ignorance, inciting violence, spinning cons, and debasing our country.

Maria Elena Buszek Denver, CO Writer Response: Kate Kretz has spoken of her creative process as “exorcism through creation,” and few works in her oeuvre reflect this better than her Lie Hole series. While Kretz has taken on the visage of our 45th president before, these stripped-down, but instantly recognizable drawings of only his mouth—distorted into the made-for-TV scowls, snarls, and shouts one recognizes from his every media appearance—have the powerful effect of isolating and disempowering the messages they convey. Floating in a void like the spluttering, raging mouth on stage in Samuel Beckett’s play Not I, Kretz too presents what Beckett called “an organ of emission, without intellect.” But the painstaking craft that is visible in each work, created mark by meticulous mark in Prismacolor pencil against deep black paper, represents not only her critique of, but a cathartic violence to this disembodied gob and what it represents. As one imagines her laying down each focused slash of color, it’s hard not to think of Kretz conjuring a kind of feminist witchcraft on her subject—each mark a pin to prick, a prayer to protect against, a promise to resist each awful “emission.”

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Kate Kretz Lie Hole Prismacolor pencil on black Rives BFK paper. 10 x 8 inches. 2017

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Karen LeCocq Mariposa, CA Artist Statement: I created this work before the abomination was elected.

It seems almost inconceivable that it would come to pass after the Hollywood Access tape was revealed. How could anyone in their right mind elect this cretin? How could women, over half of the voting public, put “Grab ‘em by the pussy” in office? It remains inconceivable.

Mira Schor New York, NY Writer Response: No Where Near My Vagina. Would you want to wipe your ass with Donald Trump’s image, his teeny little mouth smudged with lipstick (lipstick on a pig indeed), pursed for a kiss? The idea is repellent.

The image is disturbing. It realizes our response to the dictator-in-chief’s abuses as it would be expressed on the streets of his hometown of Queens, New York: “Hey, Donnie! Kiss my ass!” You might want to moon him while you’re saying it. The effect is extreme. The artwork, unassuming, modest, small, is also fire engine red: it is quietly and effectively subversive and incendiary.

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Karen LeCocq No Where Near My Vagina Acrylic on stretched canvas. 6 x 5 x 1.5 inches. 2016

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Karen LeCocq Mariposa, CA Artist Statement: After the initial shock and horror of the election set in, my constant anger was eating me up inside. I found that humor helped ease the poison. I created this after reading a letter from the Southern Poverty Law Center telling how white supremacists were celebrating tRUMP’s victory. A vision of tRUMP as a garden gnome sprang into my mind. Making a pointed head seemed obvious: the KKK attire was perfect to depict his hatred of all humans not white.

Mira Schor New York, NY Writer Response: The tRUMP Garden Gnome. How does one represent a man who is absurd, pitiful, and abject, but also, because of his office, powerful and extremely dangerous to the survival of human beings on earth? The effort drives those of us who are sane and reasonable to the brink. Our desire to humiliate the humiliator-in-chief is great. We turn him into a garden gnome. We put a dunce cap on him, which is a Klu Klux Klan hood—or, is it the other way around? We brand him with a swastika. We paint nail polish on his stubby little fingers. We portray his red tie hanging way below his mushroom-shaped dick. We shrink him until he is a helpless squealing puppet. We hope that will work to save the stars and stripes on which he stands.

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Karen LeCocq The tRUMP Garden Gnome Plaster fiber. acrylic paint (figure) wood, acrylic (stars) copper tubing, plaster fiber (bomb) plastic acrylic (high heel) printed fabric (flag). 14 x 5 x 4 inches. 2017

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Kristine Mays San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: The act of lynching originated during the American revolution. This act of terrorism is an extreme form of informal group social control, often conducted with the display of a public spectacle for maximum intimidation. In the United States, lynchings of African Americans, typically by hanging, became frequent in the South during the period after the Reconstruction era and especially during the decades on either side of the turn of the 20th century. The political message—the promotion of white supremacy and black powerlessness—was an important element of the ritual. Fast forward to present day and this type of terrorism comes in the form of black people killed at the hands of the police. Due to social media, these deaths have been recorded and shared worldwide, with the victim’s name often noted as a hashtag in a modern day cataloging of information. The ribbons on the sculpture are hand-stitched with the names of AfricanAmericans killed at the hands of the police. This sculpture was created to reveal the burden and breadth of injustice being inflicted upon people while the media declares these occurrences as isolated instances.

Melinda Alexander Los Angeles, CA Writer Response: I lied.

I lied to him. When #PhilandoCastile and #AltonSterling were killed. He said he was scared of police, and I told him, “Police don’t kill little kids.” It was a lie, but how do you tell a 6-year-old black boy that his life actually could be in danger? How do you tell a 6-year-old black boy that playing in the park while black could get him killed? He knew about #TamirRice, but I tried to convince him that police don’t usually kill children.

“Well I don’t want to grow up then, cuz I’ll have to eat salad... and police might kill me.”

I lied, again.

“We’re working to reform the police, baby. By the time you’re a grown-up, they might be different. That’s why we’re fighting so hard to change them.”

We are fighting, but we’ve been fighting for over 25 years—since that day on Florence & Normandie [site of the LA rebellion] that changed history, since they hosed down black folks at counters just trying to eat lunch. So I can’t bring myself to tell him about #JordanEdwards, because I’m all out of lies. They do kill young black boys just like you, baby, and they may never change—cuz they are doing exactly what they’ve been designed to do. **From page 88 - Getting Free: A Love Story

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Kristine Mays modern day lynchings and hashtag memorials Wire, ribbon and rope. 40 x 20 x 9 inches. 2016

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Rosemary Meza-DesPlas Farmington, NM Artist Statement: “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being” (Lorde 2007). In her keynote speech at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, Lorde (2007) spoke about anger being “a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.” A swell of discontent and frustration settled over the United States at the beginning of 2017 like an ominous cloud about to burst. Prior to the torrential rain, frustration morphed into anger. Held in our nation’s capital, the Women’s March occurred on January 21, 2017 in tandem with sister marches throughout numerous US cities and countries: it galvanized millions of people towards a constructive outlet for their anger. The Women’s March movement left women feeling empowered and unwilling to stay silent any longer. “The remainder of 2017 has served, in retrospect, as an extended march, a cry of protest at the shameful treatment of women in American society” (Austerlitz 2017).

Austerlitz, Saul. 2017. “US Culture Year in Review: The Year of Women Breaking Their Silence”. The National. December 27, 2017. https:// www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/us-culture-year-in-review-the-year-of-women-breaking-their-silence-1.691036.

Lorde, Audre. 2007. Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley: Crossing Press.

of this ugly destructive project you call progress?

We are not a quiet cloud raining sustenance for the leached soil of Mother Earth to continue soaking the life blood of your children [. . .]

We murmur in the sky over your manifesto of Development and Destiny, to block the Sunshine over your dirty work,

Berette Macaulay Everett, WA Writer Response: Dear Patriarchy, We are done [with…] this experiment, normalized over multi-millennia to control our lives, our bodies, and even the lives of the conceptually unborn Is it that you think we will birth any more from between our… trembling legs, that we will nurture more . . .

Watch how We (Re)Shape the Light [. . .]

Dispossessed, suppressed, oppressed, pieces of us scattered over histories and geographies toward to every future We Will Right . . .every testimony of your reign, . . .to inflict fear upon anyone who is bordered as ‘Other’ We are Perseverance from soil to star dust Screaming, sweating, working [through the hysteria of the masculine misunderstanding] We will no longer whisper in quiet We gave Space, because We are Space, More than half of the bodies, We Are the Whole Work, […]

The Mother now rages to save us all And when this Survival work is done, even you, who has lost all you pillaged for, Will thank her.

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Rosemary Meza-DesPlas What You Whispered, Should Be Screamed Hand-sewn human hair (gray). 34 x 36 x 4 inches. 2018

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Geri Montano San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: I titled this artwork with the German spelling of her name, “Frieda.” It was inspired by my research on Frida Kahlo’s background. Frida’s father was German. Frida wanted to hide this because of the rise of the Nazis. She was a woman artist ahead of her time, strong, independent, a rebel, an artist. Frida was an activist who participated in demonstrations against injustice. She endured many adversities in her lifetime, and, has often been portrayed as a fragile, emotional woman with tragic personal history. I acknowledge her many trials with her health, polio as a child and the bus accident, both of which left her with disabilities and caused her much pain. In truth she was a multifaceted woman who also liked to cross dress to express her power and independence. Additionally, it is known that she was open sexually and engaged in many affairs with both sexes. I chose to celebrate this side of Frida, which is rarely portrayed in artworks.

Petra Kuppers Ypsilanti, MI Writer Response: Frida/Frieda, unmoored, vulnerable dominatrix, black and red. Frida Kahlo, the artist and painter, has often been made into a consumable icon by an international art world, shorn off her radical framing and her push-back against capitalist values. This artwork gets explicit in its fantasy. Frida becomes her father’s Frieda, entered back into the canon of female fetishes, acknowledged as an act of re/claiming.

Embrace the power of dreams and fantasies, where forbidden Nazi images shift murkily into queer agendas, like a female Tom of Finland. A Stormtrooper skull blinks on her cap, containing her black hair. Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte and Nazi guard. The peace dove bleeds into a décolleté framed by a medical brace. Boots, braced and high, fit into contemporary fetish scenes. The crop for a shying horse, maybe back there with the black cat and monkeys that peek around the border’s edge. This is an old photo, a new painting, an old fantasy of violent women, a newer acknowledgement of violated women, a shimmering dom. Color drippings echo old x-rays, racy medical fantasies, an agency reclaimed and shaded, shaped out of histories and watercolors. This image drips into your dreams.

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Geri Montano Frieda Acrylic ink, prisma pencil, charcoal on paper. 70 x 40 inches. 2012

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Patricia A. Montgomery Oakland, CA Artist Statement: The Wedding Coat tells the story about domestic violence. The embroidered words on the sleeves represent the types of violent acts forced on an individual. It can start off with the exchange of hurtful words and name calling. Soon the words turn into a slap across the face or push across the room. It is all about controlling and bullying from the abuser. Some of the words depicted are: YELLING; PAIN; MANIPULATION, DEPRESSION; THREATENING and GASLIGHTING. The shadow figures on the back of the coat represent these aggressive behaviors that an individual experiences during a violent confrontation. A woman is beaten every 9 seconds. 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been a victim of domestic violence. These numbers could be higher, since so many domestic violence victims suffer in silence.

The texts on the back of the coat are words of encouragement! How one must believe that she/he is worthy! That you are strong and will not allow someone to hurt you! Don’t be ashamed! Tell your story about domestic violence so that you may inspire others. Keep this thought in mind: “Never underestimate the power of an extremely PISSED OFF WOMAN!”

Khadijah O. Miller Chesapeake, VA Writer Response: I think of the song “911” by Wyclef Jean. In the chorus, he sings with Mary J. Blige, “Someone please call 911; Tell them I just been shot down; And the bullet’s in my heart; And it’s piercin’ through my soul; Feel my body getting’ cold; Someone please call 911…”

Just as Wyclef Jean moans these lyrics, this wedding coat moans a siren’s alert to domestic violence. Domestic violence kills. Domestic violence aims to kill the spirit, soul, and heart of those attacked.

Encroached in something beautiful like this coat with its embroidery and beautiful fabric but etched within are those words, actions, and feelings that destroy—”playing games,” “kicking,” “harassment,” “criticizing you,” “control,” and “pain.”

As a child, we heard the lie that “sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us.” The colorful fabric across the back reminds me of sticks and stones, leaves and branches that we see in the fall—as the weather becomes cold and the leaves dry up from the cold and fall—so does the spirit of domestic violence abuse victims. This coat wears their pain. This coat sports their experience. In protest—I mean in contrast, we must marry love, trust, support, truth and action.

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Patricia A. Montgomery Wedding Coat: Story about Domestic Violence Fiber art: mixture of ethnic and cotton fabrics, digital images and text, crystals, buttons, textile thread, painting and machine embroidery. 44.5 x 40 x 10 inches. 2018

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Laura Murray New York, NY Artist Statement: After the election, I kept revisiting this memory of getting held up at gunpoint in my apartment lobby a few years ago. I envisioned all of the country’s misogyny, all of the rising tension, and all of the potential for violence as a gun pointed at my face. I wondered how can I respond in a way that is peaceful, powerful, and—most importantly—feminine?

Genanne Walsh San Francisco, CA Writer Response: Crucible.

Where to begin? The beginning beginning goes too far back, gets biblical: begats, beheadings, bewilderment. (All still here, and plenty of it).

