Art Event #1

Hartwick College invites many people to come in and talk about their professional careers. In particular, the art department invites many artists to come and lecture about the different work that they have done. Recently, someone who is quite famous in the art world came to talk about her work. She was a part of the famous group of artists called the Guerrilla Girls.

            She explained that in the 80’s she met up with a group of other female artists in New York City. They all had one idea in mind, to let the world know how women were being discriminated against in the art world. After having several meetings over what artwork they wanted to produce, they decided to make their own posters and put them up throughout the city. They came up with various situations, even going as far as calling out particular museums and galleries that had little to no female artists featured. This was the main reason why they wanted to remain anonymous, they did not want these posters to be seen as a way to advance their careers and most of all, did not want to be sued for what the posters said. Whenever they went out at night to put up their posters, they always wore gorilla masks. To make the money to produce the posters they made, they went around and lectured to different colleges, always wearing the masks.

            After explaining her years as a Guerrilla Girl she went on to show us how she went on to do her own personal work. She ended up using a lot of the ideas and problems that she had faced with the Guerrilla Girls and used them in her artwork. Her pieces include feminist ideas, ideas concerning religion, and other various topics. She used many different mediums, such as fabrics, paintings and various types of sculpture. One piece even featured hats and hairpieces.

            One of my favorite pieces was, “The advantages of being a Woman Artist.” The poster was one of the simplest, only in black and white, and had the sarcastic humor that seemed to be present in many of the posters that they made.

            Seeing a woman such as this become so successful in the art world, especially during the time she was looking for jobs, really is inspiring. Her and her group of friends decided that they all believed they could change the statistic of women artists, and they are part of the reason why there are so many artists today.  Watching someone like this should really push people to fight for what they believe for, no matter how they have to do it.