Joyce Kozloff’s Patterns of Protest

Episode Transcript
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Joyce Kozloff (00:00):
In 1975, Miriam moved back from California, and
she said, we're gonna start anart movement. And then people
loved it, and then everybodyturned against it and hated it.

Hrag Vartanian (00:11):
So who's the first that called it pattern and
decoration?

We did.

So who's we?

The group. I think it was maybe, like, the
second or third meeting whenthere were maybe a dozen people
there.

Okay.

We have to have a name. And there were the people
on the pattern side and thepeople on the decoration side.
It became a thing. And thenthere was a real backlash
against this.

Why? I did about P&D, you think, that didn't
fit in with that image?

I think maybe it was just seen as... frivolous.

Touchy feely or other things. Who knows?

You know, kitschy.

Right.

Those are the kind of words that are used.

That's the disparaging words right there.

Maybe there were too many women.

Hello, and welcome back to the
Hyperallergic Podcast. You werejust hearing the voice of Joyce
Kozloff, a key founding memberof the Pattern and Decoration
Movement, which is often justabbreviated to P&D. In the
1970s, along with artists likeMiriam Shapiro, P&D was a
major component the blossomingfeminist art scene. These

(01:10):
artists were fed up with hardedge abstraction, minimalism,
and art championed by white menthat claimed to be apolitical as
if that ever really happened.Kozloff and her colleagues
realized there was a realprejudice against pattern and
decoration.
In 1978 along with her friendValerie Jaudon, she wrote in the

(01:30):
Heresies journal that quote, "Wecame to realize that the
prejudice against the decorativehas a long history and is based
on hierarchies. Fine art abovedecorative art, western art
above non -western art, men'sart above women's art. In
rereading the basic texts ofmodern art, we discovered a
disturbing belief system basedon the moral superiority of the

(01:53):
art of western civilization."These politics are implicit in
the decades of resplendently andunapologetically ornamental art
that Koslov has gone on toproduce. Eventually, her pattern
paintings morphed into paintingsand maps which became more and
more overtly political.
And as a veteran of the 60s and70s peace movements, not only

(02:16):
did she refuse to shy away fromexpressing her dedication to
feminism, but she was alwaysinfusing a spirit of war protest
in her work as well. Even tothis day, her political activism
continues outside the studio aswell as inside. If you've been
listening closely to ourepisodes this season, you'll

(02:38):
hear some recurring characterscome back into the story. The
Heresies Collective, Columbiaprofessor Stephen Greene, and of
course, the leading 20th centuryart critic, Clement Greenberg,
who, like so many others in thatera, dismissed Kozloff's P&D
work as "ladies embroidery"- asif there's anything wrong with

(02:59):
that. Well, good thing it wasn'tall up to him, because Kozloff
went on to create over a dozenmajor public artworks over the
decades all across the UnitedStates.
And it would be fair to say thatwork like hers inspired
generations of artists tounabashedly lean into
extravagant ornament. In thisepisode, we'll talk about

(03:22):
everything from her mother'sembroidery to her travels in
Turkey and Iran that inspiredher art. And we'll also hear
from Hyperallergic staff writerMaya Pontone, who reported this
past year about an iconic subwaymural of hers at Cambridge's
Harvard Square that isunfortunately in danger of
disappearing. I'm HragVartanian, the Editor-in-Chief

(03:45):
and Co-founder of Hyperallergic.This podcast is supported by
Hyperallergic members. These
are people who believe in thepower of independent journalism
to tell stories that no one elseis telling. So if you can,
please consider becoming aHyperallergic member. Now, we
have a lot to cover, so let'sget back to the conversation.

(04:13):
So I'm in the studio with artistJoyce Kozloff. Hi, Joyce.

Hi, Hrag.

How are you doing today?

Very well. It's a beautiful day.

It really, really, really is. So one of the
reasons I wanted to have thisconversation with you was that
I've admired you from afar or atleast your work. So thank you
for coming in.

Thank you.

So I want people to get to know you a little bit,
and I wanna get to know you alittle bit more. So can we start
at the beginning? Tell us,Joyce. Tell us about your
childhood.

I grew up in a town in New Jersey, a small town
called Manville. I had 2brothers. I was the oldest of 3.
My dad was the borough attorneyof this town, and my grandfather
had a hardware store there.

Oh, okay. So you had real roots there.

Yeah. It's a very sad story about that town
because it was a company towndominated by the Johns Manville
Asbestos Factory Oh, wow. Whichwas the largest asbestos factory
in the world. Oh, wow. And

This was when when Jersey was making
everything in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. This is I was born in, December 1942.
So we're talking about theforties fifties.

