She Laughs Back + Why is that so funny?

 
Note: Unfortunately, I lack images of the speakers from the talk.

She Laughs Back: Feminist Wit from the 1970s in Bay Area Art + Why is that so funny?

"Why is that so funny?" was the title of the guest talk, which interviewed three feminist artists featured in the student gallery. Lorraine Garcia-Nakata, Kathy Goodell, and Louise Stanley explained a little about themselves, their process, and their identities as artists. 

Lorraine Garcia-Nakata is a part of the Royal Chicano Air Force movement here in Sacramento and one of the only female artists at the time of its conception, as well as the only female artist to work on Sac's South Side Park Mural. She has utilized many mediums, including printmaking, and is a musician and an author. Garcia-Nakata shared that she had felt the 1970s were a "visionary time" despite the many terrible things happening in society, and remembers hitchhiking to SF, listening to various visionaries, and then returning to her town to deal with the typical trials one faces when coming of age. She cited Angela Davis' works and talks as inspiring and influenced her work. She stressed that humor was vital to survival as a way to cope with the atrocities.

Kathy Goodell was a professor of painting and drawing who has received grants and awards throughout her career with work featured in national and international galleries, in addition to publishing many works. in the 1970s, Goodell had been involved in politics and social activism and cited the many people, musicians, and speakers she saw in SF, as well as the many independent women she'd met throughout her life, as her inspiration.

When I wrote the response to the conversation, Louis Stanley was currently showing in NYC. She's primarily based in San Francisco and has found narrative motifs throughout history as a source of inspiration. She revealed she had started a woman's group that focused on issues that weren't really spoken about in the 1970s and delightfully recounted how she would get stoned with friends and create "bad art" (deemed such by her abstract expressionist-focused male contemporaries), which was her rebellion against abstract expressionism, and used art history as inspiration.

Lorraine Grace-Nakata shared her experiences with the creation of the South Side Park mural. Some male artists in the Royal Chicano Air Force were concerned about her painting’s depiction of a topless woman. The park mural was adjacent to a church, and they were worried bare breasts would scandalize some of the abuelas. One of them asked if she could cover the woman in her painting with a peasant blouse, which Grace-Nakata immediately refused because peasant blouses were colonialist, and this was an indigenous woman. They relented, and she resumed painting. When church released several women stopped to admire her work, remarking on her lovely painting and made no mention about breasts. Garcia-Nakata called it a moment of “abuela approval.”

Below is a sketchbook version of the woman she painted.

 

The Mystic Muse and the Bums Who Sleep in the Golf Course Behind the Oakland Cemetery (1970) was one of the paintings featured in the gallery, created by M. Louis Stanley. This was one of the paintings that was produced while stoned in a graveyard behind her college to paint. She cites rebellion as the primary incentive, as a fun exploration of art deemed "bad art." She claimed this was her "proclamation painting," something she didn't realize until a year later. It was especially exciting to see this painting in person, as it had been one of the works Stanley discussed in-depth in the conversation panel earlier. It was smaller than I had thought, which made sense because it was something she had to carry easily with the rest of her supplies.

Special mention: Roz Joseph (1926-2019). A collection of Joseph's photographs were featured in this exhibition. The photos depicted drag queens clad in sensual garments, bold makeup, and even body hair. Her images were part of a series on SF's drag queen Imperial Court in the 1970s, capturing a moment in history before AIDs ravaged the community. These were my favorite works in this gallery. The photographs do not come across as posed or staged. Instead, they seem exactly as they are described: moments in history. More importantly, these were snapshots of moments from people’s lives in the calm before the storm. But I find this ominous claim a little inaccurate. After all, the LGBTQ+ community during the 1970s lived through terrible bigotry. Still, these are proud and beautiful pictures. I love seeing people embrace who they are.