The middle beginning is as you might expect: an apple, a curse, innocence betrayed, a trail of crumbs, a trail of tears, a crone with a nugget of wisdom in her apron pocket. Trees rustle. A wolf comes out of the forest.

The crone’s bones are spat into the campfire and the children merrily roast their supper, shadows rising, cheeks shining with righteousness.

Ferocity wins, hunger wins, what a fucking triumph, the end.

Here we go again: the newish beginning. Everything we love and fear in the crosshairs. The crone morphs into a domestic worker. The children are still the children but medicated and so less prone to wandering in the forest. The wolf is—take your pick, so many to choose from, ha ha, how fun!

The bones are still the bones, the blood is the blood. The forest stands until it cannot hold, at which point it will fall. Across the level field a figure waits, intent and watchful, eyes glowing.

The fire wants to know: what will you feed me? I need to burn.

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Laura Murray Plug it up Watercolor and tampon on paper. 17 x 26 x 2 inches. 2016 Courtesy of Fay and Dave Mattana

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Aqsa Naveed Stockton, CA Artist Statement: Make America Ignorant Again is in response to the 2016 Election Campaign that spurred the slogan “Make America Great Again” implying that the United States of America was once great. In the eyes of the oppressor, violence and injustice seems like an achievement, but for the oppressed, a prison in a promised land.

The responses spoken to women, are always spoken to as second thoughts or given no thought at all.

“If you marry me, I won’t make you wear that.” Are we meant to take our modesty as a prison from which a white man will liberate us, when in fact a woman’s choice is all she needs to do what she wants?

“That chicken korma gave me diarrhea last week.” Your bowel movement has nothing to do with my ethnic food.

My ancestors spent years perfecting recipes and patiently serving every delicacy with tradition. Meanwhile your ancestors spent years breaking and entering our mother-land and then you tell me that you can’t handle spice?

My food is not for your weak digestive system.

“No one respects Muslim women like I do.” No one boasts their frauds like a white man does to people of color.

Burcu Döleneken San Francisco, CA Writer Response: Oh, my body!

Stand against the sense of smugness in the white male ideology and hegemonic Western feminisms, knowing that Muslim women throughout history have been fighting against imperial colonialism, against Western and Muslim patriarchs, against the racism of Western epistemology, against the patriarchal interpretations of Islam, and against sexism, misogyny, and xenophobia. Oh, my body! take a stance, and be proud cuz since the dawn of the time we were, we are, and we shall be.

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Aqsa Naveed Make America Ignorant Again Digital. 11 x 14 inches framed. 2017

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Aqsa Naveed Stockton, CA Artist Statement: The NiqaBAN is in response to the Quebec Niqab ban that was proposed and passed in October of 2017. Its real purpose was to ban Muslim women from wearing niqabs, or face veils when they provide or receive public services. In December 2017, two months after its passing, a Quebec judge suspended this law due to challenges in the court by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. In the court’s judgement, the ban violates the freedoms guaranteed by the Quebec and Canadian charters of human rights and freedoms.

My response challenges the idea that banning modest wear in society (or any religious practice) does nothing to prevent or solve real political problems. History has proved that banning religious practices, as opposed to creating better laws, only results in an unsafe society and civil unrest. The niqab is a form of self-expression that many Muslim women choose, rather than are forced to wear. It’s worn to practice our religion and to devote oneself to God and should never be up for debate.

Burcu Döleneken San Francisco, CA Writer Response: Oh, my body! our earthly presence, the battleground of all hypocrisies Look how much trouble we have caused in the mind of white patriarchs.

How many times our bodies are policed, and our choices are scrutinized

by Western ideologies that has been fighting over our bodies to claim submissiveness, oppression, weakness, and lack of subjectivity in Muslim women so that they – the invincible savior and supreme benevolent—can reclaim our liberation. Yet, despite their paternalistic attempt to liberate Muslim women, when in their bell jar they are woken by their nightmare of our own resistance and resilience. Recall those countless moments when your presence revealed the mask behind the free world where freedom is only entitled to hegemonic Western life and existence, modes of thinking, being and being in the world.

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Aqsa Naveed NiqaBAN Digital. 11 x 14 inches framed. 2017

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Brenda Oelbaum Ann Arbor, MI Artist Statement: Piss on Me. This work is a continuation of a collection started during the Bush/Cheney Administration, The Axis of Evil Rug Series: Buy a Rug Stamp Out Evil (2002-2005). So distraught by the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, the artist’s only response was to work it out in her art. There was a cathartic emoting of anger as her latch hook went in and out of the image of this pasty orange face over and over again. The pleasure was short lived as looking at the image over time was making her physically ill. After hearing rumors of bizarre sexual antics from a dossier pulled together by a British spy in Russia, she was able to focus more on the absurdity of the situation. Her hope is that this work can bring some levity to an otherwise distressing political situation.

Taking Notes; Who Are We? Trump’s Foolish Head Truncated Fucked up Face Removed from body Violent Gesture, Face and Hair Bully Glaring Reminder of Our Failure, Implementer of Fascism-ism, Racism, Sexism, Hatred Sewed and integrated into Consciousness What? What?

Brenda Oelbaum -Intelligent-Fearless-Creative Passionate/ Compassionate Sensitive Performance Drawn in woolContinuing Oelbaum’s Oeuvre: Buy a Rug Stamp Out Evil

Helene Smith-Romer Chicago, IL Writer Response: Piss on Me: Or is that Shame On Us? A Metaphor 4 Where We Are. Trump Toilet Cubism Porcelain Portrait Reflects Weston and Duchamp Recollected Highlighting the Absurdity and Tragedy of #45 Brenda Pop Provocateur

Piss on Me-A Visual Poem-by a Feminist Artist Enriched Collage of Women’s History Needlepoints/Samplers Seneca Falls Women Artists of Bauhaus; Weavers-Tapestry Furry Cover Toilet Lids and Matching Rugs Remembered Miriam Shapiro, Martha Rosler, Judy Chicago Naming; Just a few What does an artist do when?

Fascist rules?

Oelbaum: “So distraught by the election of Donald J. Trump…. There is a cathartic emoting of anger as my latch hook goes in and out of the image of Trump….”

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Brenda Oelbaum Piss on Me: Trump Toilet Trio Latch hook rugs, standard toilet. 2016

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Priscilla Otani San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: These briefs symbolize the 1980s when Brett Kavanaugh and other well-to-do boys came of age, raised on party flicks like Risky Business, Valley Girl, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, House Party and Pretty in Pink. Mimicking Hollywood, they partied their asses off, trashed homes, wrecked cars, drank and vomited to excess, and grabbed pussy mostly without consequence. It didn’t matter that the girls said stop. Their behavior was forgiven. Boys will be boys. Girls were silenced, disbelieved, slut-shamed. Their anger burned without end. At some point boys like Kavanaugh sobered up and old-boy-networked into jobs that clothed them in suits of impeccable respectability. It was easy to forget the past. No harm. No foul. No proof. His word against hers.

Liar, liar pants on fire. The witch hunt is just beginning.

Tanya Wilkinson San Francisco, CA Writer Response: There are many facets to privilege. One of the most pernicious is that the privileged are able to forget about the damage they do. For men who cling to their entitlement there is no internal reckoning, no clear-eyed view of the consequences suffered by others. Those who rely on male privilege remain boys in our eyes: lying boys, bullying boys, tantrumy boys, destructive boys. We can see that their tiny white briefs are aflame but they do not feel the heat.

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Priscilla Otani Liar Liar Pants on Fire Mixed media, men’s suiting fabric with pinned paper briefs. 20 x 16 inches. 2018

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Sheila Pree Bright Atlanta, GA Artist Statement: As major social movements have emerged in the past two years, I’ve documented the tensions, conflicts and responses between communities and police departments that have resulted from police shootings in Atlanta, Ferguson, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I’ve observed young social activists taking a stand against continued injustice that closely resembles that which their parents and grandparents endured during the era of Jim Crow. By documenting this emerging social movement, I have been able to invite other communities into the on-going conversation. In 2013 while photographing under-recognized living leaders of the Civil Rights movement, I made a connection between today’s times and the climate of the 1960s that inspired the #1960Now project. #1960Now, examines race, gender and generational divides to raise awareness of millennial perspectives on civil and human rights. #1960Now is a photographic series of emerging young leaders affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Likisha Griffin Atlanta, GA

Writer Response: Janelle Monae Robinson: A Self-Defined Moment In Protest History Bright’s protest image of celebrity Janelle Monae captures a moment that uplifts the feminine nurturer in the black community. In this photo, Monae’s elegance and compassion is personified as she stands alongside Alexia Christian’s mother during a local #SayHerName protest in Atlanta, Georgia.

The demonstration took place after questions and concerns arose over the police shooting of Christian, who was accused of pointing a gun at police officers in police custody with no sustainable proof—and also the death of Sandra Bland in police custody. Bright captured Monae in a moment of history that speaks to generational experiences of racism in America, which has impacted all classes and caste.

Celebrity culture has always been present in activism as icons like Harry Belafonte, James Brown, Nina Simone and others spoke against Jim Crow laws in the 60s. They experienced entering back doors of performance halls and restaurants due to segregation. Bright has stated, “Black bodies are born into a movement, whether they are conscious of it or not. It’s called the Black Liberation Struggle.”

Adorned in a sailor's hat, Monae signifies the representation of being the captain of her own ship. The artist and her label, Wonderland Records, showed solidarity at the Say Her Name protest chanting “Hell You Talmbout.”

The oral tradition of expression paid tribute to ancestral connections of those who walked before Monae as celebrities.

Historian and photographer Deborah Willis has examined photography as the tool that self-defined black identity in America as first seen in photo albums of black families, who could afford cameras as early as 1840.

Bright’s image of Janelle Monae Robinson belongs to a print and digital album, #1960Now, capturing a presentday visual-narrative of social justice.

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Sheila Pree Bright #1960Now: “Say Her Name” Protest, Artist Janelle Monáe and Wonderland Records Members Perform “Hell You Talmbout” Protest Song Photography. 30 x 30 inches. 2016.

Courtesy of Ashby Nickerson, Director of Candela Books + Gallery and owner, Gordon Stettinius

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Favianna Rodriguez Oakland, CA Artist Statement: After Arizona’s governor signed an anti-immigrant bill, SB 1070, into law in April 2010, a movement of organizers around the country rose up to fight it. I traveled to Arizona as part of a women’s delegation to document the women and children. At one of the marches, I photographed a young Latina girl in the crowd and developed this poster.

The phrase, “Undocumented. Unafraid.” is a term that was born in the immigrant youth movement. This poster was originally commissioned by AltoArizona.com

Chimine Arfuso Clovis, CA Writer Response: We were driving to a protest against the detention centers for children being separated from their parents at the Mexican/American border.

My mother was a refugee from Cuba, I often think about what it was like for her being separated from my grandmother at such a young age. Because of circumstances they had to flee separately.

What if they had detained my mother? Man-made “borders” manmade “laws” man-made “hierarchies” of privilege and worthiness.

My daughter teared up as I told her about the babies being ripped from their parents’ arms. Even as a five year old she understood what a tragedy this was.

When we got to the protest it was hot. Fresno is not a fun place to protest during the day in the middle of summer. We could not compete with the sweat sliding down our foreheads, drinking water, taking moments underneath a small veil of shade.

We labored in the sun, together, repeating the chants, Justicia para el pueblo, si se puede.

I looked over my shoulder back at my daughter, her brown skin glowing in the sun, proudly holding up her ACLU sign.

Ella no tiene miedo.

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Favianna Rodriguez Undocumented. Unafraid.

Offset. 24 x 18 inches. 2010

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Sawyer Rose Fairfax, CA Artist Statement: Anna works full-time in the home, home-schooling their 7-year old while also caring for their toddler. Hillary worked in digital services for the US government through the Obama administration, and has recently been named the first-ever Chief Digital Officer for the province of Ontario, Canada. The two women’s work hours are intertwined in their sculpture, as they are in real life—Hillary in gray and Anna in green. Paid labor (Hillary only) is represented by the metal pods.

Unpaid labor (both women) mostly caretaking and domestic responsibilities, is represented by wool felt pods. Hours when they were not working are indicated by the very few spaces on the rope.

This piece is part of The Carrying Stones Project: an ongoing series of sculpture, data visualization, and social practice works that explores the inequities surrounding women’s paid and unpaid labor.