Right.

The asbestos company knew about the harm of
their product, but the publicdidn't.

Of course.

And and many people in that town suffered the
consequences.

Ugh. It's a typical Right. Typical typical
story. So what was it likegrowing up in New Jersey in the
forties fifties? I mean, was itthe white picket fence Americana
thing?
Or, I mean, how would youdescribe it?

We had a backyard, and and and we had a
garden. We didn't have a picketfence. I walked to public
school. There was a publicschool that everybody went to. I
was only 35 miles from New York.
Right. But that was a completelydifferent world.

So did you ever go?

Well, you know, like once a year there would be
a trip to the Statue of Libertyor the Empire State Building.

Okay. No. No. Like a family trip?

A school trip. Oh,

school trip. So not even a family thing.

No, my family didn't do that. I think it was
small town America. It couldhave been halfway across the
across the country, you know. Mymother was a homemaker, but she
was very active in all kinds ofcommunity organizations. So was
my dad.
She did a lot of embroidery,very fine embroidery. Always.
She always had it with her. Oh,wow. And I think that may have

(06:37):
influenced me, but I neverreally acknowledged it.
And I regret that.

Why do you think? Why do you think?

That I didn't acknowledge it? Yeah. Because I
didn't take it seriously.

Right.

You know? And I wish I could tell her.

Well, that's one of the things, like Yeah. You
know? Well, you can't always,but you do see it now.

I do.

You do see that.

And then we moved to another town where I went to
high school.

Okay. And What was the town?

Well, we lived outside of it, but the town is
called Bound Brook.

Okay.

And so I went to Bound Brook High School. And at
the high school, there was oneart course that was called art,
which I took, you know. And I Isomehow I was always the class
artist, just all the way throughgrade school and and high
school. And so I would make thestage sets, and I would make the

(07:27):
the the signs and whatever. AndI loved that, and I get
validated for it.
I was everybody thought I wasthe class artist. But, when I
decided I went to an art school,I had a lot of resistance. My
parents and my teachers wantedme to go to a prestigious
liberal arts college.

Sure.

I think I wanted to go to art school and be an
artist as a kind of defiance,because I didn't really know
what it was.

Right.

You know, as to kind of defining myself as
different from them, and I hadan aunt and uncle that
intervened, who really were veryimportant in my life, and they
were in Pittsburgh. I mean, shewas a fashion illustrator, and
she was a docent of the CarnegieMuseum, and they were much more
cultured than my family. Andthey said to my parents, if she

(08:14):
comes to Carnegie Mellon, we'llwe'll look over her.

Got it.

And that's how I ended up going there.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Because of them.

That's really amazing. You just need, like,
one relative to, like, validateand be like, hey, we got this.

Well, everybody respected them, but when I got
there, I had a lot to make upfor because I'd only had this
one course called art.

So what was that like?

Well, I worked really, really hard, and I
didn't get good grades. And I Iforgot that, and when my mother
died, I was going through allthe papers and I saw my report
cards, I went, oh my god. Youknow? See in drawing, see in
painting. You know?
I mean, I I I had to I had somuch catching up to do.

So what was Pittsburgh like for you then?
Like,

what I loved it. I still love Pittsburgh. At that
time, the steel mills were stillthere. So I was

So it was a very different city.

Very different. I was there in the early sixties.

Got it. Okay. So the rust belt hadn't fully
rusted.

Yes. Yes. And and you could you'd see the the
steam coming out of the the thechimneys and the steel mills.
Oh, wow. And it's it's leveledon different level layers.

So did it feel more working class as a city?

Very much. Very much. And there were these steps
going up from one layer toanother that that people were
walking. And then there werealso these these trains that,
that took you up and down, andthere were trolleys. It's very
much a city of hills with these3 rivers that come to I don't
wanna be, you know, givingpromotion for the city of

(09:43):
Pittsburgh.
But there are these 3 riversthat come together at the bottom
and a lot of Beautiful. A lot ofbridges and then these these
levels going up and up and up.It's really terrific.

I mean, first time I went to Pittsburgh, I was
actually flabbergasted. Like, Iwas like, this is really pretty.
Yeah. And you don't realize howintegrated it is with these
bridges and rivers.

Right.

It's hilly around. It's kind of it's really
it's really pretty.

And then I took a course that changed my life. It
was my junior year, I believe.

Okay.

And it was a required course, I think it was
a required course for art majorscalled the Oakland Project.
Oakland was the neighborhood Oh,

got it.

