I first became aware of Tee Corinne’s work as a lesbian feminist activist and photographer in the Spring of 1977 when Sinister Wisdom featured her now iconic solarized photograph picturing two women entwined in an intimate embrace. Soon, poster versions of this highly erotic yet non-objectifying image proliferated in women’s bookstores, coffee shops, and households. Tee had already made a name for herself with the Cunt Coloring Book of 1975 and was showing work in bookstores and galleries around the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1979, I heard that she and several comrades (including Ruth Mountaingrove, Jean Mountaingrove, and Carol Newhouse) were organizing the first of a series of summer photography workshops for women. They coined the term “Ovular” (in contrast to Seminar) to describe the enterprise. These early initiatives affirm the concerns to which Tee devoted 100% of her energy: lesbian visibility, lesbian agency, lesbian love, and lesbian legacy. The camera, she believed, offered individuals and communities whose existence within mainstream histories has been erased an accessible mode of self-affirmation, self-preservation, and self-projection. The camera responded perfectly to Tee’s ambitions as both an artist and an activist. The Ovulars (held annually from 1979-1982) engendered a short-lived but influential lesbian photography journal entitled Blatant Image: A Magazine of Feminist Photography (1981-1983), published by a collective of 24 women whose members included the original Ovular “facilitator team.” The magazine’s objectives were to ask, as Tee herself explained, “How has the women’s movement changed the way we see? What kinds of photos are being produced and published now that haven’t been seen before? What are the realities of our shapes and our lives? What are the differences between the ways men have pictured women and the ways we see ourselves? We wanted the magazine to be accessible to all women, strongly feminist in structure, radical both in the sense of confronting the viewer with seldom seen or hard to look at images and in going for the roots of women’s vision. We wanted it to include both the work of women of earlier times and of our own, to include ideas as well as pictures.” This statement of intent could serve as an overarching description of Tee’s oeuvre.
The oeuvre consists of two books of erotic fiction (Dreams of the woman who loved sex, 1987, and Lovers, 1989), one novel (The sparkling lavender dust of lust, 1991), three collections of short stories, four books of poetry, and numerous small edition publications, in addition to collections of drawings and photographs. The publication formats range from album (Yantras of Womanlove and The Southern Oregon Women Writers’ Group Picture Book, 1982, At Six: An Artist’s Book, 1990) to calendar (Lesbian Muse: The Women Behind the Words, 1989). Portfolios of her art have been published in Lesbian Subjects, Feminist Studies, Gallerie: Women’s Art, The Advocate, Philadelphia Gay News, The Lesbian Inciter, I Am My Lover, and Femalia. She edited and photographically illustrated two anthologies of erotic fiction, Intricate Passions (1989) and Riding Desire (1991), winning the Lambda Literary Award for the former. Two of her photo-collaged works and one album cover were featured in the ground-breaking exhibition “In A Different Light,” curated by Larry Rinder and Nayland Blake at the University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Her photography is discussed by Jan Grover in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (1989), in Stolen Glances: Lesbian Take Photographs edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser (1991), and in Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History by Harmony Hammond (2000), among other publications. Most recently, Rudy Lemcke organized an on-line exhibition, “Tee A. Corinne: Cancer in Our Lives,” which may be viewed on the Queer Cultural Center site (http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/).
From the beginning, Tee took an active hand in the promotion and circulation of her own creative work and that of the lesbians she championed. To this end, she reviewed art and literature for a variety of publications. She was, for many years, the art books columnist for Feminist Bookstore News. Many of us know her as a co-founder, early co-chair, and tireless proponent of the Queer Caucus for Art. Her collaboration with Sherman Clarke as co-editor of the QCA Newsletter helped weld this scrappy assembly into something like a community and her book reviews for the newsletter have guided our itineraries as readers. In 1991 she was chosen by Lambda Book Report as one of the fifty most influential lesbians and gay men of the decade. In 1997 she received the Women’s Caucus for Art President’s Award for Service to the Arts (she co-founded the Women’s Caucus for Art, Lesbian & Bisexual Caucus). From the beginning, Tee was mindful of the historical significance of her work and, in addition to preserving traces of her career itinerary in self-publications such as Tee Corinne: Twenty-Two Years, 1970-1992, she has bequeathed a rich archival legacy to the Special Collections of the Libraries of the University of Oregon. A finding aid is available at Northwest Digital Archives (http://nwda.wsulibs.wsu.edu/). She encouraged others to honor their own work and communities by taking comparable steps. We will sorely miss that encouragement. Now it’s up to us.