Sharon Gelman Potomac, MD Writer Response: Sawyer Rose has made Anna and Hillary’s bond and toil palpable. The wool pods and the softness of felt speak of work for the family lovingly offered. Fecund and green, dappled and gray, these pods seem organically formed of their own volition or grown on trees from small buds. Swollen with life and possibility, they might soon burst into something edible and nourishing. Yet the heft and weight of these responsibilities are also tangible.

In contrast, the metal pods clearly are forged and folded by human hands. Their bright, many-faceted, pointed shapes articulate the sharpness of mind and multiplicity of talents required for professional work in the digital realm. Their complex geometry perhaps indicates the extra capabilities women must demonstrate to be hired for competitive positions and compensated equally to men. The metal evokes the value of that necessary compensation as well as the shine of accomplishment.

The rope binds Anna, Hillary, and their children together, the twisted strands joining family members and their work, one to another. Its thickness conveys their shared burdens and the fact that women’s work is rarely done, while the optimistic yellow color celebrates the preciousness of free time and of shared joys.

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Sawyer Rose Anna & Hillary Data visualization of women’s work hours, felt, aluminum, silver, solder, rope. 10 x 6 x 6 feet. 2017

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Sheree Rose Culver City, CA Artist Statement: When I met Bob Flanagan in 1980, I identified as a cis female heterosexual. I was divorced after 14 years of marriage, and had joint custody of my two children. I had been introduced to the second wave of feminism while earning my Master’s Degree in Psychology at Cal State Northridge. I joined a group: The Socialist Feminist Network, mostly comprised of lesbian philosophy professors, who cautioned me that I had been sleeping with the enemy, i.e. straight men! My curiosity aroused, I was more than ready when Bob told me, on our first date, that he was submissive, and that he would devote his life to doing whatever I wanted, both sexually and in our “real” life. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse!

From that life-changing moment, for the next sixteen years, I forged a lifestyle that encompassed female domination, photography, performance art, political activism, punk music videos, an award-winning documentary, along with an exploration of my own gender and sexual fluidity.

The photo, Blue Takes Washington, was taken at the March on Washington for lesbian, gay, and bi equal rights and liberation, April 1993. Blue was my slave, and she proudly posed in all her butch glory in front of the White House. The photo has lost none its power and is more relevant than ever in today’s political climate.

Yetta Howard San Diego, CA Writer Response: Sheree Rose’s Blue Takes Washington (1993) is one of many examples of Rose’s work that situates her artistic legacy within queer, feminist, and underground art history in ways that exceed her collaborative performance art practices with Bob Flanagan for which she is often known.

In addition to redefining sexual, museum, and subcultural space via BDSM practices, Rose helped initiate the BDSM scene in Los Angeles, which included involvement with the Society of Janus. From 1989-1993, Rose was also an integral part of Club FUCK!, a queer, leathersex, BDSM, and body modification nightclub and performance space. In Blue Takes Washington, the photographic subject is both personal and political: subversively clutching chains in defiance of the White House in the background, Blue, one of Rose’s slaves, boldly displays butch gender while publicly proclaiming involvement in leather culture as a distinctly political act extending beyond the contexts of the 1993 March on Washington.

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Sheree Rose Blue Takes Washington Color photographic print. 20 x 16 inches, framed 24 x 20 inches. 1993.

Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.

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Rachel Sager Oakland, CA Artist Statement: My current body of work continues an examination of matter in a transformation; metamorphosis, one state to another. I am particularly drawn to how such elemental shifts coincide with the sometimes devastating effects of human beings on the world around them. Here, I portray this trans-mutation of matter as calculated explosions on aerial landscapes; the ground living, breathing, and dying all at once, in a heavenly haze. Simultaneously, these images of meteoric combustion and uncertainty loosely depict colorful images of debris and fire filled clouds, liberating the mind from any certain and singular symbolism.

Tyler Mills Santa Fe, NM Writer Response: Mulholland Drive Woolsey Fire, 2018 What glitters in the flames? A traffic ticket’s room of numbers candle into wounds. And here a page curls up from a high school yearbook—all the faces bricked together as they burn.

I hope the owner fled, the smoke parting ahead, the heat distant enough. A wad of bills releases like wings over water— the road not a road, but a channel now of tar that twists away— and kitchens and dens and the conversations held there vanish. Are and gone. The sea, sitting in its own explosion of geranium red and ghost pepper, hosts horses and dogs stepping out of the soot on the beach. What can gathers here, close to the cool edges of the waves. No movie made this.

I cannot find a way to place the self here, what we have done.

All of us and none of us. Nearby, a church on the set of a Western town survived after the saloons and stables blew into air.

Where there’s smoke—the saying begins, and fire hoses jet comets into the ash. Prisoners hold the line.

The groan of a bridge melting moans like an animal.

More light arrives, white and yellow, over the hills.

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Rachel Sager Red, White, & Blue Oil on canvas. 40 x 60 x 2 inches. 2013

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Kadie Salfi Ithaca, NY Artist Statement: Every 16 Hours.

Every 16 hours a woman is shot and killed in the United States by a current or former romantic partner.

I am a woman.

I am a mother.

I am a wife.

I am a daughter.

I am a sister.

I am an aunt.

I am a niece.

I am a cousin.

I am a friend.

I am an artist.

Responding in the way I know how.

After discovering how many women are killed by guns every day in the US I started making art about gun violence against women in order to highlight the loss of lives, the terror, and the unnecessary destruction. I hope to stimulate vital conversations to raise awareness of this growing epidemic. For the last eight years I have been making work about the darker side of America’s gun culture and Every 16 Hours was a natural progression.

Rebecca Morgan Frank Naperville, IL Writer Response: this gun killed my mom the gun that killed my mom was a cigarette-shaped gun, was a Big Tobacco gun, was a corporate lobbyist-shaped gun, was loaded with American product, was known to cause harm, to kill, was a probably-killing-other-people in-its-vicinity gun, was also dressed with nail polish and eyeshadow, was a slim Virginian gun, an adcampaign gun, was a gun that you could also put in a pretty gold case–you could have it engraved, just for the person you wanted to kill–this gun is just like the other guns with women as its target, this gun was pointed first at girls, this gun is available at your local big box twenty-four hours a day, this gun has shot a million American women, this gun threatened another 3.5 million of us, this gun is a gun is a gun is a gun, this gun is loaded.

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Kadie Salfi My Mom & Scorpio Nail polish, eyeshadow, graphite, spray paint, gold leaf, varnish on wood. 20.5 x 35 x 1 inches. 2018

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Gigi Salij Venice, CA Artist Statement: Fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities. Frauds are having a moment, aren’t they? Everywhere we look we seem to be uncovering impostors, fakes, shams, charlatans, embezzlers, swindlers, quacks, hackers, and double-dealers. There’s even one in the highest office in the land, I’d say. In this piece, I aimed to convey the quiet, private, seeping, creeping realization-not obvious at first, but utterly clear eventually—that one has been the victim of fraud.

Bridget Wagner San Francisco, CA Writer Response: blue bleeds into blue sit in a quiet light choose the wrong color a backward mirror a false hope paint me anger paint shame the cheat and the cheated for your milky sweet smile I send white roses of rage

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Gigi Salij Fraud Watercolor. 9 x 6 inches. 2017

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Mira Schor New York, NY Artist Statement: A day in the studio begins with the instantaneity of response to that day’s repellent news, which I can articulate very freely in ink and gouache on paper. The paintings fix and develop some of these moments, enact a scenario, concentrate the rage into as intense a frame as possible. Their surface is a viscous slurry of black oil paint. The blackness is not just spiritual and political darkness, it also represents the way in which, in such a moment, space itself is solid and fights you as you try to move forward, impinges on your freedom.

This painting was begun June 30, 2018, three days after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation from the Supreme Court, at the same time as attention to the fate of small children ripped from their parents by Trump and Sessions “zero tolerance” immigration policy came into sharp focus. The open book has been an important image, form, and metaphor in my work since the 1970s. In this painting the book of law is turned on its side and “justice bleeds out.” The painting was completed July 4th, 2018.

Peggy Phelan Palo Alto, CA Writer Response: In Mira Schor’s remarkable 2018 painting, Justice Bleeding Out, heavy black oil depicts the Book of Law lying on its side. As if punctured, the word Justice, washed in red, seeps out of the book and bleeds into the bottom of the painting’s support. Viewers must tilt their heads to grasp Schor’s urgent message: justice itself may soon be illegible, irretrievably lost. Justice Bleeding Out calls our attention to the new fragility of post-Enlightenment categories of human polity: liberty, justice, and human rights.

Amid the strange tilt-a-whirl of our current political scene, meaning itself is becoming untethered from the wisdom of the book. An homage to books both ancient and modern, sacred and secular, Justice Bleeding Out recognizes that the book helps keep truth vital. Functioning in the manner of an SOS, Schor’s painting depicts Justice as a body in danger of dying. The looping cursive of the word falling across the canvas calls to mind the emptying out of a box of cracker jacks, or the fading notes of a musical score.

The dramatic seeping away of justice is staged against the darkness of most of the canvas, begging us to attend to its faint, but still discernible, pulse.

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Mira Schor Justice Bleeding Out Oil, ink, and gesso on canvas. 18 x 24 x 1.5 inches. 2018 Courtesy of the Artist and Lyles & King Gallery

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Judy Shintani Half Moon Bay, CA Artist Statement: I am an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of culture and history through making installations and assemblages. Top of mind to me is how the past repeats itself. I am connected to a collective of those who have experienced trauma by being “the other” throughout history and into present time. My art making allows me to explore different shades of humanity, creating contemplative work for the public to experience, learn, and dialog about American history that is often not discussed.

This weathered American flag is created from remains of a dilapidated barrack, gathered with my father during a pilgrimage to the Tule Lake Segregation Camp. How did my grandparents and father and siblings survive imprisonment and then come out into a world that did not want them to move back to their home and livelihood in the Pacific Northwest?

As a descendant of an incarceree I was raised to not make waves, to be unseen, and a model American citizen who could never escape her appearance. It is my mission to illuminate this discrimination from 76 years ago and to see the parallels to what is happening today to Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, immigrants, and refugees in America.

Emily Sano San Antonio, TX Writer Response: Shintani’s flag of barbed wire and desiccated wood, made from scraps gathered at the former Tule Lake Internment Camp, reminds me of Poston, AZ, where my family was interned during WWII. The U.S. forcibly removed 160,000 people from their homes and property and confined them for several years in remote desolation. Yet, these JapaneseAmericans endured their losses by building community gardens, sports teams, scout troops and schools, and even sent volunteers to fight with American troops in Europe. Generations later, as the internees integrated back into society, America has recognized the internment was shameful and wrong.

This flag is more than a reminder of a tarnished historical event. In a climate of social division, intolerance, violence and hate, it warns us that the unthinkable can happen again. Will those who promote fair play, racial equality, free speech, and ethical behavior become a marginalized group for whom our symbol of national unity feels like iron barbs in their skin and dust in their mouths? Shintani’s flag protests those separatist leanings that undermine our sacred American values.

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Judy Shintani Pledge Allegiance Repurposed wood, barbed wire. 48 x 24 x 12 inches. 2014

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Sarupa Sidaarth Belvedere Tiburon, CA Artist Statement: Shh depicts freedom of expression inspired by but not necessarily about the Pussy Riot story, a Russian punk rock group that staged provocative guerrilla performances on the themes of feminism, LGBT rights and politics. Their unauthorized protests were filmed in public places and posted on the internet. They staged a protest performance in a cathedral that went viral and their subsequent arrests received global attention. Shh implies that free speech is a precursor to change.

Shannon Rose Riley Fremont, CA Writer Response: They poured into the city from all directions, by the tens of thousands—women of color, trans, straight, gay, genderqueer, and white women; women who’ve raised children, who are raising children, who’ve chosen abortion, and who want the right to choose; those wearing pink hats, wearing colored ski masks, wearing little more than their rage; those with FEMEN written across exposed breasts, with signs reading “Smash the Patriarchy” and “Audre Lorde was right,” with armbands all the Feminist Army and the Radical Lesbian Front; all of these and their allies came together for three days of rallies, action, and protest.

“By any means necessary,” Sister X challenged on the first day (a nod to her creative namesake and previous battles). Inspired, several waited each night in the alley behind the hotel; on the third night, the security team finally exited, slamming the door behind them. Laughing, three FEMEN rushed the group, their breasts a startling distraction in streetlight chiaroscuro. The one in the bright mask stepped up behind The Man— ”shh,” she whispered; she had already brought up the knife.

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Sarupa Sidaarth Shh Acrylic, googly eyes, eyelets on canvas. 24 x 24 x 1.5 inches. 2014

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Colette Standish Berkeley, CA Artist Statement: Homeless T-shirt is a response to both the homelessness epidemic and Airbnb epidemic that have infected our nation. For every new, potential Airbnb, housing complex that is being built, there is a new homeless encampment being built at the same time.