That, the universities are in. And for a
semester, you were supposed togo out and document the
neighborhood. Mhmm. And everyweek, we came back and put our
stuff on the wall. And I wasjust so into it.
I was in the street, and I usedevery and I used every different
material and every differentapproach, and I just loved
watching the activity anddocumenting it. And and that was

(10:41):
the best work I did in artschool. And I think that had a
lot to do with my becoming apublic artist later.

Okay. I like that.

You know, I was it it was acknowledged as good
work for the first time in allmy years there. Yep. And that
felt good too.

So now what was teaching what was learning about
art there like? I mean, I'mguessing it was a pretty
traditional, probably no womendiscussed?

Oh, no.

So what was that like as an art student in the
sixties? Like, were

you Well, first of all, I was a an art ed major.
I did student teaching duringthe day, and I took studio
courses at night. And then Itaught junior high school and I
was really bad at that. And

How bad? How bad, Joyce? Come on, tell us.

I was eventually fired.

Oh, you're kidding.

No. That was

Go, Joyce.

My that was my first job in New Jersey teaching
junior high school art. And it Ijust So was

it you didn't have patience for them? Or was
it just like

I was

they were unruly

Yeah. I didn't know how to establish any type
of discipline or

control. Gotcha.

So they were throwing art supplies with wads
of wads of paper mache and paintall around the room. Finally, it
was so out of control. Finally,I was fired. And I mean, that
was supposed to be what I wasgonna do with my life. So I was
kind of devastated.

Well, okay. Plan b. So what was plan b?

I actually went to graduate school in fine art.

And where?

At Columbia.

So now what was the art world for you? Like, was
it this idea that the art worldonly existed in New York? I
mean, did you feel like therewas a career in it? Like, did
you You know,

I don't think I knew anything about any of that.

So you went in just sort of wide eyed I

really, I really don't think I did. Right. And in
Pittsburgh, we had thePittsburgh Biennial.

Oh, the Carnegie, yeah.

Carnegie. The Carnegie. Yeah. And that was a
way to see art from fromeverywhere. That was very
exciting.

So that was formative for you.

Yeah. That was that was great. And and the
Carnegie Museum in general.There weren't a lot of galleries
in Pittsburgh at that time.

Makes sense. Okay. So now you go on to grad
school. You moved to New York.Tell me about it.
I mean, because we're talkingthis is, like, literally the one
of the most boisterous times ofart in New York. Right? We're
talking, like, the sixties.

Yeah. I was there from 65 to 67. I

mean, that's kind of an important formative
period

in New York. I wasn't accepted into the MFA
program. I was in a programcalled special student or
something.

Got it.

And I was also working in 2 galleries on
Madison Avenue. So I was doingboth.

Oh, wow. Okay. 2, not even one.

Well, 2 days a week in 1, and 2 days a week in
they don't exist. They haven'texisted forever.

What were the names? Can I ask?

Well, one was called the Castellane Gallery.

Okay.

That was where Yayo Kusama first did those
installations.

Did you meet her when you were there?

Yeah. And I sat in the room with this these
these penises going out intoinfinity. Day after day.

You know, that sounds like a perfect 19 sixties
New York experience. Kusamapenises radiating from this
space. And what was your firstimpression of Kusama when you
met her?

I mean, she came in. She was very cute. She
always had a miniskirt on. Mhmm.And she was, like, already a
very hot artist then.

Right.

I mean, she was sort of the part of the pop art
scene.

Right. Right. Right. Did pop art excite you?
Yeah.
It did. Yeah. And what about itexcited

you? And also some of the abstraction that was
going on. It was just allexciting to me.

It was? So minimalism, color field, all

the same. So much minimalism.

Okay. Minimalism didn't feel exciting to me.

No. But I was more interested in abstraction.
And then when I got into thisgraduate program, we kind of
were all pushed into being hardedge abstractionists. Really?
And and we all went in doingdifferent kinds of work.
I was doing kind ofexpressionistic semi figurative
work. Mhmm. And by the time Icame out of the program, I was

(14:45):
doing hard edge abstraction.

Like everyone else?

Like everyone else.

So what was it? Why? Why? Was it like a
Greenbergian thing?

Yes. Very much.

So everyone was studying post painterly
abstraction

or something? It was just it was somehow in the
air.

Who were the professors at Columbia?

You know, the professors weren't necessarily
doing that kind of work.

It just felt like everyone was sort of
gravitating towards that?

Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. And eventually,
we all found our own separatevoices later, but we all came
out doing these, I mean, thesethese paintings that, like, mine
had maybe 3 or 4 shapes in themand Yeah. Very flat colors. And,
you know, my teach one of myteachers, Steven Green

Oh, you taught you learned with Steven Green.
He taught a lot of people. Iknow. Frank Stella too.

