Work from 1977 at the Getty

There has been a recent interest in work from the 1970s, a decade in which I came of age as an artist. I have work from this era in an exhibition entitled Evidence of Movement, currently at the Getty Research Institute through October 7, 2007. The exhibition surveys the variety of ways that artists in the 20th century have documented and represented performance-based art using nearly every medium imaginable—from photographs, films, video, and audio recordings, to notes, drawings, scores, books, and objects.

My work is included in Close Radio, which was a weekly series of experimental radio broadcasts on Los Angeles station KPFK from 1976 to 1979. I was living in Old Town Pasadena at the time when the area was occupied by artists and winos (that was before the term homeless even existed). It was long before The Gap and Tiffanys moved into the area. We had tons of beautiful skylit studio space and paid pennies for it (my rent was $35). The work we were doing was simple and conceptual. I was exploring the subject of women’s feet and shoes as a metaphor for women’s mobility (or lack thereof) in society, researching the theme through fashion, cultural histories, personal narratives and fairy tales. For Close Radio, I read aloud the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, The Red Shoes,while dancing in red high heeled shoes. By the end I nearly collapsed in exhaustion. It was a time when performance art was often durational and always a one-time, almost ritualistic activity.

You can actually listen to the audio performance online through the Getty’s website. Here’s a link. http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/evidence_movement/index.html