Shimon Attie of Brooklyn won a Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome.
Deborah Bright is featuring new work in a solo show at the Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston, January 2-26. Titled “Manifest,” the series of photographs in several formats explores artifacts of the Puritan and Yankee settlement of New England. Images from her series on horse fantasies “Being & riding” were included in “Horse tales: American images and icons, 1800-2000” at the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, N.Y. (14 Oct.-30 Dec. 2001).
John R. Clarke received the Vasari Award from the Dallas Museum of Art for his book Looking at lovemaking: constructions of sexuality in Roman art, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250 (Berkeley, 1998).
Whitney Davis has moved from Northwestern to join the faculty of the Department of History of Art at the University of California at Berkeley. Berkeley has just started a new interdisciplinary research unit and study center on the theory and history of sexuality (Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures) and Whitney will be actively involved in its programs. On November 28th, he presented some current research on “Homoeroticism, sexual selection, and the sense of beauty” as a public lecture for the Center.
Roberto Ferrari reports that his website devoted to Simeon Solomon has been updated with more images and links to documents. cf. http://www.fau.edu/solomon
David Hockney has been much in the art news the past couple months for his new book that posits that artists since the renaissance have been using optical equipment.
Kris Kovick -- cartoonist, author, spoken word artist -- died October 26, 2001, in San Francisco of breast cancer at age fifty. Author of What I love about lesbian politics is arguing with people I agree with (Alyson, 1991), she contributed cartoons and illustrations to numerous books and periodicals including How would you feel if your dad was gay? (author Ann Heron) and Glibquips: funny words by funny women (ed. Roz Warren), and Dyke strippers: lesbian cartoonists A to Z (ed. Roz Warren). She founded “San Francisco in exile” (www.SFinExile.org), an on-line audio archive of queer spoken word.
Kovick was born in Fresno, CA, September 10, 1951, and raised in Wilsonia, CA. She distinguished herself as a gay and women’s rights organizer at Fresno State in the 1970s, then spent five years in Seattle where she was the first woman to enter the printing trade in the Pacific Northwest. She worked as an etcher and scanner operator for twenty-five years. She moved to San Francisco in 1980 and lived there the remainder of her life.
Donations can be made in her memory to the Jon Sims Center for the Arts, 1519 Mission, SF, CA 94103.
Lili Lakich’s neon sculpture “Elvis II” (aluminum, copper, brass, animator, neon and argon gas in glass tubing, and neon crackle tube) is on exhibit at Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd at Fairfax, Los Angeles, through January 21, 2002.
Ann Meredith reports that the San Francisco Public Library LGBT Center has acquired a portfolio of 25 photographs of her work from the series “I am a witness: thirty years of LGBT culture.” Her newest film short “Strap ‘em down: the world of drag kings” (produced by her Swordfish Productions, Berkeley) premiered at the L.A. Lesbian International Film Festival in November. Also, she has been awarded a grant from the Zellerback Family Fund through the Northern California Chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art for the traveling exhibition/installation “Forgotten angels: a matter of honor: women who serve in the military.”
Richard Meyer will be reading from Outlaw representation: censorship and homosexuality in twentieth-century American art on Saturday, February 23 from 7:30-9 pm at Giovanni’s Room. Just out from Oxford University Press, the book shows how conflicts over censorship and homosexuality have shaped the history of modern art in America. Come celebrate with the author and support Giovanni’s Room, Philadelphia’s independent queer bookstore. Details of the event are included in conference information on page one.
Artist and psychotherapist Connie Panzarino died July 4, 2001. A disability rights activist, Panzarino is best known in art circles for designing a logo combining a woman’s symbol with a wheelchair access symbol and a closed fist (see Hysteria: a feminist magazine by women in Kitchener, Waterloo, vol. 1, #4, Spring 1982, p. 5). She was the woman in an electric wheelchair crossing a busy city street in JEB's book of photographs, Eye to eye: portraits of lesbians.
Constance Panzarino was born with spinal muscular atrophy type II in Brooklyn, NY, on November 26, 1947. By adulthood, she could only move her right thumb and facial muscles. Daily full-time attendant care allowed her to run her household, write, paint, garden, and cook. She obtained her master’s degree from New York University.
As a registered art therapist, Panzarino worked with men and women survivors of physical and sexual abuse. She was on the editorial board of “Access Expressed” of Very Special Arts, and was a supporter of the disability group Not Dead Yet.
Along with her autobiography, The me in the mirror (Seal Press, 1994), she authored books for children with spinal cord injuries and spinal cord diseases, and wrote short stories, essays, and magazine articles about gays and lesbians and people with disabilities. She was featured in the “Art as activism" issue of Woman of power (# 6, spring 1987).
Elisabeth Smith’s new mixed-media photographs will be featured in “Rock, paper, scissors” at Kim Foster Gallery, New York, opening on 10 January 2002. The works are in two series “Album” and “Games of chance” and reinforce the subjectivized notion of camera seeing by subverting the distinction between photography and painting, and by calling to mind the way memory acts on the past. “Album” compises 60 images -- both found images and photos by Smith.
Jenni Sorkin announces that her thesis exhibition entitled “High Performance: the first five years, 1978-1982,” a thesis exhibition will be held at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Anandale-on-Hudson, NY, May 12-May 26, 2002. The opening is Sunday, May 12, from 1-4 pm. Artists included in the show are Nancy Buchanan, Chris Burden, Theresa Cha, Tee Corinne, Lowell Darling, Cheri Gaulke, Jurgen Klauke, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, the Lesbian Art Project, Kim Jones, Paul McCarthy, Linda Montano, Richard Newton, Gina Pane, Reindeer Werk, Carolee Schneeman, Barbara T. Smith, Lon Spiegelman, and The Waitresses. For transportation details, including a free coach bus that departs from SoHo, contact Jenni Sorkin at jmsorkin@hotmail.com
Jim Van Buskirk reports that his piece “Body of knowledge” has been accepted for the anthology Dangerous families and that his reading of his own “Quel coincidence” will be aired on KPFA on December 25th. He read his short piece “Balls” at the Lambda Literary Festival in October.
Wessel + O’Connor Gallery announced its “last picture show”; the gallery will close with the show on 30 December 2001.