Right. A lot of people. So his claim to fame was
that he was Frank Stella'steacher, and he would talk about
Frank Stella all the time. Andhe brought Frank Stella in to
talk to talk to us. And,

I interviewed Frank Stella about Stephen Green
once.

Uh-huh. Stephen Green used to give you a tough
crit, and the next day, come inand apologize. Really? Yeah. And
I I remember that.
I think that was very neurotic.

He also taught Jake Berthold

Uh-huh.

And a lot of other people. Anyway, sorry. Go
ahead.

Yeah. He talked for a long time. And the teacher
who worked with me the most wasTheodore Stammos. Oh, okay. I
remember A

very arc New York school.

Yeah. I was very fond of him. He you know, like,
some teachers like the malestudents, some like the female
students. He was good with thefemale students. He was good
with the women.

And respectful.

Yeah. And I remember one day, I was doing
one of these paintings. He said,I'm gonna teach you how to
scumble. Go to the ladies' roomand get a lot of paper towels.
And we were down on the floor onmy painting with poured acrylic
and paper towels, and he wasteaching me how to scumble.
That's one of my most vividmemories of graduate school. So

(16:45):
how

do you how do you scumble? I don't know.

It's like you you you kind of make a soft surface

Got it. Okay. Got it.

Rather than a hard surface.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. So these are some of the
formative teachers for you?

Well, these were teachers, and they were all men.

Oh, I was about to ask. No women. No. So then
did you ever get a sense that asa woman you could make a career
as an artist? Or or was thatsomething that just appeared a a
scene

Yeah. Turned to you? I don't think no. Maybe
other people did. I mean, I waspretty naive.
I mean, I I don't think we we wethought about our gender that
much. You know?

But you must have known that it it there were
restrictions because of it. Imean, wasn't this New York where
you couldn't go into certainrestaurants if you weren't
accompanied as a woman? Isn'tthat the same thing?

Maybe I never tried to go. I know. But, yeah,
I mean, of course, but I knowthat I didn't say when I was in
school, why don't I have femalerole models? Why don't I have
female teachers? Looking back, Isay that, but when I was there,
I didn't Of course not.
I didn't say that.

Well, because if everyone's thinking the same and
it was sort of expected

Right.

That's kind of the way it works. Right?

Right.

Okay. Now you finished at Columbia.

I finished.

You said 1967.

Yes. Oh, and the other thing is the the peace
movement was happening in NewYork at that time. Right. And in
graduate school, I started goingto these enormous peace
demonstrations, like in fieldCentral Park, a 1000000 people,
you know. And at ColumbiaUniversity, there were all these
teachings and things.
And I think that that was very,politicizing moment. When I was

(18:18):
in Pittsburgh, I was doing thisduring the civil rights
movement, and I remember that.And I student taught in
Pittsburgh in a blackneighborhood in the hill. So I
had some exposure to the civilrights movement in but then,
really, it was the peacemovement in in which I started

(18:38):
to feel most involved.

So what was that?

And everybody was kind of swept up in it.

So did did it really

Certainly on university campuses. I grew up
in a small town, but I couldnever not live in a city. I'm
addicted to street life, andeven during COVID, I had to be
out in the street. So that wasone of the more most vivid
moments, those

Totally.

Demonstrations, and I still go to
demonstrations. Sometimes I askmyself, why am I still doing
this?

So, okay. So you've graduated. What did you
do next?

Well, I got married the same way that I got
my MFO.

Oh, okay.

Or the same Right. Month or something. I I
met my husband about 6 monthsbefore I finished at Columbia.

Okay.

The way I met him, he he he's an art critic.
He was an art critic. Is hewalked into our studios.

What's Max's full name for everyone?

Max Kozlov. Same name as me. Okay. He used to eat
in this pizzeria. Maybe it'sstill there called V and D's
over on Amsterdam and a 100 andsomething street.

Nice.

And he ran into Stephen Green. And Stephen Green
said, I wanna bring you up tothe studios and show you the
work of the graduate students.And he was pushing the guys
Mhmm. But Max came back the nextday and asked me, he said, I
have a question for you. And Isaid, Oh, I don't think I can
answer it.
And he said, Would you like togo to lunch? So that was easy.

You're like, I got that.

Okay. So we had lunch and we got married 6
months later.

Wow. Yeah. That's fast.

That was very fast. I know.

You just felt it. You're like, this is it?

I don't know. He talked me into it or something.

But you timed it with your graduation month I
don't know. Which isinteresting.

