Women’s Work as Artists and Writers

  Welcome to our fourth “Women’s Work” newsletter. How encouraging to publish this one in a new post Covid era when many of us can return to some of the lives we lived pre pandemic. I hope this finds you and your loved ones safe and well. This newsletter features the writer, Cynthia Chin-Lee, and the artist, film maker, photographer, Catherine Herrera.  Each traces their roots to their ancestors and to their origins of what led them to become the creative artists and writers. Cynthia begins her essay with her mother, Nancy. Nancy, while a talented visual artist and a story teller, was not allowed the freedom of her daughter. Despite winning prizes for her art and a scholarship to art school, she was asked to turn it down and support her brother’s ambition to attend college. Cynthia acknowledges her easier path to becoming a writer and growing up in her Chevy Chase area outside of Washington D.C.   She describes the discrimination her family faced in buying a home, or fire...

  1934, Baltimore, MD.   Someone was knocking on the door.    Then seven years old, Nancy was folding clean diapers for her mother, but her father grabbed her arm and shoved her into the closet. Her father  warned,“ Get  in there and be quiet!”    He then calmly proceeded to open the front door and chat with the local truant officer. The officer’s eyes narrowed as he said, “We heard you have a school-age child? She should be attending school. That’s the law.” Nancy’s father invited the officer to look around the house. Only small children were playing in the backyard, all too young to go to school.   While Nancy should have been going to school, she was held back so she could help take care of her younger siblings. She was not allowed to attend school until her brother, a year and a half younger, was old enough to go to school. By that time, it would be useful to have her walk with him as her parents cared about educating him, but not her. ...

  When I was a young artist, still unfamiliar with this energy called Creativity, after each new creation, I wondered, will Creativity show up again?  Is it something I can will up on my own? What brings it forth, what pushes it away? Dipping into the obscurity of the darkroom as a sweat lodge, where I communicated with Creativity, offering my dedication to perfect tone and the full Ansel Adams Zone.     Photography was the first of those images pinned to the cork board in my grandparents kitchen, stories of loved ones and where they were now. My Grandpa's travel photos and my Dad's first published photos were the first breadcrumbs on my path. Before there was a camera, I used my fingers to frame those images I would have taken.    Creativity returned. Again. And, again. I learned to collaborate with the energy, to offer proper deference and respect. I was no idiot. I knew I had no control over Creativity. Patiently, Creativity showed me how we could work t...

  As we emerge from the pandemic, I wanted to include my personal symbol of hope for this challenging year of 2020.   It is the lemon tree outside my veranda window that blossomed throughout and comforted me with the natural beauty that it showed every day. The image of the greenery with the lemons sustained me as the months passed, the seasons changed, but the lemon tree was resilient and beautiful. I asked my friend, the artist, Avigail Gottlieb, who lives in Israel, to paint a lemon tree for me. Here are two renditions of the lemon tree she created. Now I can share it with all of you, and share the hope and beauty that it brings not only in nature, but in art.  I thank her for the inspiration and the gift of her work.   Jennifer Ewig in her essay, “How Art Has Made All The Difference,” questions what she would have become in life if not an artist. She shows us all the paths she took to test her talents, and out of all of them, art won out. The Chicago Art Institut...

Bio - Avigail Gottlieb She has been an artist, mother, and grandmother, residing in Israel since 1969. She lives on a collective farm with her husband and has four sons and lots of grandchildren! She was inspired to create this image of The Lemon Tree after Nitza, one of the editors of "Women's Work," asked her to use a photo of her own lemon tree in her garden. This rendering is as beautiful as the original lemon tree and adds its own interpretation.

  Story-telling is in my DNA and I became aware of this proclivity  at the age of three .   I had awakened from a nightmare that I still remember.  My father was asleep when I crawled into my parents’ bed and snuggled between them.  I told my father a story about a big round house I wanted him to build for me.  The nightmare and the  story  had nothing in common, except perhaps the story was my way of dispelling the fear the nightmare instilled. Stories are a human reaction to life’s tribulations. From earliest times, humans have coped with terrors by relegating them to tales to entertain us around the campfire.  A story shared is a fear  conquer ed, an experience shared is one less trial to be faced without knowledge. My story-telling included tales I made up while I played alone in a grove of lilac bushes in the woods behind our house in Maine. I shared stories of actual experience when I started school after my family moved to Califor...

What would I be if I were not an artist? For this mostly a right-brained human, the answer might have led to great unhappiness. I am not a linear thinker nor do I like to be boxed in. Freedom for me and my creative spirit is what keeps me going. Over the years I have wondered if only I had more of a musical ear or a scientific interest, what might have happened to my path? Now in my early seventies, I can look back on this question a bit more objectively and less passionately than in earlier decades. So much water under the bridge that this question does not intrigue me as it used to. So much has happened to confirm the success of my childhood decision to be an artist. I am very much at home with my chosen path and am grateful for what this has given me and all that I have been able to share. Art seems to whisper in my ear as a muse would do in ancient times. This soft voice gives me insights into my potential and helps me go further. When I was 7, my mother tried to get me into other ...

  In this newsletter, our second, Gretchen Butler, an artist living in Sonoma, shares her origins of becoming an artist, going back to her first drawing, 50 years ago, which began her path. In her essay, " Art Roundup 2021”, her art jumps off the page and changes since her children were toddlers to adults and her retirement from special education. I love her conclusion which states that at age 77, she still needs deadlines to figure it all out and evolve as the "witchy self-critic becomes friends with her inner time keeper." Marlene Shigekawa, a writer and documentary film maker, describes in her essay, "Stories and Moving  Pictures," her childhood in Anaheim filled with astonishment over seeing her drawings in her elementary  school classroom hanging with other drawings. Suddenly, "this black-haired girl “appeared on the wall  where many blonde-haired ,blue-eyed classmates could see her." What did it mean for Marlene to  become visible as a Japanese ...

When I was six, I would watch my mother drive our 1949 blue and gray Chevy, observe how she would shift the gears and step on the clutch. I would memorize every movement so that when I grew up, I could drive my car like she did and alone go to a field or the beach and take my easel and paint the surrounding landscape or seascape. I wanted to be an artist. When entering my elementary school cafeteria for lunch, I was surprised to see my drawing made from colored crayons hanging with other drawings. There on the wall was one drawing from each class. I remember drawing myself near the chicken coop where I would be feeding the chickens. Of course, in my creation there was the obligatory elementary school image of a sunburst in the upper right-hand corner, myself dressed in the yellow and brown poke-a-dot dress my mother had made and my black hair in pigtails. My mother always made sure that I was color coordinated. Yellow ribbons were tied to the end of my pigtails. Another time, when driv...

  During my toddlers’ nap time, I glanced around the kitchen and sketched the eggbeater on a whim. My version was askew, which reflected my life. However, the feel of the pencil on paper was pleasing, and the egg- beater metaphor made me smile even though I was in heartbreak mode. That first drawing 50 years ago opened a gate for the can opener, watering can, stove and ironing board. Then, children, fishermen, petunias and chickens danced onto pages. Drawings translated into prints from linoleum blocks warmed in the oven, then clamped onto the kitchen table to be carved. The following decades, small increments of art in the kitchen amidst family hubbub saved my sanity. I especially did not want to take a class. I did not want anyone telling me what to do. Pleasure emerged from allowing shapes to emerge without judgment, without an end product agenda. Well, since I don’t like to waste stuff, the first rough prints became stationery for letters to my parents. I thank my parents for e...