Women Artists Need Support

To draw attention to the needs of women artists -- and they are many! -- the Fund for Women Artists launched the second annual SWAN Day, set for March 28, 2009. SWAN stands for Support Women Artists NOW! and that about says it all.

Women in the arts continue to suffer discrimination and under representation. It's true in theater; it's true in film, music, dance, visual arts. Writes the Fund:

Women are creating some of the most exciting and
challenging art in the United States today. And yet, despite great strides in other fields and a few high-visibility success stories, women continue to face enormous employment discrimination in the arts and media.

The Fund for Women Artists is dedicated to helping women overcome barriers .... At the same time, we need to educate the public about the continuing problems of gender bias and pressure institutions to change. Not only do women suffer by being shut out, but the culture as a whole is poorer when it is deprived of the vision and creativity of women artists.

To draw attention to these needs, Martha Richards, founder of the Fund for Women Artists, established SWAN Day and invited artists to use it to draw attention to women's creativity. In response, over 160 events are underway across the country in and around this day.

Events include dance, readings, panels, ceremonies, celebrations (not all are strictly on the day of March 28). In New York alone, a couple dozen events are underway. The Women's Project, a pioneering theater company in New York, held a Carnival at its theater space in New York last week. Melodia Women's Choir, an amazing group of women's voices, sang at the Women's History Celebration of New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson, in preview of its May 16 concert, Visions of Eternity. On March 28, Broadway Theater Women will discuss collaborations at the Lincoln Center Library, following an earlier Collaboration Award Celebration by the New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts and Media. Words of Choice itself is joining in SWAN events with a performance on April 23 at the Judson Memorial Church, a benefit for the Planned Parenthood of New York City Activist Council.

The west coast has its share of events, too, such as a Goddess Painting Abstract Workshop in San Rafael on Wednesdays in April, a 'Funk to Feminism' tour in Napa on March 28, and Women Artists on Immigration in Los Angeles, held on March 7. All told, events are in about half the states and 11 countries. The full list is online, and details can be located via a Swan Day map.

SWAN Day is a perfect opportunity for the pro-choice community to reach out to artists in their communities and to show a little love. The excitement of women's art and challenges facing women artists are described on an 8-minute video posted by the Fund for Women Artists. Women artists are using their talents to raise women's visions of equality and freedom; in turn, they deserve support, as well -- on SWAN Day, and all year round.

Posted by Cindy Cooper

Pictured: 2009 Swan Day poster from the Fund for Women Artists

Video: Egg Laws Put Pregnant Women At Risk

North Dakota is the latest state in which anti-choicers are trying to pass a sneaky law that would give a fetus the same rights as a grown adult. Yes, it's an "egg law" -- the same one that was defeated by a huge margin in Colorado in 2008. (Words of Choice toured there and had an up close view. Thanks again, Colorado!)

But these anti-choice folks keep roaming the nation to try and find another gullible state. Seems like North Dakota is it ... although a few others like Montana, Maryland and South Carolina are vying for the title of most foolish state legislature. The anti-choicers aligned with the hardcore Religious Right want to pass a state "human life amendment." They call it a "personhood" law and formed a group called Personhood USA to push it. But, by any measure, the proposals would wreak havoc on the law as human persons currently know it.

These laws would make abortion illegal in all circumstances. But that's not all they would do. And to explain other BAD elements, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women just posted a short video on YouTube (see link at bottom of blog entry) to explain how these proposals would harm pregnant women. NAPW is referring to pregnant women who want to carry a child to term, not those who are seeking abortions!

What are the dangers? "How Personhood USA and the Bills They Support Will Hurt ALL Pregnant Women" describes in four-to-five minutes on its video the cases of women who wanted vaginal births but were ordered to have their stomachs cut open in a Cesarean by a court because a doctor or hospital decided that was best under "fetus counts first" analyses. "These laws would affect ALL pregnant women," the video explains.

What's really great is that NAPW stepped out of the policy-wonk bubble and used a little creativity to describe in clear and factually accurate terms what can sometimes seem obscure or complex. When the propaganda of the anti-choicers is sliced away, it's pretty simple -- these "personhood" laws would benefit no one and be a disaster for women.

NAPW, located in New York City, is headed by lawyer Lynn Paltrow. The organization works to show how bad anti-choice policies affect women's reproductive lives, including those who want to give birth. According to th NAPW website: "By choosing to focus on pregnant women and the full range of attacks on their rights – including the efforts to establish fetal rights under the law and attacks made through the war on drugs–NAPW is making new allies and building new strength from a broad based and integrated approach to reproductive and human rights."

With its video, NAPW is also spreading its communications sensibilities -- and in especially admirable ways. See the NAPW video exposing the sham of "personhood" laws here.

Posted by Cindy Cooper

above: picture from video by National Association of Pregnant Women

Fadiman is First on Film and Abortion

Dorothy Fadiman is a superstar when it comes to making films about safe and legal abortion, and the dangers of illegal ones.

Anyone who wants older footage about the fight to legalize abortion and the days before it was legal will. invariably, end up calling Fadiman (as did Words of Choice for footage for our DVD). Operating from Concentric Media, her company in Northern California, Fadiman has made four films about abortion -- one won an Emmy, another was nominated for an Oscar. Each one is a classic. All can be viewed via online streaming -- see the links at the bottom of this blog. Spanish versions are also available.

In addition to making the films, Fadiman searched available archives across the nation and, without a doubt, has the best collection of historical film available -- or knows where to find it.