It's like everything, and then I kind of
didn't know what happened. Youknow? I mean, I got my MFA and
my MRS and

All at once. All at once. You know? And you're
like, why not? Next phase.
Okay. So now you got married,next phase of your life starts.

Right.

Talk us through it. What happens?

I inherited a studio from Miriam Shapiro.
Miriam Shapiro and Paul Brockwere friends of Max's, and they
were moving to California

Okay.

To teach at UCSD. Okay. And she was giving up her
studio.

University of California, San Diego.

Yeah. And she was giving up her studio on the
Upper West Side, and thereweren't very many studios. Oh,
we we lived at a 106th inBroadway. And she was in the
studio building, but she renteda section of a cloisonne
workshop. Oh.
And she turned it over to me.That was my studio for 7 years.

Wow. Okay.

I went there every day. I did some part time
teaching here and there.

But so many women of that generation, when
they got married, they sort ofstopped making art. You never
had that. No. You you knew youwere always gonna make art?

No. I No. Yeah. I never stopped making

art. And thankfully, it's like you it
seems like you had support fromothers who also

wanted to see

I did.

Yeah. Yeah. I did.

And was Max doing criticism then?

Yeah. So

he had already been writing criticism when you
met?

Oh, yeah. Okay. I actually had seen him lecture
and had read his work when Imet. Oh. That's why when he
asked

I love people who fall in love with art
critics. I don't know why, but

Well, you know, I didn't fall in love with him
when I heard him lecture.

Okay.

And that's why I went and came to my studio and
said he had a question for mebecause he was very
multisyllabic, and I didn'talways understand what he wrote.
I I that's why I said I don'tknow if I can answer. But in in
any case, about 2 years later,we had a son, Nicholas.

And what kind of work were you making?

Okay. So I continued that work that I
started at Columbia for a littlewhile.

Okay.

But it really wasn't me. And I came to realize
that I started introducing a fewmore shapes and colors, you
know. Mhmm. And then whenNicholas was born, I started
working in a tiny room, whichwas almost like a big closet in
the building where we lived.

Okay.

So that I couldn't didn't have to go out
away Sure. When I when I wasworking. And I had to work
smaller. And I started I don'tknow. I started doing these
paintings with, like, thesezigzags in them, almost like
game boards.
And I don't know why. But they,I think, were my first real
personal work. And I paintedthem in a kind of much more

(22:55):
nuanced painterly way. It wasn'ta hard edge anymore. They were
kind of soft geometricabstractions, and they had
repetition in them.
That was the first work that Ishowed. On my 30th birthday, I
had these big rolls of thesehard edged paintings in my
closet that I used to have toclimb over to get down the wine

(23:15):
glasses when I had company, andI threw them all out. Almost all
of them, I have one.

Oh, wow.

I I just didn't need them anymore.

You were done.

I was done.

But you kinda regret it, I think.

I don't regret it. Okay. And I I don't have
good pictures of it. I wish thatI had that, but we didn't have
good pictures then.

So where were you showing when you said you
were exhibit?

My first show was in 19, 70 at Tibor Denoche. Oh,
wow. And I showed with him allthrough the seventies. And what
happened was we were moving toCalifornia. Max got a job at
teaching at Cal Arts the 1styear.
And I had a toddler. And I hadnever shown my work to anyone.

(23:58):
So I took my slides around,which is what you did. And they
hold them up to the light, orthey say they're not interested.
And I went into Tibor D'Anache,which I didn't really think was
the right gallery, but I hadpaid a babysitter and everyone
else had rejected me.
So there were a lot of galleriesin that building. And so then I
went in there and Tibor wassitting there and he held him up

(24:21):
to the light and he said, whencan I come to your studio? And I
said, when would you like tocome? And he goes like, how
about tomorrow?

Wow.

And he came to the studio, and I didn't have a
complete body of work, but I wasmoving to California. And he
said, do you want September orOctober?

Wow. He really was taken by them.

This was no. This is not the whole story.

Oh.

This was like June when we were moving.

Got it.

His longtime director, John Bernard Myers
Mhmm. Had left with the wholestable

Oh, wow.

Right before I walked in Or maybe a week
before.

Timing, timing, timing.

I know.

Right.

And started his own gallery and took all the
artists. And Tibor had neverbeen active in the gallery. He
was a banker. He was behind thescenes, and his relationship
with John Bernard Myers ended.The gallery ended, and there he
was with a gallery and the fallseason coming and nothing

And no artists.

No artists. So somehow he filled up his gallery
pretty fast.

Well, we see how. Yeah. And lucky for you.

So he came and I and he said September or
October. I said, October?

So that was your first major show after?

That was my first show.