Tirza T. Latimer
ttlatimer@sbcglobal.net
September 2006
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Tee Corinne lived her life in service to her art and her ideals. She always wished she were an American lesbian in Paris of the 1920s, and tried to create that kind of community wherever she lived. She was a tireless networker, taking great joy in introducing people she thought would make nice couples, or good collaborators, or who could just help each other do what they were trying to do. She belonged to a lot of organizations, and used her southern charm to bend them to her will.
She maintained long-term friendships with the novelist Valerie Taylor, columnist and gay activist Marie Kuda, and publisher Barbara Grier, as well as noted academicians James Saslow and Sherman Clarke and writer and gay rights activist Jim Van Buskirk. She was romantically linked with artists, photographers, writers, and thinkers, including photographer Honey Lee Cottrell, writer and activist Frances Doughty, novelist Lee Lynch, and, the love of her life, Beverly Anne Brown, a writer and social justice activist.
She made a lot of difference in the world. The work she did continues making change, and it’s up to us to keep at it.
Jean Sirius
jean@jeansirius.com
September 2006
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Preparing this issue of the newsletter has been different for me without Tee’s immediate input. Even as her health and that of her late partner Beverly Anne Brown took more of her time and energy over the past two or three years, her inspiration was still critical for me. She continues to inspire.
I visited Tee just a week or so before she died on August 27th at age 62. When I arrived in Oregon, she was in Rogue Valley Medical Center but my last view of Tee was in her living room at the comfortable home she had shared with Beverly in the mountains of southern Oregon. She was surrounded by a group of helpers, mostly women, many of whom she had taught. When we parted, she smiled, a deer was nibbling on a bush in the yard outside the window. The day was bright. Before I left, Tee indicated where she had hung a few singleton earrings that she wanted me to have. One of them was shaped like a callow lily or vulva which, for me, will be a continual reminder of the illustrations in her wonderful Cunt coloring book. Her last book is with Haworth Press and we await its publication.
During the summer, I happened to be looking at an earlier issue of the newsletter, from a few years ago. Its liveliness rose from the page, and Tee’s influence and inspiration were palpable. Our collaboration on the newsletter and on a CAA panel, as well as on a book of essays on gay and lesbian art which didn’t get very far, was a melding of interests and skills. We amused each other, challenged each other, fed off each other’s ideas and thoughts. She said it was fine -- queer, even -- for my preferred style of capitalization, based on years of library cataloging, to be different from the style she used in “About books.” She helped me see and talk about what I saw.
It is perhaps typical of Tee’s devotion and humor that the search keyword “orgasm” was suggested by Tee and her executor, Jeanne Simington, as a shortcut to Tee’s guide at the Northwest Digital Archive.
Sherman Clarke
sherman.clarke@nyu.edu
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Virtually all of Tee’s estate will become the property of the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives. Contributions in Tee’s name may be made payable to Tee Corinne Fund, with “Tee Corinne U of O Libraries” in memo line, and should be mailed to:
Library Development Office
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1299
If you have papers or materials relating to Tee, the archive welcomes your donations, now or at a later time, to become part of her collection and her legacy. Please call or write Linda Long, Manuscripts Librarian, at 541-346-1906 or llong@uoregon.edu
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Joseph P. Ansell
(1949-2006)
Joseph P. Ansell, 56, a teacher, artist and author, who was a leading expert on 20th century Polish-Jewish artist Arthur Szyk, died on July 27, 2006 at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore from complications of a bone marrow transplant. He was a recent resident of Auburn, Alabama, having spent much of his life in the Washington area.
