ARTICLES
The New York Feminist Art Institute
by Katie Cercone

Place of first publication
nparadoxa:  international feminist art journal: Incidental, volume 22 2008
www.ktpress.co.uk

alternative forms of healing such as ritual, dance and chanting. For the wall hanging piece Wedding Portraits (1977), Pat Lasch used photo compositions surrounded with cake icing-like paint squeezed from a pastry pouch, a technique she learned from her family run bakery business. The show also included work by Ana Mendieta, who spoke as a NYFAI panelist on the intersections of art and spirituality, as well as some of Hannah Wilke’s original late 1960s vaginal imagery. Wilke was involved with the NYFAI through speaking on panels, and taking on an apprentice from the institute for a period. The Transformations show became a hallmark of what was truly a transformation in the educational processes that the school had started to introduce in so far as each piece acted as a forceful catalyst.

Establishing a healthy working rhythm between the NYFAI member’s personal and professional aspirations for producing art collaboratively sometimes proved to be a delicate affair. Dena Muller, who conducted a portion of the NYFAI interviews and formerly served as director of A.I.R. Gallery in New York, a women-centered artist cooperative gallery established around the same time as the NYFAI, spoke to this matter during her interview with Melissa Meyer, “[T]he art world is structured around the individual artist being recognized for their individual talent, so collaborating in a group context can be especially complicated.” Although the largely positive reflections of former NYFAI members have proven the NYFAI was a much needed source of inspiration for many, the conflicts the women spoke of demonstrate how feminist community is never an idyllic, conflict-free utopia.

Over the course of the interviews a number of women discussed some of the conflicts that arose between the NYFAI’s members, some left unresolved. Elke Solomon spoke to the power struggle which developed between Nancy Azara and Miriam Schapiro, an instance she felt was “deleterious to everybody” and “deleterious to the school as well.” Solomon also lamented her cohort’s cursory deletion of abstract painting from the feminist visual economy, “Abstraction was seen as male. It’s yet another dogmatic way of thinking or not thinking about something.” In Joan Arbeiter’s interview, both she and Dena Muller touch on the drawbacks of consensus-oriented feminist models of administration, Joan remarking, “It was too laborious,” and Dena, “That circle business doesn’t work, somebody has to be in charge.” According to the Irene Peslikis Papers, held at the Special Collections Library at Duke University, Irene Peslikis, now deceased, was voted off the Institute’s board of directors due to a conflict regarding the issue of racial integration, a decision which prompted the resignation of others. Phyllis Rosser, who worked for Ms. magazine at the time, recalls when a number of the younger women didn’t want to have women of a certain age, including the institute’s oldest student Helen Stockton, showing in the Ceres Gallery. She recognizes that it was co-founder Rhonda Schaller who said, “No, this is going to be for women of all ages,” and remembers how subsequently, “All the young art students left.” Currently, Rhonda Schaller owns and directs The Rhonda Schaller Studio, an art gallery, studio and mentoring space in Manhattan’s Chelsea district where she continues to curate feminist exhibitions for women of all ages.

Despite its flaws, the NYFAI seldom failed to provide a unique environment in which students, faculty and teachers might cultivate new methods of conflict resolution through a consensus-based model. NYFAI alumna Sandra Lara, a blue collar worker and telephone supervisor, speaks to the way in which NYFAI “softened” her feminism and her way of approaching cooperative situations, “Working in a craft position with all men, in order to be seen and heard, [you had to] definitely elbow in . . . make yourself room, make yourself heard. They’re not going to hear a gentle voice.”

In “Our Journey to NYFAI” from From Our Voices: Art Educators and Artists Speak Out About Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Issues, partners Nancy Azara and Darla Bjork affirm their experience at NYFAI as a critical period in terms of defining and accepting their sexual identity. For lesbians, NYFAI became an environment of emotional safety, a place where a homosexual female artist could, in the words of Darla Bjork, “feel comfortable for the first time.” What resulted was an open dialogue between lesbian and straight women, each learning to listen