1st show period.

I had never been in a group show.

What? No. How did that how did you

how did God lose you? I said, just kept a student
show, maybe.

Yeah. But, no, how did that happen?

I, we weren't part of the downtown scene. We
were living on a 100 and sixthStreet.

So you felt disconnected from the downtown
scene?

I didn't know anything about it, really. Oh,
wow. You know? So so I wasliving in California when I had
the show. Right.
And I came in for the show, andthe show was reviewed. It got,
reviewed in a lot of short, nicereviews in different places.

And it was good reviews?

Yeah. Oh, good. Okay. And then he offered me
another show and another show,and I showed there for almost
every year through theseventies. Wow.

And And you were selling?

Some. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I guess I'm also asking because it's like I
wanted to know how much pressurethere was to sell in that era.

There wasn't any pressure. I

don't I don't think.

Okay. But he did sell. And they sold in those
days a lot to corporations.Mhmm.

Well, if you're a banker, I guess you also know.

Well, which is which is bad for artists because
then the work disappears intothe black hole.

And no one ever sees it.

Back hole and the corporations merge with other
corporations, and you never knowwhere the work is. But some of
my early work, I'll never knowwhere it is. But,

Oh, wow. Really? There's pieces you've just lost
track of?

I've lost track of. And I know other artists
have too. But anyway, so myreaction to my first show was
these paintings look reallysmall and timid. And and that
was good because getting themout of my studio into a big
white space Mhmm. Was reallygood for me.

(27:22):
And the next body of work Ipushed, you know, I pushed those
zigzags, and I pushed the color,and I pushed this pushed the
scale. And it started becomingmore exciting to me, you know.
This is where the decorationcomes in.

Love it.

So the year that we were in California, which was
1970, 71, I became involved withthe feminist art movement. It
was a very big thing in my life.It made me rethink everything
from my personal relationshipsto all those questions you asked
me about art Yeah. And what didI look at and why and and and

(27:59):
how did I see myself, and howdid I Mhmm. See my peers.
We formed this group called theLos Angeles Council of Women
Artists, and we protested at thecounty museum.

Yeah.

And that was my first, you know, feminist.

So what did you protest for in that

time? We protested. We went in, and we
counted the works in thepermanent collection, and there
was only one by a woman. And whowas it? Elizabeth Viger Le Brun.

You're kidding. That was

it. Yep. Easy to remember. And then we went in
the library, and we looked atthe catalogs of the exhibitions,
and there had only been one by awoman, and it was Dorothea
Lange.

You're kidding.

And it had been 20 years earlier.

And that was it? Yep. In 1970? Mhmm. Wow.

So it was very easy to make a list of demands.
One of the things that came outof that, that they they
demanded, or that the countyagree museum agreed to do with a
historic show about womenartists, which is the show that
Anne Sutherland Harris and LindaNochlin did, women artists 15 50
to 1950. And that came out ofFormative show. Yeah. That came

(29:13):
out of the demands that ourgroup made.

Oh. And you

realize that was so direct. And it didn't happen
till like 5 years later Right.Because of all the research they
did. Of course. So with myfriend, Gila Hersh, who's an
artist in California, we hadthis little project that we
never really finished,underlining in art magazines and
art history texts adjectivesthat were gender loaded.

(29:36):
Okay? So there were there therewere the tough, strong, virile
ones, and then there were thesoft, sweet, decorative ones. So
that's when I got interested inthe word decorative. Ah. Because
of the language, because how itwas used.

Right.

And that goes back to that year. And before I
started doing the work, Istarted thinking about
decorative, the decorative arts.Who makes the decorative arts?
That's so interesting. Thedecorative arts are made by
women, by people who areanonymous.
They're made by people in othercultures.

Right. But they're unnamed people.

Yeah. And in the Western hierarchy

That's right.

They don't appear. And in the way I learned
art history, they certainlydidn't appear.

Absolutely.

So I knew nothing about the decorative arts,
because I had a traditional arthistory background, and I loved
art history.

But you already spotted then there was this
hierarchy happening that was

That was that was the thing, was the underlining
of the words. And then Iremembered when I was in
graduate school, the worst thingyou could say we were all doing
abstract painting. The worstcriticism you could say was that
it was decorative.

You know, and it was true decades later too.

I gather.

You know?

So you tremble that someone would call it
decorative.

That's right.

So then I decided to embrace the word and stop
worrying about it.

Damn right. That's good.

And I wasn't the only one, you know.

That's also your activist self coming out

a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. But a but a lot of
people saw that as, okay, we'regonna we're gonna turn this
around, you know.

Great.