He was born on July 19, 1949 in Bethesda and grew up in Silver Spring, graduating with an undergraduate degree in art in 1971 from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He held an MFA from George Washington University and his career in the fine arts led him to teaching studio art and art history at the University of Maryland, College Park, Georgetown University, Otterbein College, the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston, and Auburn University in Alabama.
At the time of his death, Joe Ansell was the interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn, having served as the Head of the Art Department and interim Director of the Jule Collins Smith Art Museum on the Auburn campus. He previously served as the Dean of the Faculty and Instructional Programs at the Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston, and as an Associate Professor at the Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio.
Joe Ansell excelled in the art of miniaturist painting and his works are displayed throughout the world, including the Musée de la Publicité in Paris, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where he had one of the early fellowships, and Tyrone Guthrie Center at Annagghmakerrig in Ireland.
In 2004 he published Arthur Szyk: artist, Jew, Pole, the culmination of his lifelong study of the eminent Polish artist who emigrated to the United States in the 1940s and was known for his anti-Nazi art and illustrations of Jewish religious traditions. Joe lectured on Szyk in the United States, England, and Poland, and traveled frequently in Europe for his research.
Joe was predeceased by his father Leonard R. Ansell. He is survived by his mother Shirley Ansell of Silver Spring and his sister Carol Ansell of Washington, as well as many relatives, close friends, and members of his extended family.
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Random Thoughts on the Long Path to the Truths of Our Queer Lives, dedicated to Arlene Raven
“Creative writers are always greater than the causes they represent.” -- E.M. Forster (1879-1970), in “Gide and George”
Arlene Raven died on August 1, 2006 of cancer. She was 62, a noted feminist art critic, art historian and hero to many including the queer community. I had the privilege of working with her on two major collections of feminist art criticism, an anthology and several other projects over the course of our friendship.
After receiving her B.A. from Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, Arlene completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. She married a fellow class mate Timothy Corkery, divorced and moved on with her life. In 1973, Arlene co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop with Judy Chicago and Sheila de Bretteville. This was part of the path-breaking Women’s Building in L.A. There, Arlene went on to create and edit Chrysalis, one of the most influential magazines of women’s culture to emerge from this era. Only connect! That was the whole of her whole sermon.
I met Arlene after her CAA presentation on Romaine Brooks who I had encountered the year before and determined to work on. Arlene with her then mass of raven black hair was dressed in a brown velvet suit. She was one of the most attractive, smart and sexy women I had ever seen and a breath of fresh air at a CAA conference plus she was courageous enough to be speaking on a lesbian artist. Add to this mix that she was a lesbian and her allure was irresistable. I never expected to know her or be working with her but life is full of strange and unexplained little twists.
I became involved in the women’s movement in art while still in graduate school at NYU, thanks to Anne Harris. When I returned to Coral Gables, Florida where I had grown up, I began working at Florida International University and introduced the first Woman and Art course in the history of the state. Through my work with the Women’s Caucus for Art chapter, formerly called WAIT, I managed to mainstream us. Eventually, I hooked up with Arlene and Johanna Frueh. I had the idea that we should put together a collection of feminist art criticism and we began work collecting what we knew was out there. And our books and articles are part of the feminist art movement’s history.
Arlene was an extraordinary woman, lesbian and feminist art historian/critic. Her dedication never wavered. She wrote countless articles, authored numerous catalogues including a definitive work on her lover Nancy Grossman’s art. Moreover, she curated groundbreaking exhibitions such as “At home” and she initiated the Lesbian Art Project in 1977. I am gratified that her articles and publications as well as the memories of her friends and colleagues will continue the legacy she left to all of us. Her courage, her dedication, and her determination to mend a broken world serve as a banner to those of us who remain and those of us who will carry the torch that she lighted. She took the road less traveled and that made all the difference.
A memorial for her will be held in September and a scholarship fund has been set up in her honor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Contributions made out to “MICA/Arlene Raven Fund” may be sent to:
Arlene Raven Scholarship Fund
Maryland Institute College of Art
1300 Mount Royal Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21217
Sandy Langer
docnoir@hotmail.com
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Julio Galán, neo-expressionist Mexican painter, died in Mexico on August 4, 2006. An obituary by Roberta Smith appears in the New York times for August 15th.