Sister Space

Women & Their Work is celebrating 30 years of helping women artists, and for the month of May, the GiftShop will offer 30% off many gifts. It’s a great place to get the perfect Mother’s Day gift. Don’t forget, Mother’s Day is May 11.

Look for the pink dots!

Our 30th anniversary gala was a fête to remember! Just as soon as we recover, we promise to post more party pix. Thank you to Tocquigny for housing us and Cissi’s for feeding us!
YUM.

Let us commence the countdown to our 30th anniversary art gala and benefit party. This Saturday night, we (and we hope you too!) will be ensconced in the top of the Frost tower, sipping Tito’s vodka drinks and goggling at pro ping-pong players and Austin Video Bee installations. Christine at Chicken Fried Therapy is almost as excited about the party as we are!

In honor of our thirtieth year, we’ve been sifting through the archives here at Women & Their Work. Once in a while we like to post our fave images from the past–they’re way too good not to share. This week, jump in the wayback machine with us as we travel in time to the heady cusp of 1989-1990! The Berlin Wall was freshly toppled; protecting yourself was respecting yourself; Poison and Paula Abdul ruled the airwaves; the smell of Coty fragrance was in the air, and Women & Their Work put on some killer dance events.
How amazing is this? The pose, the heels, the lace, the office chair–doesn’t it sort of make you want to reach for a spritz of ex’cla•ma’tion?

Though we don’t know exactly who the top dancer is, we do know that his flat-top was looking regal, mustard was definitely his color and he seems to have been quite adept at vogueing. Nice royal blue/plum color palette there on his Ally Sheedy-esque dance partner.
The Urban Bush Women keep it cinched while waiting to take the stage at a 1989 elementary school performance.

Could anything be better than Lycra dance apparel in varying shades of red and hot pink in this Urban Bush Women promo shot? Probably not.
Urban Bush Women and Women & Their Work are both growing up–UBW celebrates their twenty-third anniversary this year! Since we can’t dig through their archives too, their website is the next best bet.

A 2001 study by the artist Eleanor Dickinson found that although the population of artists in the United States was roughly equal (fifty-three percent men and forty-seven percent women) the number invited to have their work exhibited were still startlingly uneven with eighty-one percent men and only nineteen percent women. WATW has paved the way toward improving those numbers with its continued success. It was the first organization in Texas to receive a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in the early eighties; it has been voted “Best Gallery” by The Austin Chronicle five times in the last seven years including 2006 and 2007; and it has been given a grant by the Warhol Foundation to insure stability and growth for the future. With blurbs in The New York Times, Art in America magazine and NPR, WATW has helped put Texas and its women artists on the map.

–From an Arts Feature article in the April issue of The Good Life magazine, in which writer Bonnie Neel offers a great, concise overview of the history of Women & Their Work.

If you live in Austin and you ever step outside, you’ve probably seen the pop/stencil/street art of El Paso-born artist Federico Archuleta, aka Fe De Rico. Even if you never leave your car, you’ve definitely cruised past his epic rock icon stencils depicting the likes of Iggy Pop, Johnny Cash, Joey Ramone and Janis Joplin on the former Tower Records building (now Intellectual Property) on the Drag.
Federico has big love for the Man In Black and once personally drove a commissioned Johnny Cash portrait to a buyer’s doorstep in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico all the way from Austin.

Look for Federico and his inimitable style at our 30th Anniversary Art Party on April 19th, where he’ll be drawing party portraits of the guests. We’re stoked he’s joining the festivities!