So what was happening was in these paintings
I was doing, which were gettingmore intricate, I was painting
these these textures withdifferent kinds of brushes and
brushstrokes and the differentshapes, and they were turning
into patterns. And there was afine line between a texture and
a pattern.

Yep.

In 72, I went to Tamarind, and I looked at a lot
of Native American, carpets.

So Tamarind is a is a print, Lithography
workshop. Lithography workshop.

And the summer.

For those who may not know.

Yeah. In the summer of 73, we spent in a
village in Mexico. Max waswriting about the Mexican mural
paint movement. And I waslooking at Mexican decorative
arts and copying the patternsinto my into my sketchbook so
that I could come home and usethem in paintings. And then
immediately, I started puttingthese these patterns into into

(31:57):
my paintings.
And that was the beginning of mypattern painting. Some of the
others in the group were weredoing it earlier, you know, and
we didn't necessarily know abouteach other. We found each other
through a kind of osmosis. Iknew one person, another person,
and something was in the air.And we came to it from different
roots.

I'm always curious how the movements
formed. So when you were talkingabout the feminist movement that
was sort of forming, were thesejust kinda colleagues that
slowly you started hearing therewere gatherings? Or, like, how
did you get involved?

Okay. So Miriam Shapiro was a mentor, and she
was 20 years older than me.

So you knew her in New York. That's how you
ended up with her studio.

I knew her in New York, but not very well.

Okay. Got it.

And she was really a different generation.
Mhmm. You know? She and herhusband were friends of my
husband. And then when inCalifornia, I got to know her
better.
I was a faculty wife. And thefirst party for the faculty and
faculty wives, another facultywife invited me to a
consciousness raising group. Oh.And I joined the group. This is

(32:58):
the fall of 1970.
Mhmm. And it it completelyraised my consciousness within a
couple of weeks. It was veryradicalizing.

So so what The women were like?

The women weren't artists in the group.

Okay. But when you say consciousness raising,
what it what it was the whattook part? What took place, I
should say?

You have a subject for the evening. Okay.
Like How do you feel about yourmother?

Oh, okay.

How do you feel about your body? Very basic
subjects.

Wow.

You go around the room. There are 8 or 10 women.
Mhmm. And each one addresses thesubject from her own experience
as allowed 15 or 20 minutes.

Wow.

And you're you can't interrupt. And then at the
end, you have a conversationabout the commonality of it. And
I I don't know. It's not it'svery different from group
therapy where you deal withpeople's problems. This becomes
a social issue that is shared.
Right. And it's very it's veryradicalizing is all I can say.

I could imagine. This is also pre talk shows, so
you probably didn't have a lotof opportunity to hear people's
experiences like that.

So and there were very different women in the
group, different ages, differentlevels of of education. We came
together through, a women'scenter near where I lived, who
signed up for it. And this otherwoman who asked me to join
signed me up, who was also a faca displaced faculty wife with a
young child, you know, comingout from the East Coast. So I

(34:20):
was when I saw Miriam Mimi, Iwould talk about my conscious
retinist raising. So then sheinvited me to this brunch at
June Wayne's.
June Wayne was the former anddirector of the Tamarind
Lithography Workshop. Got it.And at the meeting were all
these people I met for the firsttime. Several of whom became

(34:42):
friends. 1 was Judy Chicago.
1 was Moira Roth, who diedrecently. He's an art historian.
And Bev O'Neil, who was an arthistorian, who also died. And
Claire Spark, who did programsfor Pacifica Radio. They went
around the table, and everybodysaid what they were going to do.
They're gonna start a feministeducation program. They were

(35:02):
gonna start a magazine orsomething. And it got to me, and
I didn't have a project. And I Iguess I was set up, but Miriam
started saying to me, you alwaystalk about feminism. You always
talk about and and you don't doanything.
And I felt kind of shamed. Mhmm.And I was, like, holding back
the tears. And so I said, well,well, what should I do? And they

(35:25):
said, you're gonna organize theWomen Artists of Los Angeles.

How did that go?

Well, I only knew the ones in that room.

That's great.

So I I mean, I think I was set up. Anyway.

But did it work?

Yeah, it did. They each gave me a list.

Oh, wow.

And mostly Miriam did it, and she really wanted
this to happen. And then shewanted to empower me, you know,
and and I have to give hercredit for that even though it
was very humiliating. So I endedup calling all these people I
never heard of. I remember therotary phone on the wall and the
lists and calling and checkingoff, and I have taken care of

(36:10):
this baby and trying to do mywork, and 65 women came. Crowded
into this small apartment,standing room only.

Which apartment?

Apartment that we lived in in.

