Animating the Archives: the Woman's Building

Johanna Breiding
CamLab
Teresa Flores (in collaboration with Maryam Hosseinzadeh)
Raquel Gutierrez
Hackers of Resistance
Onya Hogan-Finlay (in collaboration with Phranc)
Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza
Marissa Magdalena
J. Alex Mathews
Felicia 'Fe' Montes
Cindy Rehm
Gladys Rodriguez
Hana Ward
Lisa Diane Wedgeworth
Diana Wyenn

All activities take place at:
Avenue 50 Studio, 131 North Avenue 50, Highland Park, CA 90042, (323) 258-1435 unless specifically noted.

One Woman Shows

Sunday, April 30, 2017, 2-5 p.m. Pieter, 420 West Avenue 33, Unit #10, Los Angeles, CA 90031

One Woman Shows is a play on words against the singularity of the solo exhibition to a model of multiplicity as a group of women witness and perform acts of self-naming. Seating is limited; please email cindyrehm@gmail.com for reservations.
Cindy Rehm (see Bio in Artists and Project Descriptions).

Opening Reception for Animating the Archives: the Woman’s Building exhibition.

Saturday, May 13, 2017, 7-10 p.m.

Opening Reception for Animating the Archives: the Woman’s Building exhibition.
Johanna Breiding, CamLab, Teresa Flores with Maryam Hosseinzadeh, Raquel Gutierrez, Hackers of Resistance, Onya Hogan-Finlay in collaboration with Phranc, Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza, Marissa Magdalena, J. Alex Mathews, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, Cindy Rehm, Gladys Rodriguez, Hana Ward, Lisa Diane Wedgeworth, Diana Wyenn (see Bios in Artists and Project Descriptions).

Regarding Room: Miniatures Workshops

Saturday, May 20, 2017, 1-4 p.m.

Reguarding Room: Miniatures Workshops – The artists will host two Miniatures Workshops for the community, in which participants remake, in miniature, artworks with themes of rape and sexual assault. The miniatures created will be exhibited. The public is welcome to attend.
CamLab (see Bio in Artists and Project Descriptions).

Feminist Friday (on Saturday night)

Saturday, May 20, 2017, 7-10 p.m.

Feminist Friday (on Saturday night) is a casual but directed conversation about contemporary issues related to feminism. This intersectional conversation is open to any and all community members. The purpose of Feminist Friday is to create a safe environment in which people can share questions, concerns, resources, and experiences pertaining to feminism. The ‘unofficial’ motto of Feminist Friday is “Cocktails, Conversation, and Consciousness-raising”. Light drinks and snacks are provided. Open to all.
Micol Hebron is an associate professor of art at Chapman University. She is also the creator of the digital pasty male nipple meme, the Gallery Tally gender equity project, and founder of the Situation Room. She has been doing feminist art and actions in Los Angeles since 1992. Feminist Friday was started in 2015 as part of the programming for Micol's space, The Situation Room, in Eagle Rock.

La Palabra hosts the Women Writers Series

Sunday, May 21, 2017, 2-4 p.m.

La Palabra hosts the Women Writers Series
During its years of operation, one of the signature programs of the Woman’s Building was its Women Writers Series. Writers including Angela Davis, June Jordan, Margaret Atwood, Rita Mae Brown and Alice Walker presented readings of their work alongside local women writers. Las Palabras, the monthly reading series of Avenue 50 Studio, has invited the Woman’s Building to recreate an experience of the Women Writers Series. The authors will be reading from their work.
Gloria Enedina Alvarez — Her books of poetry in English and Spanish include La Excusa/The Excuse and Emerging en un Mar De Olanes.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo — Her first collection, Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge published by Sundress Press.
Melissa Chadburn — Her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is forthcoming with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Arminé Iknadossian is the author of United States of Love and Other Poems (2016).
Eloise Klein Healy is the founding editor of Arktoi Books and the founding chair of the MFA In Creative Writing program at Antioch University Los Angeles. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently a collection of selected and new work titled A Wild Surmise. She was the first Poet Laureate of the City of Los Angeles.
Deena Metzger’s most recent novel is A Night of Rain Books. She has authored many novels and collections of poetry and essays.
Amy Uyematsu — Poetry books include The Yellow Door and Stone Bow Prayer.
Pam Ward’s novels include Want Some, Get Some and Bad Girls Burn Slow.
Terry Wolverton’s books include Embers, a novel in poems, and Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman’s Building, a memoir.
Karineh Mahdessian is a poet, coordinator and host of the Las Palabra Reading Series.

Gallery Talk

Saturday, May 27, 2017, 3-5 p.m.

Gallery Talk This is an opportunity for art students and the public to tour the exhibition and discuss the work with Metabolic Studio’s curator-in-residence Charlotte Cotton. Several artists in the exhibition will be in attendance.
Charlotte Cotton is an independent curator of and writer about photography. She is currently Curator in Residence at Metabolic Studio, LA Her publications include The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Imperfect Beauty, Then Things Went Quiet, Guy Bourdin, and Photography is Magic.

An Evening of Women's Performances

Saturday, May 27, 2017, 7-10 p.m.