Natasha Boas Mill Valley, CA Writer Response: Standish’s resin-dipped AirBnB Homeless T-shirt sculpture reads as a concrete “street shirt” and is the artist’s response to the inter-connected homeless and Airbnb epidemics that she believes have infected our nation. Standish writes, “For every new, potential Airbnb, housing complex that is being built, there is a new homeless encampment being built at the same time.” Homeless T-shirt calls our attention to the hypocrisy and shortcomings of businesses that claim to uphold the utopian ideal of a “shared economy.”

The Real Sharing Economy—How You Can Help Bay Area Homeless: This list, compiled by curator Natasha Boas, is based on interviews with artists, colleagues, family and friends who are active in helping the homeless.

These are their favorite organizations and are not listed in any order.

Choose one. Volunteer or donate today. This list was inspired by Colette Standish’s “Homeless Project” https://www.colettestandish.com/newpage/). http://www.foodrunners.org http://sfmfoodbank.org http://www.childrenofshelters.org http://www.cots-homeless.org http://www.thelivingroomsc.org https://cccwinternights.org https://www.safetimehost.org http://www.thefoodprogram.org http://www.glide.org http://www.youthspiritartworks.org http://fescofamilyshelter.org http://dorothydayhouseberkeley.org http://www.ecs-sf.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html http://www.abodeservices.org http://www.apcollaborative.org http://www.ahoproject.org http://www.carethroughtouch.org/welcome http://www.northbeachcitizens.org/take-action https://sanfrancisco.backonmyfeet.org http://www.self-sufficiency.org http://www.chp-sf.org http://www.cep.ngo http://www.bayarearescue.org http://www.beyondemancipation.org

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http://www.bfhp.org http://thegubbioproject.org http://www.bfwc.org http://www.compass-sf.org www.catholiccharitiessf.org/get-involved http://www.cceb.org http://www.crisis-center.org http://www.charlottemaxwell.org http://www.cohsf.org http://www.canbinc.org http://cityteam.org http://covenanthousecalifornia.org http://www.ccinterfaithhousing.org http://www.edenir.org http://www.homefirstscc.org http://www.eastoaklandcollective.com http://www.dishsf.org http://www.homelessactioncenter.org http://www.curryseniorcenter.org http://www.wardrobe.org http://www.svcommunityservices.org http://www.svdp-sf.org http://stmaryscenter.org http://www.saysc.org

Colette Standish Homeless T-shirt T-shirt and iron hanger. 32 x 18 x 1 inches. 2017

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Samanta Tello San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: For far too long, women have been silenced by patriarchal societies in most, if not all, cultures. At times, this silencing has been done violently, yet sometimes it has been done in a gentle, subtle, even playful way. Women still speak, but often our voices are ignored, belittled, interrupted or shouted down.

With the interracial communication between female figures in my work, I seek to represent the power of unity of action that gives all women a unified voice—how one woman’s voice can spark a chorus of women’s voices and create a cultural shift, how sharing their stories can make them feel supported and able to find the strength to advocate for themselves.

I think it is essential for us women to maintain our courage and persistence, continually claiming our time and our turn, and support each other while doing so. I believe one of the ways the male establishment keeps its power is by promoting female competition. In this work, I represent women interconnected as if they were part of a puzzle, with each piece, each woman, each culture, a proud part of a whole that would be incomplete if even one were left behind.

Anna Mantzaris San Francisco, CA Writer Response: What We Know About Trees What We Know About Women They come in different shapes and sizes They provide shelter They give food They make oxygen They come from the earth They are showered by the stars They grow tall under the moon They prevent floods and droughts They keep landslides from happening They buffer noise They form alliances We are survivors

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Samanta Tello Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes Burnt wood, gold/silver foil, stains and acrylic on wood panel. 36 x 36 x 1.5 inches. 2016

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Sandra Yagi San Francisco, CA Artist Statement: The tampered election resulting in the rise of the Trump Administration will result in the degradation of the environment, rising seas, volatile weather patterns, unfair income distribution, and destabilization of foreign relations. I was inspired by the dark imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, and portrayed Mike Pence being punished in Hell, floating on a croc shoe boat, surrounded by burning oil rigs and mutant creatures. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but I sincerely hope that those in this administration pay their dues for the corruption and hypocrisy. Preferably in an orange jumpsuit.

Karen Crews Hendon Long Beach, CA Writer Response: Between Fire and Water: Hindsight is 20/20 Client: Thanks for meeting me.

Shaman: Always. How’s everything?

C: Well you know…one foot in front of the other. We’re all in it together, but there is no together. I never foresaw any of this.

S: A perfect storm.

C: It’s chaos! We wanted deconstruction, not destruction…we let in the grandmaster himself. No wonder people act the way they do, they’re given permission to act on the greed, intolerance, racism, and recklessness. Doesn’t it seem that everything is upside down? People are being pulled apart!

S: Koyaanisqatsi. Hopi. Upside-down world. Yep, it’s real, there’s a movie too.

C: This seems like poison, not a remedy.

S: It’s medicine for sure, served-up like a boar’s head with a toupee on a platter. We created it. It’s taken thousands of years to feed the darkest of wounds.

C: So everything is going to hell…

S: Hardly. It’s a time of both upheaval and renewal. Pachakuti. Hell is only a fear that exists inside us. This is the rising and birthing of balance itself. May she ride her dragon over the waters.

C: No consequences for them?

S: Of course…as within, so without. It’s their soul’s journey, not yours. I’ll see them soon.

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Sandra Yagi The Boat Oil on panel. 9 x 12 inches. 2018 Courtesy of Bert Green Fine Art, Chicago IL 113

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Amy Ahlstrom, Artist San Mateo, CA www.amyahlstrom.com Amy Ahlstrom is a quilter creating modern pop art. Ahlstrom holds a Master of Fine Arts in Fiber from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ahlstrom has quilts in the permanent collections of Google, Capital One and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and has exhibited at the Sylvia White Gallery, Modern Eden, Pro Arts, Root Division and the StARTup Art Fair. Ahlstrom has been nominated for the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art and for the Fleishhacker Foundation 2017-2019 Eureka Fellowship. In 2016, she was the inaugural artist for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Artist In Residency (AIR) program. Ahlstrom co-chairs the ArtSpan Open Studios Committee and is a member of the Exhibitions Committee for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.

Melinda Alexander, Writer Los Angeles, CA www.melinda-alexander.com Melinda Alexander does “women’s work”. She is both a student and a teacher. Having studied art, education, and social justice at UCLA (B.A.) and NYU (M.A.), everything she says she really knows she learned from experience. A child of political activists, a woman who has dealt with a marriage that ended in abuse, divorce, single motherhood, self-employment, a shit load of healing, and trying again in love—she’s learned a few things about hope and resilience. She shares her journey to get free with women all over the world—in person and online through workshops, consulting, long posts on Instagram, as well as through her new book, Getting Free; A Love Story. She speaks on topics like: Body Image, Style, Spirituality, Feminism, Anti-Racist Engagement, Social Media, Self Development, Motherhood, Recovering from Abuse, Healthy Relationships, Art and Social Justice. She lives in Los Angeles with her artist son and dharma partner and she also has a cute creative and healing space for artist activation called Midcity Magic.

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Lauren Araiza, Writer Granville, OH Lauren Araiza is an associate professor of History at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She earned her PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley. Her teaching and scholarship focus on African American history, social justice movements, cross-racial coalition -building, and U.S. race relations. She is the author of To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

Salma Arastu, Artist Berkeley, CA www.salmaarastu.com A native of Rajasthan, Berkeley-based artist Salma Arastu has been creating and exhibiting her paintings internationally since the 1980s and her art works, whether paintings, sculptures or poetry speak of human universality. Her art form and techniques are greatly inter-woven with Arabic Calligraphy, Miniature Arts and Folk patterns, her major influences through her travels. Born into the Hindu tradition in her native India, and embracing Islam later on, she has enjoyed the beauty of these two distinctive traditions first hand. At birth, she was given the life-defining challenge of a left hand without fingers. She has exhibited widely in more than 40 solo shows nationally and internationally, won several awards including East Bay Community’s fund for artists in 2012 and 2014, City of Berkeley’s Individual Artist grant award in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Three of her works are in public places and she has published five books of her poems and paintings.

Chimine Arfuso, Writer Clovis, CA www.chiminenicole.com Chimine Arfuso (she/her) is a single mama of boy/girl twins, Cubana, PhD researcher, breastfeeding advocate, zumba instructor, soon to be doula, tarot reading, social justice fighting, non-black woman of color feminist, decolonial research methodologist, and passionately pursuing the dissemination of knowledge such that women can make empowered choices about their bodies, babies, sexuality, and spirituality. xxx

Micah Bazant, Artist Berkeley, CA www.micahbazant.com Micah Bazant is a visual artist who works with social justice movements to make change look irresistible. They are a white, trans, Jewish, anti-zionist artist living in the Bay Area and are currently Artist In Residence at the organization, Forward Together.

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Natasha Boas, Writer Mill Valley, CA https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/publications/baya-woman-algiers Natasha Boas Ph.D. is a French-American contemporary art curator, writer, and critic who was raised in San Francisco. Her 2018 exhibition, Baya: Woman of Algiers, at the Grey Art Gallery, NYU garnered important international critical attention. In 2017 she was featured in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Vertighost commissioned for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and playing the role of herself, an art historian. The same year, she authored the Facebook Artist in Residence book on the recent history of Art and Tech in the Bay Area for the 5th anniversary of Facebook’s artist in residency program (FBAIR). Natasha Boas is an expert in the art of California countercultures, Modernist avant-gardes, and the San Francisco Mission School. Throughout her 25-year career, she has been involved in exhibitions internationally at museums and galleries including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Yale Art Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of Marseilles, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She teaches Thinking through Art and Design at Berkeley at UC Berkeley and curatorial practice at the California School of the Arts. …….

Lorraine Bonner, Artist and Writer Oakland, CA www.lorrainebonner.com Lorraine Bonner was born in New York and escaped to California in 1970. She practiced medicine for 35 years, sculpture for 25 years, and writing for as long as she can remember. Traumatized in her childhood, she is amazed that she has lived as long as she has, and might have flossed more vigorously had she known this would happen. She lives in Oakland, close to her children and grand-children.

Maria Elena Buszek, Writer Denver, CO www.mariabuszek.com Maria Elena Buszek is associate professor of art history at the University of Colorado, Denver, where she teaches courses on Modern and contemporary art. Her recent publications include the books Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2006) and Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Duke, 2011); contributions to the exhibition catalogues Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia, and In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States; and articles in Art Journal and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. Dr. Buszek has been a regular contributor to the popular feminist magazine Bust since 1999, and, with Kirsty Robertson, recently edited a special issue of Utopian Studies on the subject of “craftivism.” Her current book project explores the ties between feminist art and popular music since 1977.

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Sandra Butler, Writer Emeryville, CA www.sandrabutler.net Sandra Butler is a writer and activist living in the Bay Area. She is the author of Conspiracy of Silence, The Trauma of Incest. Cancer in Two Voices, coauthored with Barbara Rosenblum, was the winner of the 1991 Lambda Literary Award. Butler’s recently published third book is: It Never Ends: Mothering Middle-Aged Daughters. The through line that has informed her vision as both a writer and an activist, centers around the need for breaking silence, to name that which is still unspoken, and to move issues relevant to women and girls still in the shadows into the public world. Conspiracy of Silence gave voice to the incestuous abuse of girls in 1979, Cancer in Two Voices spoke frankly about how a lesbian couple navigates the death of a partner in 1991, and It Never Ends is designed to illuminate the first-person experience of aging mothers, and the challenges and adaptations that have emerged over the lifespan of the relationship.

Della Calfee, Artist Houston, TX www.DellaCalfee.com Artist Della Calfee uses photography to explore form, light, and color in combination with emotional or evocative content often using figures and landscapes. She was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Palo Alto, California. Della has been showing work in San Francisco and Bay Area galleries since 2008, receiving several awards. She is active in local efforts to provide more showing opportunities for local artists. Della currently lives and works in Houston, Texas.

Indira Cesarine, Artist New York, NY www.indiracesarine.com Indira Cesarine is a multimedia artist who works with photography, video, painting, printmaking and sculpture. A graduate of Columbia University with a triple major in Art History, French, and Women’s Studies, she additionally studied art and photography at Parson’s School of Design, International Center of Photography, School of Visual Arts, The Art Students League and the New York Academy of Art. Cesarine had her first solo show at the age of sixteen at Paul Mellon Arts Center. Her work as an artist has been featured internationally at many art galleries, museums and festivals, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mattatuck Museum, CICA Museum, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Getty Images Gallery, French Embassy Cultural Center, Art Basel Miami, Cannes Film Festival and the International Festival Photo Mode to name a few.