Fadiman's first three films, made between 1992 and 1996, formed a trilogy under the umbrella title, From the Supreme Court to the Back-Alleys & Beyond, 2.5 hours altogether. The fourth film, made in 2005, Motherhood by Choice, Not Chance, weaves together scenes from the trilogy into a 27- minute compilation.

Women Made Movies describes Fadiman's work: The films examine the deeper meanings of "choice" and how hard-won and fragile a woman's right to a safe abortion actually is at this point in time.

Here are Fadiman's synopses:

WHEN ABORTION WAS ILLEGAL: UNTOLD STORIES (1992) - Women who risked their lives and doctors who risked their licenses speak frankly to bring alive the era of back-alley abortions, revealing the physical, legal, and emotional dimensions of abortion when it was a crime. (Academy Award Nominee). Part 1 of trilogy, From the Back-Alleys to the Supreme Court & Beyond. 28 minutes.

FROM DANGER TO DIGNITY: THE FIGHT FOR SAFE ABORTION (1995) - The national movement to decriminalize abortion is traced through the parallel stories of illegal networks that helped women to find safe abortions and the efforts of activists and legislators who worked to change the law. (Emmy Award Winner.) Part 2 of the trilogy, From the Back-Alleys to the Supreme Court & Beyond. 57 minutes.

THE FRAGILE PROMISE OF CHOICE: ABORTION IN THE US TODAY (1996) - Vignettes from around the country, news footage, and interviews combine in an examination of how restrictive legislation, funding cutbacks, and anti-choice violence affect abortion's availability and how activists and clinicians are working to preserve abortion access. Part 3 of the trilogy, From the Back-Alleys to the Supreme Court & Beyond. 57 minutes.

MOTHERHOOD BY CHOICE, NOT CHANCE (2005) -- Distilling the history and power of three movies in the trilogy (above) From the Back-Alleys to the Supreme Court & Beyond, the film uses first person stories to bring alive the history of the struggle for women’s reproductive rights in the U.S. and the passion of those who moved abortion from the danger of the back alleys to a safe, legal choice. It includes information about current threats to those rights. 27 minutes.

Fadiman's website offers helpful materials -- a resource guide, discussion guide and promotional materials (although some need updating; for example, the promotional guide doesn't delve into Internet strategies).

She also has co-authored a book with Tony Levelle: Producing With Passion: Making Films That Change the World. It's a 21-chapter step-by-step guide "about building a community where people collaborate and share resources to turn a vision into reality." The book covers the entirety of a project from shaping an idea to distribution, planning, grants production and more.

Through generous sharing, Fadiman's abortion films can be viewed online at the Power of Choice Project and also at Fadiman Social Documentaries on the Internet Archive.

posted by Cindy Cooper

pictured above: cover from Motherhood by Choice, Not Chance, film by Dorothy Fadiman

Opportunities: Your Work in The Museum!

The International Museum of Women is throwing open its virtual doors to showcase women around the world through an exciting online venue called Exhibiting You! Individual women are invited it submit and enter their own work for display.

The museum will consider a range of works: visual art, creative writing, journalism, music, audio, photography, video and animation.

The women's museum (it uses the acronym I.M.O.W., but that seems incredibly hard to remember) is a virtual museum dedicated to "valuing the lives of women around the world," as described in an earlier blog. It emanates from San Francisco, but its "collections" and exhibits are all online.

As of January 2009 and continuing until September 2009, the museum is making its webspace available for artists to fill on their own with "inspiring work for social change." The museum explains that it is preparing a major exhibition for October 2009, and while that is underway, "we are showcasing the talents of our global community."

Most of what is currently exhibited is visual art. But number one on the "most popular" -- ten are listed -- is a combo essay and abstract color photograph called "Living in the Moment" by Sumithra Prasanna of Singapore. The photo is a bright sphere of light set in blue and purple and peering into darkened shapes that could be mountains or legs. In the accompanying story, Prasanna writes, "Doesn't life feel like an endless ride on a giant wheel of misfortune? .... Moments seem like beads, strung together on a thread spun out of your own misery..."

Other displayed works include a 7-minute film, '34x25x36,' in which New Yorker Jesse Epstein explores a mannequin factory in Los Angeles, with an eye to the manufacture of a perfect body. Using an ongoing musical sound track of wonder, interviews and powerful imagery of table-after-table of mannequin workers, mannequin heads hanging from the ceiling, hands being molded and a worker buffing a torso, she raises notions of worship and body image.

(One criticism -- sometimes it's a little hard to find the actual art ... you must go the the artist's page, and then find a button that says SHOW ALL and from that page, if the art doesn't appear, you must click onto a not-very-prominent link of the name of the artwork.)

Sisters is a series of charcoal and white paintings by Anki King of Norway; Women in Science by Hausenffeffer, a San Franciscan, has portraits in striking colors of accomplished women who are often grayed out by gender-bias; Please let me dream is a short performance on video about the experience of domestic violence by Haidji of Portugal.

Submissions to Exhibiting You! are made online. Each genre has its own specifications (stories 300-1,500 words; visual art, accompanied by a 100 word essay, and so on). Submitters must register as a museum member and the museum provides some tips on how to enhance an application. The museum selects the works to be displayed -- it seems that there are about 20 at any time. Viewers who register are invited to "curate" by rating the works with one-five stars.

Many strong and provocative displays by and about women are on the site -- it would be also wonderful for some explicitly pro-choice works to be on display in Exhibiting You!

Posted by Cindy Cooper

pictured above: logo from the International Women's Museum (I.M.O.W.)