An Evening of Women's Performances The Woman's Building was critical to the development of this art form in the 1970s. A new generation will demonstrate how performance has evolved.
Performers will be Raquel Gutierrez, Hackers of Resistance, Marissa Magdalena (with Jerri Allyn and Marjan Vayghan), and J. Alex Mathews (see Bios in Artists and Project Descriptions).

Sunday, May 28, 2017, 2-4 p.m.

Reading for Teach Your Daughters Well, Enseñe Bien a Sus Hijas, stories, rituals and traditions from women who teach (stimulate, empower, elevate, educate) their daughters.
Reading by artist Lisa Diane sWedgeworth and some of her project participants (see Bio in Artists and Project Descriptions).

Feminist Art Work Sharing

Saturday, June 3, 2017, 1-4 p.m.

Feminist Art Work Sharing Facilitated by Jerri Allyn, an artist and former instructor at the Woman’s Building, this event will utilize a feminist process of discussing creative work that was pioneered at the Woman’s Building. A select group of artists will present their work and participate in a facilitated discussion about it. The event will also be open to the public to view.
Jerri Allyn, a Community-based Artist, Educator and Scholar, is interested in civic engagement (MA, Art and Community). She creates site-oriented, interactive installations and performance art events that become a part of public life. Recently, she has been exploring the phenomenon of human trafficking with a team of artists: www.hidden-in-plain-site.com.

2017 Avest Awards

Saturday, June 3, 2017, 7-8 p.m.

2017 Avest Awards — Honoring the decade long legacy of the Woman’s Building Vesta Awards (1982-1991), Onya Hogan-Finlay and Phranc will collaborate to create the 2017 Avest Awards, a limited edition of handmade, miniature paper vest sculptures and letter pressed certificates that will be presented to 10 women in recognition of their contributions to the arts in Southern California. Awardees will be announced mid-April 2017.
Onya Hogan-Finlay (see Bio in Artists and Project Descriptions). As a visual artist, Phranc has adopted the moniker “The Cardboard Cobbler.” She exhibits at the Craig Krull gallery in Santa Monica and Friesen Gallery in Sun Valley, Idaho

An Evening of Women’s Music

Saturday, June 3, 2017, 8-10 p.m.

An Evening of Women’s Music In the spirit of the Woman's Building, which served as a gathering place for women in Los Angeles as well as an arts and educational center, we will bring Animating the Archives: the Woman’s Building to close by gathering to sing, dance and celebrate the vibrancy of women’s culture. This event is organized by Phranc.
Alice Bag is a singer/songwriter, musician, author, artist, educator and feminist. Alice was the lead singer and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first punk bands to form during the first wave of punk rock in Los Angeles. Alice went on to perform in other groundbreaking bands, including Castration Squad, Cholita, and Las Tres. She has published two books, including Violence Girl and Pipe Bomb For the Soul, based on her teaching experiences in post-revolutionary 1980's Nicaragua.
Phranc introduces herself as "the All-American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger." In the late 1970's Phranc was a member of the bands Nervous Gender and Catholic Discipline in the L.A. punk rock scene. She has released five albums of original music and toured internationally with many acclaimed and notorious artists including The Smiths, Violent Femmes, The Pogues, and Morrissey.

Upset is an American band with Lauren Freeman on lead guitar, Rachel Gagliardi on bass and vocals, Ali Koehler on guitar and lead vocals and Patty Schemel on drums.

Additional performers to be announced.

Animating the Archives: the Woman's Building a Metabolic Studio Special Project in Archiving. Fifteen emerging Southern California women artists received fellowships to create new works about the Woman’s Building and the feminist art movement. The project seeks to further preserve the history of the iconic feminist art organization, both through traditional archiving methods and by encouraging a new generation of artists to engage that history. The works, which range from visual to performance art, from media to social practice projects

When searching for younger artists interested in feminism, the Woman's Building Board consulted over a dozen artists, curators, and arts instructors; everyone recommended was invited to propose a project. A three-member selection panel — Meiling Cheng, Professor of Theatre in Critical Studies at the USC School of Dramatic Arts; Consuelo (Chelo) Montoya, founding Program Manager and faculty member in Otis College of Art and Design's MFA in Public Practice program; and Elena Muslar, then the Program Associate at the Skirball Cultural Center — chose the artists that would receive the fellowships.

From 1973 to 1991, the Woman's Building provided a space and a symbol for education, exhibition, performance, community and political action for the feminist art movement in Los Angeles and around the world. Since the site closed, many of its artists have continued to promote its values and processes in their art, teaching and organizing work. A core group has also worked for decades to preserve the Woman's Building history through archives, audio and video oral histories, books, and in a 2011 exhibition at Otis College of Art and Design that was part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time.

The artist Lauren Bon and artist and the Metabolic Studio have been working out of a warehouse across the street from the historic Woman's Building on North Spring Street. Lauren Bon invited the Woman's Building to return to Spring St, within Metabolic Studio from November 2016-April 2017, in order to continue the long-term task of preserving and re-animating the Woman's Building's critical role in the development of feminist culture and expression. When Metabolic Studio approached the Woman's Building with with the opportunity, we realized that this was a chance to track the legacy of our movement in the artists of today. The artists awarded fellowships from Metabolic Studio have been encouraged to review archival materials and become familiar with the history of the Woman's Building, and craft their response.