In 2014, her public art sculpture, The Egg of Light was exhibited at Rockefeller Center as part of the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt. Her work was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York for the annual Take Home A Nude art benefits in 2017 and 2018, and was featured at SCOPE Art Basel (Switzerland) in 2018.

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Lenore Chinn, Artist San Francisco, CA www.lenorechinn.com Lenore Chinn, a native San Franciscan who graduated from San Francisco State College with a B.A. in Sociology, is a painter, photographer, and cultural activist who works to create structures of personal and institutional support that will both sustain critical artistic production and advance movements for social justice. Her current street photography chronicles a rapidly changing socio-political landscape. She was an original member of Lesbians in the Visual Arts, is a co-founder of the Queer Cultural Center and has been active in the Asian American Women Artists Association since the group was founded. From 1988 to 1992 she served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

Sandra Cisneros, Writer Shohola, PA www.sandracisneros.com Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, several honorary doctorates and national and international book awards, including Chicago’s Fifth Star Award, the PEN Center USA Literary Award, and the National Medal of the Arts awarded to her by President Obama in 2016. Most recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship and in 2019 will receive the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. Her classic, coming -of-age novel, The House on Mango Street, has sold over six million copies, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two non -profits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. She is also the organizer of Los MacArturos, Latino MacArthur fellows who are community activists. Her literary papers are preserved in Texas at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. Sandra Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and earns her living by her pen. She currently lives in San Miguel de Allende.

Meriwether Clarke, Writer Los Angeles, CA www.meriwetherclarke.com Meriwether Clarke is a poet, essayist, and educator living in Los Angeles. She holds degrees in Poetry from Northwestern University and UC Irvine’s Programs in Writing, where she was the Poetry Editor of Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters. Recent work can be seen in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Gigantic Sequins, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, Juked, The Superstition Review, Memorious, Prelude, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, twenty-first century woman, was recently released by Dancing Girl Press.

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Daniel Coleman Chavez, Writer Greensboro, NC www.danielbcoleman.com Daniel B. Coleman (he/they) lives a life-project centered life that decompartmentalizes his work as an artist, scholar, and organizer between the U.S. South (NC) and the Mexican South (Chiapas). Each of these elements is an integral part of who he is in the world.

Daniel is an Assistant Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC Greensboro, a performance artist and choreographer and a transfeminist and abolitionist organizer. As an artist, Daniel has taught and performed throughout México, the U.S. and Canada, as well as in Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Poland, and Estonia.

Parker Day, Artist Los Angeles, CA www.parkerdayphotography.com Parker Day was born in San Jose, California in 1984. She studied photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco from 2002 until 2005. Day has exhibited in the US and abroad including solo shows at Superchief Gallery in both Los Angeles and New York, and Peyer Fine Art in Zurich, Switzerland. Group shows include the FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, Spring/Break Art Show in New York, and the Juxtapoz Clubhouse in Miami.

Her work has been featured in Vogue Italia, Juxtapoz, Vice, i-D, Paper, and Dazed, among others. Not a Cult published her monograph ICONS, now in its second printing. Her next monograph, Possession, also published by Not a Cult, will be released in November, 2018.

Parker Day lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Burcu Döleneken, Writer San Francisco, CA Burcu received her BA in Sociology from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Turkey.

Throughout her studies she was an active member of the Women’s Research Student Association, and feminist circles in Istanbul. She wrote her graduation thesis on Contemporary Istanbul: Art Fairs from the Perspective of Globalization and Financialization. After graduation, she was involved in civil rights projects as an editor, researcher, administrative assistant and manager. Before moving San Francisco to seek a masters degree in the Humanities, she worked at RUSIHAK, the only rights-based advocacy NGO promoting the human rights of the people with disabilities, with a special focus on the people with mental and intellectual disabilities in Turkey. There, she was part of different projects, of which two focused on Article 12—equal recognition before the law, and Article 24—inclusive education based on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Her field of interest is, in a broad sense, the discourses of decolonization, intersectional feminism, and anti-capitalist critiques. In her studies she intersects contemporary politics, and political movements with the perspective of art as a space of discourse, an intervention, and resistance. Besides her academic field, she feels dedicated to animal liberation and environmental issues.

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Sally Edelstein, Writer South Huntington, NY www.sallyedelsteincollage.com Sally Edelstein is an award-winning collage artist and writer whose work has focused on examining social fiction, deconstructing the cultural clutter of mid-century America through the lens of feminism and social justice. Her blog Envisioning the American Dream is a series of social commentaries that serves up mid-century culture with a twist of today as assumptions are shaken and stirred. Nationally exhibited, Edelstein’s colorful, densely rich collages are a smorgasbord of pop culture stereotypes from mid-century America that were offered by an often fragmented media consumed with clichés and fictions. Her collages are composed of hundreds of appropriated images from sources as varied as vintage advertising, schoolbooks, illustrations, and each piece is painstakingly done by hand. Her upcoming book Defrosting the Cold War: Fallout From My Nuclear Family is a memoir of how she learned to navigate the tangled, doublespeak, duck and cover, cold war culture of her mid-century suburban childhood. Layering memory, nostalgia, humor, and history, her work is a cultural snapshot of a time and place but like a posed Kodacolor print, it is not as it appears.

Audrey Ferber, Writer San Francisco, CA Audrey Ferber is a San Francisco writer thinking and writing about aging, body image, care-giving, dance, food, sex and clothes. She still misses her native New York but is astounded almost daily by the beauty of San Francisco and her husband, Jerry.

Her work has appeared in LILITH, MORE, the Cimarron Review, Fiction International, various anthologies and elsewhere. She teaches at City College of San Francisco and is a member of the Writer’s Grotto.

Justyne Fischer, Artist Washington, DC www.justynefischer.com Justyne Fischer is an award-winning printmaker whose work focuses on Social Memorials.

Whether exhibiting her work locally or nationally, Fischer spreads her message of social justice through features in The Washington Post, East City Art, Artscope Magazine, Professional Artist Magazine, Wall Street International Magazine, The Huffington Post, and The Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. Fischer has served as a visiting artist at Drexel University, Michaelis School of Fine Art University of Cape Town, South Africa and the Fine Art Department of the University of Maryland. Fischer maintains a printmaking studio at Blue Studios Art Underground in Arlington, Virginia and has worked as a printmaker and art educator in the Washington, D.C. area since 1996. She earned her BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Her works are featured in numerous private and public collections including the Boston Public Library, Montgomery College, D. Watkins, Detroit Public Library, Montgomery College, Florida A&M University, Tulane University, and The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

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Rebecca Morgan Frank, Writer Naperville, IL www.rebeccamorganfrank.com Rebecca Morgan Frank is the author of three collections of poems: Sometimes We’re All Living in a Foreign Country; The Spokes of Venus; and Little Murders Everywhere, a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Guernica and elsewhere. Her collaborations with composers have been performed across the country. Co-founder and editor of the literary magazine Memorious.org, she is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University in Spring 2019.

Thaisa Frank, Writer Oakland, CA www.thaisafrank.com Thaisa Frank’s fourth book of short stories Enchantment (Counterpoint 2012) was among “Best Books” by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel Heidegger’s Glasses (Counterpoint, 2011) was translated into 10 languages. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and recently was anthologized in New Micro (Norton 2018) and new work in Bloomsbury (2019). She’s a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto.

Linda Friedman Schmidt, Artist Franklin Lakes, NJ www.lindafriedmanschmidt.com Linda Friedman Schmidt is a self-taught artist known for her emotional narrative portraits created from discarded clothing. She was born stateless in a German displaced persons camp, the first child of Holocaust survivors. Family history and personal experience intertwine with today’s social and political issues in her genre-defying conceptual artwork. Her work is an impassioned visual response to intolerance, racism, inequality, violence, discrimination, and the trauma of life. She shines a light on what unites and separates us in hopes of inspiring a more united and empathetic world. Museums that have exhibited her work include the American Folk Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Morris Museum, Jersey City Museum, New Jersey State Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Monmouth Museum, Attleboro Art Museum, Alexandria Museum of Art, Koehnline Museum of Art, Loveland Museum, Cahoon Museum of American Art. She is the subject of a 2018 mini documentary directed by Rémy and Kelsey Bennett, produced by The FRONT media titled Under Her Skin. http://www.thefront.com/watch/under-her-skin-lindafriedman/

Sharon Gelman, Writer Potomac , MD Sharon Gelman is a writer, editor, media producer, human rights advocate, and rabble rouser, who believes in the power of art to influence and create social change. She put this belief into practice as the longtime executive director of Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA) and as director of human rights programs for the Hollywood Policy Center. While at ANSA, Gelman conceived of and xxxxxx 123

produced award-winning audiobook Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales, directed by Alfre Woodard and featuring 26 noted, diverse voices including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren, Benjamin Bratt, Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Rickman, Don Cheadle, Charlize Theron, Sophie Okonedo, Scarlett Johansson, LeVar Burton, and Matt Damon, among others, which raises money for children in South Africa impacted or orphaned by AIDS. Gelman, a lifelong feminist, was the US editor of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World, a nonfiction book published internationally in 2017, which allowed her the opportunity to interview Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Roxane Gay, Isabel Allende, and Margaret Atwood and other remarkable women. A recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Gelman is at work on her first novel.

Erica Goss, Writer Eugene, OR www.ericagoss.com Erica Goss served as poet laureate of Los Gatos, CA, from 2013-2016. Her poetry collection Night Court won the 2016 Lyrebird Award and was published in 2017. In 2011, she won the Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2010, 2013 and 2017, and for Best of the Net in 2016 and 2017. She is the founder of Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest, www.digitalstorytellingpnw.com and co-founder of Media Poetry Studio, a poetry-andfilm camp for teen girls, www.mediapoetrystudio.com. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Her poems, articles and reviews have appeared and are forthcoming in many journals, including Contrary, Tinderbox, The Lishman Review, Connotation Press, Hotel Amerika, Pearl, Passager, Consequence, Spillway, Whale Road, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Eclectica, Blood Lotus, Wild Violet, The Bohemian, Cafe Review, Zoland Poetry, Comstock Review, Lake Effect, and Perigee.

Karen Gutfreund, Artist and Curator Saratoga, CA www.KarenGutfreund.com Karen Gutfreund is an activist artist incorporating a combination of personal commentary, political outrage, moral teachings, and social observation in text-based, mixed-media paintings. As a curator, she creates exhibitions with the motto “changing the world through art,” working to stimulate dialogue, raise consciousness and create social change. Actively promoting the work of activist and feminist artists with national touring exhibitions, she has produced over thirty-five to date and is writing a book on DIY Exhibitions. Gutfreund has worked in the Painting & Sculpture Department for MoMA, the Andre Emmerick Gallery, The Knoll Group, the John Berggruen Gallery, the Pacific Art League and the Curtis Charitable Trust. With degrees in Fine Arts and Art History from the University of Georgia and MA (pending) from NYU, she is also a consultant for private and corporate collections.

Gutfreund is currently the Exhibition Chair for NCWCA and is a member of ArtTable, TFAP and on the boards of numerous art organizations. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, but having lived in all four corners of the country, she currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Kelly Hammargren, Artist Berkeley, CA www.hankkellyartists.com Kelly Hammargren lives in Berkeley—a city that once was the “liberal” beacon and is now caught in gentrification. Kelly’s art is an extension of her community activism. Politics are the source of constant creative stimulus with social justice and the environment never far behind. As an issue driven artist, her work parallels current events or reflects political climate. Kelly’s activism spills over to the medium she chooses and explores mediums that are compatible with her desire to avoid adding toxicity to the environment. She pursues reuse and often incorporates found objects in her art with mixed media as the common description. Her work is more commonly found supporting a cause than in exhibitions.

Trudi C. Hauptman, Artist Sebastopol, CA www.hangingbyathread.wordpress.com Trudi C. Hauptman was born in Brooklyn, NY, to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants who began their experience in the sweatshops. Trudi spent 7 years as a medical caseworker in New York City hospitals, including Bellevue Hospital. In the 1970s, she began a search for selffulfillment that saw her experiment with positions as a professional baker, deli manager and artist. Her move to California began a 25-year career in nonprofits. Trudi has been involved with fiber crafts and wearable art all her life. She learned to crochet and knit at age 6 and soon began to sewing her own clothing. As a teen, she taught herself needlepoint and embroidery. Although raised as a secular Jew, she became part of the lay leadership of a progressive synagogue, which soon led to a business creating Judaic ritual items. In the last few years she has used these skills to express her vision of a feminist Judaism and Art as Activism artist.

