The way all this intellectual feminist theory makes me feel, as an artist, reminds me of the Carrie Mae Weems photo of herself standing outside the art museum.
I’m a maker of things, not a talker about them. I’ve made over 600 artworks in the last four decades, many starting in the early seventies and others since which directly relate to feminist issues. But a lot of the discourse that has grown up in the academy in the time I've been a working artist exists on a different plane from my practice. There are barriers to entry every bit as intimidating--even alienating for many of us--as those that Weems laments in the patriarchal museum. However, there may well be ways to build bridges between the evolution of my work and this ongoing feminist discourse, and I would welcome the opportunity to enter into dialogue about how the work I have made relates to discussions that have evolved in the academy.
I hope I'm up to the task! Consider this a test case: an opportunity to make feminist theory "real" for the artists it's theoretically about.
Bio
After studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1960s and participating as one of the original ‘Videofreex’ in New York, Mary Curtis Ratcliff moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in
1973. She has been working in sculpture, mixed media, and two-dimensional art ever since. Ratcliff’s work is in over eighty public and private collections, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Oakland Museum of California. It has been featured in over twenty solo exhibitions and more than 100 group exhibitions in the United States, France, New Zealand and Japan—countries in which she has also had artist residencies.
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