Karen Crews Hendon, Writer Long Beach, CA www.karencrewshendon.com Karen Crews Hendon is currently the Interim Director of the Nicholas and Lee Begovich Gallery at California State University, Fullerton, where she also teaches Exhibition Design and Museum Studies. She has held numerous curatorial positions in California, most recently as Curatorial Advisor for the MAW Collection of Latin American Art, and Chief Curator at the Monterey Museum of Art. Hendon is committed to providing transformative experiences that impact community through art. She believes art is our primal language and must be accessible, beyond the confines of designated spaces, to transform lives, ignites ideas, and inspire a balanced and restorative future.

Ester Hernandez, Artist San Francisco, CA www.esterhernandez.com Ester Hernandez was born in California’s San Joaquin Valley to a Mexican/ Yaqui farm worker family. The UC Berkeley graduate is an internationally acclaimed San Francisco-based visual artist. She is best known for her xxxxxxxx 125

depiction of Latina/Native women through her pastels, prints and installations. Her work reflects social, political, ecological and spiritual themes. Hernandez has had numerous national and international solo and group shows.

Among others, her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Museum of American Art/ Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Legion of Honor, San Francisco; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago; Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Mexico City; Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her artistic and personal archives are housed at Stanford University.

Nancy Hom, Artist San Francisco, CA www.nancyhomarts.com

Nancy Hom is an artist, writer, curator and consultant. Born in Toisan, China and raised in New York City, she has been an influential leader in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene since 1974. Over the years, she has created many iconic images for community cultural events as well as political and social causes. Through her posters, poetry, illustrations, installations, and curatorial work, Nancy has used the arts to affirm the histories, struggles, and contributions of communities of color. Since 2012, her large floor mandalas have evolved from personal expressions to educational stories and spiritual contemplations that involve direct community input. As a vehicle for healing, they offer reflections on change, interdependence, and common purpose. In addition to pushing artistic boundaries, Nancy has also nurtured the creative and organizational growth of over a dozen Bay Area arts organizations. In her long involvement with Kearny Street Workshop, an Asian American arts organization, Nancy served as its Executive Director from 1995 to 2003. She is a Gerbode Fellow (1998) and KQED Local Hero (2003), as well as a grant recipient. Her recent awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant (2012) and the San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award (2013).

Yetta Howard, Writer San Diego, CA www.yettahoward.com Yetta Howard is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Codirector of the LGBTQ Research Consortium at San Diego State University. Howard is the author of Ugly Differences: Queer Female Sexuality in the Underground (University of Illinois Press, 2018) and is editing a photography, archival materials, and essay collection, Rated RX: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (under contract, Ohio State University Press) in collaboration with ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

Judy Johnson-Williams, Artist Atascadero, CA www.judyjohnson-williams.com I am an artist exploring line, sometimes in the abstract, and sometimes figurative. It is the expressiveness and adaptability of line to many forms that is interesting. The subject of my work is our roles and how we fill them, our roles as parents, as women, as partners. All of us fill multiple roles and I like to explore the slippage xxxxxx 126

between them. Our roles are part of our identity and they are formed in relationship with other people, mother and daughter, man and woman, always at least paired. I am interested especially when there is conflict between what is good for us and what is good for the other or when there is conflict between roles: I am a daughter to my mother, but a mother to my daughter. Since all of us are subject to various roles it is fertile territory for public art. My art, though not bland or easy, is nevertheless quite approachable because I’m not preaching a distinct one-size-fits-all conclusion but leading the viewer to active participation in examining their own roles and attitudes towards them or to provoke insight into other views.

Kay Kang, Artist San Francisco, CA www.kaykangart.com The main theme in my art is alienation and assimilation of the immigrant in a foreign culture. As a Korean woman in the United States, I have confronted the challenges associated with race, language and geography that most immigrants encounter. But what has shaped my perspectives even more is my struggle with the cultural conflict that exists for women born in Asian cultures who must learn to cope with a new startling social model in the West. This struggle is a consistent undercurrent throughout my work.

Many of my pieces use calligraphic–and at times unintelligible—characters to convey both the frustration of incomprehension and the beauty and universality of understanding. The words should resonate on a very subtle and deeply personal level. My intention is to use power of the art to soothe the mind. Recently I was one of seven artists in the exhibition, In-Between Places: Korean American Artists in the Bay Area. The artists featured in In-Between Places reveal the reality and complexities of being a Korean American artist in the Bay Area—a location that has served as a gateway for Korean culture and a bridge between Korea and the West. In-Between Places acknowledges the infinitely evolving and nuanced ways Korean-Americans interpret and express history, culture, and art. Reflecting on the relationship of Korean-American artists to art making in the Bay Area, the exhibition offers fresh considerations on the intricacies of cultural identity.

Likisha Griffin, writer Atlanta, GA www.LGriffinCreative.com Likisha “Kiche” Griffin is a Creative Producer and Consultant specializing in brand development for art professionals and independent filmmakers. Griffin has worked with award-winning visual producer Sheila Pree Bright on branding strategies for #1960Now digital campaigns. She is Co-Producer of Bright’s art film #1960Now: Art + Intersections and an essay contributor to #1960Now, the book, published by Chronicle Books. Griffin also has worked with museums and art organizations. She is an essay contributor to Prospect 4 New Orleans, a citywide triennial of contemporary art curated by Artistic Director Trevor Schoonmaker. Her contribution to the exhibition catalogue honors the legacy work of MacArthur Fellow John T. Scott. During her tenure at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum (Smithsonian Affiliate)—she was Community Engagement Curator of Devin Allen: Awakenings in a New Lights. She was also the curatorial assistant of Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965): Revelations of African American Life in Maryland and the World, curated by Art Historian Barbara Paca, Ph.D. The exhibition was sponsored by Brown Capital Management and featured on ancestry.com.

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Jennifer Kim Sohn, Artist Sacramento, CA www.JenniferKimSohn.com I discovered fiber art late in my artistic career, having experienced roles of a mom, a wife and a foreigner in a new world. In my last year of high school, I found myself adopting a new American identity, which was a seismic shift for me. Two decades later, in the midst of raising three boys, I still stumbled navigating the maze of American culture, still with the uncompromising and competitive mindset Korean culture instilled in me. This is when I discovered fiber sculpture class with Carole Beadle that introduced a medium which resonated with me, so much so that rather than resuming my career as a designer, I found myself taking a meditative journey of working in fiber. This opened up not just a new art medium but a new way to approach life: to engage in life as a player, not just a director. Soon I started making art that tells stories. My personal fables of motherhood and being a Korean-American soon shifted as my concerns grew to encompass what type of world I was leaving for my boys to live in. Now my work addresses the environmental challenges we face and voices social issues that affect and will continue affecting all of us.

Susan Kirschbaum, Writer New York, NY Susan Kirschbaum is an author; poet; and former journalist whose articles have been published in myriad publications including the New York Times. Her debut satirical novel Who Town—about five ‘it kids’/media darlings—has become a local cult hit. She is now developing it for television. Kirschbaum has hosted and curated story-telling salons. She was selected to perform her poetry in a program called The Poetry Experiment: the Future is Female at La Mama Theatre in 2017.

Kate Kretz, Artist Silver Spring, MD www.katekretz.com

Kate Kretz earned a Cours De La Civilisation Francaise certificate at The Sorbonne, and a BFA at SUNY Binghamton, garnering the SUNY Foundation Award for Excellence in the Fine Arts, Harpur College Departmental Honors in Art, and Harpur College Academic Honors. She earned her MFA from the University of Georgia with a university wide assistantship. Exhibitions include the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, Van Gijn Museum in The Netherlands, Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin, Wignall Museum, Katonah Museum, Frost Museum, Fort Collins MOCA, San Jose Museum of Textiles, Racine Museum of Art, Telfair Museum, Fort Lauderdale Museum, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Museo Medici in Italy. She has received the NC Arts Council Grant, The South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, Florida Visual Arts Fellowship, and a Millay Colony Residency. She recently received the SECAC award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, and is on the Fulbright Specialist Roster until 2021. After working as an Associate Professor and BFA Director at Florida International University for ten years, she relocated to the Washington, DC, area. Kretz currently works in her studio while teaching part-time, giving workshops and lectures at various universities. She is a frequent contributor to Hyperallergic magazine.

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Petra Kuppers, Writer Ypsilanti, MI www.olimpias.org Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community performance artist, and a Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also teaches on the LowResidency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College, is the Artistic Director of an international disability performance collective, The Olimpias, and has led horror and dark fantasy writing circles in Wales and the US since the 1990s. Petra uses somatic and speculative writing as well as performance practice to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. She has written academic books on disability arts and culture, medicine and performance, and community performance. Her most recent poetry collection is PearlStitch (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016) and the chapbook Green Orion Woman (dancing girl, 2018). Her book of speculative short stories, Ice Bar, appeared in 2018. She lives with her partner, poet and dancer Stephanie Heit, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where they co-create Turtle Disco, a community arts space.‌‌...

Karen LeCocq, Artist Mariposa, CA www.karenlecocq.com 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, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has gained international recognition through its use in the Absolut Vodka Signature Artist campaign. Her work has been pictured in numerous publications, among them: Art In America, Art News, Artforum, Art and Antiques, Manhatten 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.

Berette Macaulay, Writer Everett, WA www.BeretteMacaulay.com Berette Macaulay is an artist, scholar, and writer who produces contemplative, investigative, and responsive work as cultural inquiry and criticism in prose, poetry, and in photo-based projects. Her research interests are in community (in)visibility, social justice activism, and global black memory and empowerment, often borne of her own transcultural auto-biographical histories. Berette is troubled by social labels and normalized definitions of class, gender, identity, mythology, love, race, spirituality, technology, and any form of misrepresentation, abuse of power, or privileging that happens within these social systems. Her work has been exhibited and published within the US and abroad. She is currently pursuing her MA at University of Washington.

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Anna Mantzaris, Writer San Francisco, CA www.annamantzaris.net Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in outlets including Salon.com, NPR and The San Francisco Chronicle. She has been awarded residencies for her writing by Hedgebrook and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.

Kristine Mays, Artist San Francisco, CA www.kristinemays.com Kristine Mays, a San Francisco native, has been an exhibiting artist since 1993. Her work has been shown within the San Francisco Bay Area as well as nationally, receiving local and national press. Mays has exhibited at Art Basel Miami and presented a solo exhibition at the Scope NYC Art Fair as well. She has created public art for the Hearts in San Francisco program, worked with the San Francisco Art Commission’s Art in Storefronts pilot program, and served as the artist-in-residence at the Bayview Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco. She is a participant in the San Francisco Open Studios program for over 20 years. Kristine has participated in programming at the De Young Museum, Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) and exhibited at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles. Using her work to for social change she has participated in raising thousands of dollars for AIDS research through the sale of her work. Her work is displayed in many Bay Area homes and private collections throughout the USA. Her eclectic mix of collectors include Star Wars creator George Lucas and the dearly departed Peggy Cooper Cafritz.

Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, Artist Farmington, NM www.rosemarymeza.com

Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, a Farmington, New Mexico-based Latina artist, is known for exploring gender, sexuality, and identity issues through hand-sewn human hair drawings, watercolors and on-site drawing installations. She received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA from The University of North Texas. She has been sewing with her own hair since 2000. Her decision to collect and sort hair to utilize as a vehicle for making art is informed by socio-cultural symbolism, feminism, body image, and religious symbolism. An article on her hand-sewn human hair drawings was featured in the Huffington Post Arts & Culture section in 2015. MezaDesPlas’ most recent drawings incorporate her gray hair. Ms. Meza-DesPlas parallels the themes in her artwork with the written word and spoken word performances. In 2018, she presented the academic paper Reclaiming the Tool of Anger: Year of the Angry Women at the 9th International Conference of the Image in Hong Kong. Ms. Meza-DesPlas’ recent spoken word performances were at the Feminist Art Conference, Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Canada, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM, ARC Gallery in Chicago, IL and the Durango Arts Center in Durango, CO. 130

Khadijah O. Miller, Writer Chesapeake, VA Khadijah O. Miller is a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Chair of the Department of History and Interdisciplinary Studies at Norfolk State University, a HBCU located in Virginia. Her research areas include Black Women’s 19th and 20th century history in the U.S. and across the Diaspora. Her recent publications include a co-authored chapter on Michelle Obama and Respectability Politics. She teaches a course, The Black Woman at NSU which highlights, validates and chronicles the interdisciplinarity of Black women’s lives. She is the VP of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies and serves on a plethora of committees and taskforces at NSU, among which she chairs programming for the University’s Black History and Women’s History months committee, which she enjoys meshing academics with programming outside of the classroom. She is a mother of two daughters who bring her and her husband joy.

Tyler Mills, Writer Santa Fe, NM www.tylermills.com Tyler Mills is the author of two books of poems, Hawk Parable (winner of the 2017 Akron Poetry Prize) and Tongue Lyre (winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Poetry, and her essays have appeared in AGNI, Copper Nickel, and The Rumpus. The recipient of residencies from Yaddo, Ragdale, and the Vermont Studio Center, and scholarships/fellowships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee, the Chicago native is an assistant professor at New Mexico Highlands University, editor-in-chief of The Account, and a resident of Santa Fe, NM.

Janice Mirikitani, Writer San Francisco, CA www.Glide.org With her parents, Mirikitani was incarcerated in an Arkansas concentration camp with the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Mirikitani is San Francisco’s second Poet Laureate, appointed in 2000. She has authored five books of poetry and is the editor of nine landmark anthologies for writers of color, women, youth and children. Mirikitani has also worked in civil rights causes for various multi ethnic communities, including the struggle for redress for Japanese-Americans incarcerated during WWII. Mirikitani is Co-Founder of the Glide Foundation where she, in partnership with her husband, Reverend Cecil Williams, for the past 50 plus years have achieved worldwide recognition for their ground-breaking organization which empowers San Francisco’s poor and marginalized communities to make meaningful changes in their lives to break the cycle of poverty and dependence.

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Geri Montano, Artist San Francisco, CA www.gerimontano.com Geri Montano was born in Colorado. She is a multiracial contemporary artist emphasizing her Native American heritage; Dineh (Navajo) from her fathers lineage, French, Spanish and Comanche from her mothers. Montano received her formal art education from the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating with a BFA in interdisciplinary arts including drawing, painting and sculpture. Montano has a strong interest in working with under-represented members of her community. She is currently a visual art instructor for developmentally disabled adults. Her work has been exhibited at Crocker Art Museum, Galeria de la Raza, MACLA San Jose, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Incline Gallery, Humboldt State University Goudi’ni Gallery, San Francisco State University, Luggage Store Gallery, and University of San Francisco Thacher Gallery. Montano’s work is inspired by personal experiences relating to cultural or feminist themes. Her work juxtaposes aesthetic qualities with subversive imagery; combining aesthetic, thematic and technical skills, Montano impresses emotional and powerful ideas on the viewer; never shying away from controversial or taboo subjects. .

Patricia A. Montgomery, Artist Oakland, CA www.DragonArtPlace.com Patricia A. Montgomery is a textile and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on African American historical and mythical stories. Her research into her rich African American past feeds her stories. Modified traditional quilting pattern, bright West African fabrics, Batiks are her canvas and all kinds of threads are her paints. Mixed together she creates textile paintings rich in color and texture that celebrates the rhythms of life. Montgomery was acknowledged by the Alliance for California Traditional Art’s Apprenticeship Program as a Master Quilting Artist. In 2013, she was awarded the Creative Work Fund Grant in Traditional Arts which supported new work and the collaboration with a nonprofit organization. Her historical story quilts transformed into a swing coat representing individuals from the Civil Rights Movement. These swing coats tell the stories of unknown heroines and their major contribution to the most important movement of the twentieth century.

Montgomery has exhibited national and international. Now, she is known as the “Coat Lady.” Born in Biloxi, Mississippi and raised in Hempstead, New York until 1979. Montgomery earned a Master of Fine Art from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Holy Names College. She currently resides in Oakland, California.

Laura Murray, Artist New York, NY www.lauramurray.com Laura Murray was born and raised in Oklahoma City, OK. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012. She has completed two residencies: the Oklahoma Summer Art Institute Residency in Oklahoma City, and the Snug Harbor Artist Residency Program in Staten Island. She is the recipient of several artist awards, including the Edward and Sally Van Lier Visual Artist Fellowship Grant and the 440 Gallery Choice Award. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including Postmasters Gallery 132

(New York); Concepto Hudson (Hudson, NY); Gallery 58 (Jersey City, NJ); the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKC, OK); and Galerist (Istanbul). Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, Dazed Magazine, The Nation, and Vice’s The Creators Project. She currently lives and works in New York.

Aqsa Naveed, Artist Stockton, CA www.aqsunaveed.com Growing up I wasn’t surrounded with many opportunities to grow as an artist until I had the “fork in the road” moment after graduating high school. My mind wandered in many directions but one stood out the most; I want to creatively express my experiences and expose them in a time where it was most relevant. As a PakistaniAmerican Muslim woman who wears the hijab, I knew my experiences would come with struggles and it was important for me to share them. Whether it be for my family back in my birth country or the families I see at my local mosque, I wanted to create a place where we can stand side by side and share all the quirks and hardships we have in us. That’s where social media came in, and so with my Bachelors in Media Arts and a drawing tablet, I set out to create digital comics and pop art pieces that represented a few of my quirks and hardships living as a Muslim woman in the 21st century.

Jessica Hendry Nelson, Writer Columbus, OH www.Jessicahnelson.com Jessica Hendry Nelson is the author of the memoir-in-essays If Only You People Could Follow Directions (2014), which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers’ Association, named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review, received starred reviews in Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly, and reviewed nationally in print and on NPR—including twice in (O) Oprah Magazine. It was also a finalist for the Vermont Book Award. She is also co-author of the forthcoming textbook and anthology Advanced Creative Nonfiction along with the writer Sean Prentiss (Bloomsbury, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Carolina Quarterly, Columbia Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, PANK, Drunken Boat and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska in Omaha and is Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Denison University.

Christine No, Writer Oakland, CA www.ChristineNo.com Christine No is a Korean American writer and filmmaker. She is a Sundance Alum, VONA Fellow, two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and Best of the Net Nominee. You can find her work in: The Rumpus, sPARKLE+bLINK, Columbia Journal, Story Online, Apogee, Atlas And Alice, & various anthologies. Christine is a cohort of the Kearny Street Workshop Interdisciplinary Writers Lab, the Winter Tangerine Writers Workshop, and is an Assistant Features Editor at The Rumpus. She lives in Oakland with her dog Brandy.

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Brenda Oelbaum, Artist Ann Arbor, MI www.brendaoelbaum.me Brenda Oelbaum holds a B.F.A. (equivalent) from the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; she studied painting in Florence, Italy under the direction of the late Aba Bayefski and received her M.A. in gallery administration from the State University of New York, Fashion Institute of Technology. She is a multidisciplinary, conceptual artist, working in any medium that best suits her mission.

Her Trump Collection appears in the British art journal Murtze Fall 2017. Oelbaum’s long-term body image work, Venus of Willendorf Project has been included in international papers from as far as Brazil, Belgium and Korea.

Priscilla Otani, Artist and Curator San Francisco, CA www.mrpotani.com Priscilla Otani is a mixed media artist and owner of Arc Studios & Gallery in San Francisco. Her works have been selected in Bay Area, national and international exhibitions including Beyond Borders: Stories of im/Migration, Rise: Empower, Change and Action, Against Trumpism, Women + Money, Social Justice: It Happens to One/It Happens to All, Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art, Choice, Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze, Control, and Banned & Recovered. She has curated and managed exhibitions for Arc Gallery, Pacific Center for the Book Arts and Women’s Caucus for Art. Her exhibition management includes F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way, Liberty, Metamorphosis, Resistance, and Dark and many more. She was President of the National Women’s Caucus from 2013 – 2015 and currently serves on the board of the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art. Otani received her BA in Psychology and Asian Studies from Mills College in 1974 and MA in Japanese Literature from Columbia University in 1976.

Peggy Phelan, Writer Palo Alto, CA Peggy Phelan is a Professor at Stanford University. She writes frequently about contemporary art, feminism, and performance. Her most recent book, with Richard Meyer, is Contact Warhol: Photography Without End (MIT Press and Cantor Arts Center, 2018).

Sheila Pree Bright, Artist Atlanta, GA www.sheilapreebright.com Sheila Pree Bright is an acclaimed fine-art photographer known for her photographic series Young Americans, Plastic Bodies, and Suburbia. She describes herself in the art world as a visual cultural producer portraying large-scale works that combine a wideranging knowledge of contemporary culture. Bright’s current and most ambitious project to date, #1960Now, which examines race and gender, is a photographic series x 134

of emerging young leaders affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Movement. Bright’s work is in the book and exhibition Posing Beauty in African American Culture. Bright’s photographs have also appeared in the 2014 feature-length documentary Through the Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People. Her work has been exhibited at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Smithsonian National Museum of African American Museum, Washington, DC; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and the Leica Gallery in New York. She is the recipient of several awards including the Center Prize (2006). Her work is included in numerous private and public collections; to name a few, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Oppenheimer Collection: Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland, KS; National Center for Civil and Human Rights, The High Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, all three in Atlanta, GA; The Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and the University of Georgia, Athens, GA. #1960Now series is now in the collection of the Smithsonian African American History and Culture Museum, Washington, DC; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, GA; City of Atlanta, Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Pyramid Peak Foundation, Memphis, TN. #1960Now book release is featured in the New York Times and Pree Bright is included in the documentary film Election Day: Lens Across America.

Shannon Rose Riley, Writer Fremont, CA Shannon Rose Riley is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and scholar. She is Professor and Chair of the Humanities Department at San Jose State University where she teaches classes in Humanities, Creative Arts, and American Studies. She has a PhD in Performance Studies and Critical Theory from UC Davis and an MFA in Studio Art from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She performs and records with the Chicago-based noise/performance group, ONO, and her visual and performance works have been exhibited/staged in the US, Cuba, Germany, and Poland.

She is the author of Performing Race and Erasure: Cuba. Haiti, & US Culture, 1898-1940 (Palgrave, 2016) and co-editor of Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies (Palgrave, 2009/2014). Her essays appear in various academic journals as well as in Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances (Palgrave, 2013) and Kathy Acker and Transnationalism (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). She is currently working on a piece of fiction set in contemporary Cuba.

Favianna Rodriguez, Artist Oakland, CA www.favianna.flyingcart.com Favianna Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and activist based in Oakland, California. Her work and collaborative initiatives address migration, economic inequality, gender justice, and ecology. Favianna leads art interventions around the United States at the intersection of art, social justice and cultural equity. Her artistic practices include social practice, visual art, arts advocacy and institution building.

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that are resilient and transformative. She is the Executive Director of CultureStrike, a national arts organization that engages artists, writers and performers in immigrant rights. In 2012, she was featured in a documentary series by Pharrell Williams titled Migration is Beautiful which addressed how artists responded to failed immigrant policy in the United States. In 2016, she received the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship for her work around mass incarceration. In 2017, she was awarded an Atlantic Fellowship for Racial Equity for her work around racial justice and climate change. Recently she has been organizing with artists in the entertainment industry to build an intersectional artist power movement.

Sawyer Rose, Artist and Curator Fairfax, CA www.carrying-stones.com

Sawyer Rose is a sculpture, installation, and social practice artist. Throughout her career, Rose has used her artwork to shine a spotlight on contemporary social and ecological issues. Her metalwork sculptures explore the ways living things adapt to changing environments and The Carrying Stones Project addresses issues around women’s work inequity. Her work has been exhibited widely across the US. Rose has been a resident artist at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco, Vermont Studio Center, The Ragdale Foundation, and The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. She has been awarded merit grants from The Creative Capacity Fund, The Awesome Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center, and Artist Grant SF. Rose is the President of the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art, a nonprofit providing women in the arts with leadership opportunities, mentorship, and professional development. Born and raised in North Carolina and a graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, she currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sheree Rose, Artist Culver City, CA Sheree Rose has been thrilling, shocking, and exciting audiences around the world, beginning with her collaborative photography and performances with Bob Flanagan in 1981. Their groundbreaking show Visiting Hours opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1994, and travelled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. She collaborated with Mike Kelley on the video One Hundred Reasons, as well as with Nine Inch Nails on several music videos. She co-produced the Sundance awardwinning documentary, Sick. Since 2011, she has collaborated with British performance artist, Martin O’Brien, in performances in England, New York, and Los Angeles.

Rachel Sager, Artist Oakland, CA www.rachelsager.com Rachel Sager is an oil painter living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia after studying at Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Italy. Her work has been featured in many internationally juried shows including Aqua International Art Fair in Miami, FL, Open and Crocker-Kingsley California Biennial, in addition to the Emmy

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Award-winning documentary, Sketching the Silk Road. Her current body of work continues an examination of matter in transformation, metamorphosis, one state to another. She is particularly drawn to how such elemental shifts coincide with the sometimes devastating effects of human beings on the world around them.

Here, she portrays this transmutation of matter as calculated explosions on aerial landscapes—the ground living, breathing, and dying all at once, in a heavenly haze. Simultaneously, these images of meteoric combustion and uncertainty loosely depict colorful images of global warming as seen on climate change maps, thus liberating the mind from any certain and singular symbolism.

Kadie Salfi, Artist Ithaca, NY www.kadiesalfi.com

Using an appealing Pop palate, Kadie Salfi depicts objects of damage and depredation. From her early silkscreens of bubblegum-hued bomber planes to her more recent series of Arabian camels printed on brightly dyed plaster with pure crude oil, Salfi’s work presents trenchant social and political commentary with a sly stylishness. Her latest project, Every 16 Hours, is an extensive arsenal of handguns, each painted on plywood panels with lustrous splashes of makeup: lipstick, nail polish, blush, and captioned with an unsettling statement of provenance or prophecy: “To kill his wife” or “To kill your daughter.” Born in Burlington, Vermont in 1972, Salfi studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and spent two years at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, where she printed editions of original graphics for such contemporary masters as Rauschenberg, Celmins, and Johns. Salfi maintains a steady studio practice in Ithaca, New York and has held numerous solo exhibitions on both coasts.

Gigi Salij, Artist Venice, CA www.gigisalij.com Gigi Salij is a collage artist and print maker. Her work employs text, pop images, vintage photography, photocopies, and toys to address contemporary issues—especially, feminism, gun violence, social injustice, economic displacement, and the ironies of domesticity. She studied at Swarthmore College, and received a Masters in Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She lives and works in Los Angeles and New York and is Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Emily Sano, Writer San Antonio, TX I grew up in rural Arkansas, where families from the Poston Camp went to work after being released. In college, I took up Japan studies, and went to Japan in my Junior year.

There, I was captivated by the beauty of Japanese art, and I was able to continue to graduate studies in that field. I was privileged to pursue curatorial work in Asian art at important museums. My major position was at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where I became director, and moved the museum from Golden Gate Park to the Civic Center. After retiring, and moving to Texas, I have taken a position as a curator at the San Antonio Museum of Art. 137

Mira Schor, Artist and Writer New York, NY www.miraschor.com Mira Schor is a painter and writer based in New York. Schor has been the recipient of awards in painting from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Marie Walsh Sharpe, and PollockKrasner Foundations, as well as the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism, a Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her blog A Year of Positive Thinking. She is the author of Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life, and co-editor of the journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G. She is Associate Teaching Professor at Parsons Fine Arts. Schor was elected to the National Academy of Design in 2017 and received a 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts. She is represented by Lyles & King Gallery in New York.

Judy Shintani, Artist Half Moon Bay, CA www.judyshintani.com Judy Shintani’s art focuses on remembrance, connection, and storytelling. She makes assemblages, produces installations, creates performances, and facilitates social engagement activities to generate visual stories that bring vital issues to light. She has exhibited worldwide and has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, Creativity Explored for Disabled Adults, and with ISKME’s Big Idea Fest. Shintani speaks about Asian American Art and historical trauma at venues including SF State, De Anza College, ArtXchange in Seattle, Center for Contemporary for Art Santa Fe, 516 Arts in Albuquerque, University of Pittsburgh, and Springfield College, MA. She founded the Kitsune Community Art Studio in Half Moon Bay and is a teaching artist at Creativity Explored for Disabled Adults and Foothill College, and has taught with the Institute on Aging. Shintani is a member of the Asian American Women’s Artist Association and on the board of the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art. Judy has a Masters in Transformative Art from JFK University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Graphic Design from San Jose State University.

Sarupa Sidaarth, Artist Belvedere Tiburon, CA www.sarupasidaarth@gmail.com Sarupa Sidaarth, born in India, studied at Sir J.J. School of Art and received her MFA at Academy of Art in San Francisco. CA. Her studio practice flows predominantly from an intuitive and emotional approach. Inspired by ornament, she creates an imaginative response to conflict by transforming images that allude to social and environmental issues into moments of transcendence. Her awards and achievements include First Prize at Brea Gallery’s Made in Paint 2018, Frey Foundation Grant, Golden Foundation Residency and NordArt in Germany. She was chosen as a Regional Finalist in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series 2016 in San Francisco. She won the K.K. Modi Fellowship and Pasca scholarship to France in 2011. She has participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions in India, Europe and the United States. Sarupa Sidaarth lives and works in Marin County, California.

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Helene Smith-Romer, Writer Chicago, IL http://idueart4youmuseum.com/main.html Helene Smith-Romer-artist, curator of The I Due Art 4 You Museum, bibliophile, teacher, feminist and Occupational Dadaist has spent the last 35 years pursuing and investigating the history, enigma and meaning of image-making through the collage process. Romer has focused her attention on stretching the possibilities of integrating her working operandi of employing chance, play and balancing the conscious/ unconscious in image making. Indeed, it was her visual work I Drive with Confidence Because I Know I Can Stop and 4 Women Scrapbooks where she realized the personal is the political and the power of alternative color printing. Smith-Romer received her BFA from Columbia College, an MFA from the University of Illinois with graduate classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in photography, art and computer. During her studies, Smith-Romer had the incredibly good fortune to be befriended and mentored by photographers Ray Metzker, Robert Heinecken and Joyce Neimanas. She is the recipient of artist grants, collections, residency and multitude of group and solo exhibitions. Confession of a Dadaist-The Era of Existence: 1979-2013-Imagery of Helene Smith-Romer book by critic and historian James Hugunin explores Smith-Romer’s imagery and Dadaist ideology. She is dedicated to the defeat of Donald J. Trump in 2020.

Colette Standish, Artist Berkeley, CA www.colettestandish.com

Colette Standish, an English painter and photographer, graduated from St. Martin’s College in London in 1991 as part of the wave of YBA-Young British Artists. Her achievements include: Jessop’s Photography Prize 2000 London and fellowship awards in New Mexico, Italy, and Spain. Her work is in many public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe and the Anais Nin Foundation Art collection. Colette is a frequent contributor to A Cafe in Space: Anais a Literary Journal and can be seen in Volumes, 8, 9, 13, 14 and 15. Colette’s poem, A Letter, published in Volume 8, has recently been made into a music video entitled, I Was in Love… Still Am, by an avant-garde collective EPI based in Manchester, UK and Florence, Italy. Colette’s catalog of her recent exhibition Anais Through the Looking Glass and Other Stories, at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco is now part of the following library collections: UCLA Special Collections Library; Schlesinger Library, Harvard University; Bodleian Library, Oxford University; University of Manchester Library; Central St Martins School of Art Library; and The British Library.

Samanta Tello, Artist San Francisco, CA www.samantatello.com Samanta Tello was born in Barcelona (1972) and raised in Madrid, Spain; she studied Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. Nearly 18 years ago, she moved to the Golden State and settled in San Francisco. Inspired by the magnificence and splendor of the trees in the area she started using wood as her primary material, drawing and painting trees on the wood as well as integrating pyrography and wood stains into her work. With the birth of her now seven and ten-year-old daughters, and the current

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political climate, her artistic focus and inspiration evolved, bringing attention to women and girls’ issues. Her work is a message of empowerment—graphically demonstrating how once-silenced voices and unheard ideas, when brought together, can promote strength and freedom from assumedly fixed female roles. Tello’s work has been selected for exhibitions at the 2018 United State of Women Summit, the 2018 GEO National Conference, Dennis Rae Gallery, Arc Gallery, Avenue 12 Gallery, and other San Francisco, Vermont, and New York galleries.

She was recently awarded a commission to paint a heart sculpture for the SF General Foundation’s 2019 Hearts in San Francisco project. Her work has been featured by Basma Magazine Germany, Mai: Feminism & Visual Culture, Bay Area Art Today and other publications and was the winner of the 2018 So To Speak, Feminist Journal of Language and Art visual contest.

Bridget Wagner, Writer San Francisco, CA For over 20 years I have attended numerous courses and workshops at U.C. Berkeley Extension, the Writing Salon, the San Francisco Grotto and for the last 5 years a member of the poet Julie Bruck Fearlees@Home poetry group. I am a physician by training.

Genanne Walsh, Writer San Francisco, CA www.genannewalsh.com Genanne Walsh is the author of Twister, awarded the Big Moose Prize for the Novel from Black Lawrence Press. Twister was short-listed for the Brighthorse Prize, the Housatonic Book Award in Fiction, and the Sarton Women’s Book Award. She lives in San Francisco with her wife and dogs and is at work on a new novel.

Tanya Wilkinson, Writer San Francisco, CA www. tanya-wilkinson.com Tanya Wilkinson is the author of several books, most recently Women’s Dreams and Nightmares, available at iBooks, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.com. She is also a mixed media artist.

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Maw Shein Win, Writer El Cerrito, CA www.nomadicpress.org/mawsheinwin Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor and educator who lives and works in the Bay Area.

Her writing has appeared in many journals and several anthologies including MARY: A Journal of New Writing, Talking Writing, Cimarron Review, Poetry International, Fanzine, and others. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California. Win’s poetry Score and Bone is on Nomadic Press. Her full-length collection Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018.

Nellie Wong, Writer San Francisco, CA Nellie Wong’s poetry books are Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park, The Death of Long Steam Lady, Stolen Moments and Breakfast Lunch Dinner, published since the 1970s.

Retired as a public worker, she also taught poetry at Mills College and Women Studies at the University of Minnesota. She’s co-featured in the documentary film, Mitsuye and Nellie Asian American Poets and two of her poems are installed in public sites in San Francisco. Long active in the people of color, women and labor movements, Wong contributes her energy to Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party. Her work has been translated into Chinese, Spanish, French and Italian. She was a delegate in the First U.S. Women Writers Tour to China with Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Tillie Olsen and others. In 2011, Wong was recognized with the naming of a building at Oakland High School (Oakland) where she graduated and worked in the 1950s.

Brianna Wu, Writer Boston, MA Brianna Wu is an American video game developer and computer programmer. She cofounded Giant Spacekat, an independent video game develop-ment studio, with Amanda Warner in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also a blogger and podcaster on matters relating to the video game industry. She unsuccessfully ran for Congress as Massachusetts Representative in 8th district.

Sandra Yagi, Artist San Francisco, CA www.sandrayagi.com Sandra Yagi is a painter who is interested in the intersection between science and art, using themes of anatomy, genetic manipulation, evolution, and medical oddities as tools in the creation of intricate paintings. These works depict strange worlds where flesh is malleable, skeletons of conjoined twins play, and small, delicate, genetically hybrid creatures satisfy unusual curiosities and symbolize moral conundrums. She was raised in Denver, Colorado, and as a child loved science (especially xxxxxxx 141

biology) and drawing. Yagi’s parents instilled in her the practicality of a “useful” education because of their concern for domestic stability and social integration—a result of internment with other Japanese-Americans during WWII. Yagi obtained a Masters in Business Administration, and worked for 27 years at a major financial institution. She took up drawing and painting again at age 32, while still working in finance. She became a full time artist in 2008. Her works are in notable private collections, including those of Axl Rose, Ben Stiller, Miley Cyrus, Chris Vroom (Co-Founder of Artspace), Paul Ruscha, and film director Lee Unkrich (director of Toy Story 3).

Her work has been shown internationally, and may be viewed at Bert Green Fine Art, Chicago and Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco.

Ani Zonneveld, Writer Los Angeles, CA www.mpvusa.org Ani Zonneveld is founder and President of Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), the oldest progressive human rights organization in the U.S. that advocates for women’s rights, LGBTQI inclusion, freedom of expression and freedom of and from belief. Since its inception, Ani has presided over MPV’s expansion to include chapters and affiliates in 12 countries and 19 cities. She is on the U.N. Faith Advisory Council, has organized numerous interfaith arts and music festivals, is the co-editor of MPV’s first book, an anthology titled Progressive Muslim Identities – Personal Stories from the U.S. and Canada, executive producer of a video series LGBTQI Rights in Islam, has contributed to many forewords and numerous anthologies. She is a contributor for HuffingtonPost, OpenDemocracy and al-Jazeera. She recently gave her TEDx talk titled Islam: As American As Apple Pie and is the subject of an award winning documentary titled al-imam featuring Ani’s activism works to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. As a Grammy award winning songwriter, she utilizes the power of music and the arts in countering radicalism as she speaks-sings her message of social justice and peace from a progressive Muslim woman’s perspective.

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