Okay. So, okay. So 65 women show up. Yeah. What
was the reason they showed up?

I told you the names. A lot of them are very
famous now.

Tell me.

Lucita Hurtado.

Mhmm.

Betty Saar.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Alexis Smith. Oh, wow. Via Selman. Many well known
actors.

So we're talking really an important group of

people. But but nobody was well known then.

Of course. So what do you think people showed
up?

We were we were mostly young.

So why did they show up?

They were mad.

At what?

Well, first of all, there was this show opening
at the county museum called Artand Technology. And someone,
Chana Davis, do you know her?

Yeah, I do.

Chana was the only woman who was part of this
project, art and technology,which a lot of money had been
poured into by the county museumwhere they put artists into
different industries. Right.

And those people you may not know, the county
museum is LACMA, essentially.

LACMA. So LACMA.

Go ahead.

And it was opening and the catalog had a
grid of faces on the front.

Mhmm.

And they were all men. Right?

That would make me mad too. I could see. Yeah.

And I don't know if they were all white men, but
they must have been almostProbably. Almost all

white men. We could probably guarantee that
without even looking.

Without even looking. So that was that was
what they were mad about, pluseverything else. But anyway, we
decided to protest the countymuseum.

Mhmm.

The main thing that came out of it was the
historic show.

But that's a big deal.

It was a big deal.

But it's also this was probably the first time
you met a lot of these women.Mhmm. And was it the first time
a lot of them met each other?

Yes. And they recognized each other. Some of
them were the wives of artistsand didn't know that they were
artists. Oh, wow. And they, youknow,

and So this was formative. This was a formative
event.

And a lot of those women remember that
evening.

Right.

You know, like Luchita said, Luchita Mulligan.
She was married to the artistLee Mulligan. Oh. And June Wayne
said to Hurtado, and she goes,Luchita Hurtado. It's like she
owned her name, and that and andshe always talked about that
moment.

Oh, wow. So okay. Wow. So you played a big
role.

I think it was a, a moment, and it was a it was
just a moment, and I happened tobe there. And I happened to be

Jordan just happened to be there. You made
everyone come together.

No. No. Don't

You called everyone.

I did. I made the phone calls.

It's alright,

Joyce. Own

it. Own it.

I was I was scared if I didn't, that I would

The shame, I'm telling you. Shame.

Right. So anyway, so that year was such an
important year for me, and Imade lifelong friends. People
who were really important

to me. So that that event, the day after, the
weeks, the months after, whatdid it force you to challenge
about your own work, and maybeyour own trajectory, or what you
thought about fellow artists, orthe art community? How would you
how would you

characterize that? I started seeing people
who were doing really overtlyfeminist art and feeling a
little embarrassed about beingan abstractionist.

Really?

Yeah. Okay. But it was a while before I could
act on that, you know. Mhmm. Imean, my sensibility was already
formed.
But I was very interested. Therewas a group of women in the Bay
Area, and that that summer welived in the Bay Area, and I
sort of joined that groupbriefly.

So what was this group?

It was a group of women artists that had their own
weekly meetings, kind of aconsciousness And

who are some of them? Do you mind mentioning?

Anne Lita Shapiro, Danelle Estee, Judith
Lanier.

So prominent artists now in their own right
too?

Yes. Yes. And and, a bunch of others.

How was the Bay Area deal? Very different.

Very different.

So, well, how would you characterize this?

Well, there's because because they came out of
Bay Area art.

Right.

And some of them had studied with those guys at
Davis, you know. Got it. So itwas figurative. It was small. It
was intricate.
It was funny. It was outrageous.

So when you say Davis, you mean UC Davis because
that was such a formative artschool

in that period. Right. Right. They were doing
these wacky, paintings, likewatercolors, small and tense.

And painting in the Bay Area never quite waned.
It's always been prominent too.

Right. And and but this was like a feminist
version of Bay Area art. Right.And, and, you know, and I was
sort of, like, embarrassed I wasdoing this New York abstract
paintings. Anyway, it all wentin the hopper.
Let's put it that way. It allwent in the hopper, and I
respect all those people, and Ilove their work. Then I joined

(40:53):
the feminist groups when I cameback to New York. But it didn't
have the same impact on me.

The New York ones.

Yeah. No. Because that moment was was in kept for
me in California.

Got it.

But I was active in those groups. I was in the
Heresies Collective Mhmm. AndI'm very involved in the
formation of that magazine andthe Tell us

a little bit about Heresies.

We're gonna be here all day. Good. Oh, come on.
I'm serious. Alright.

So If you're open to it, I love this. So as
long as you're open to it, I'mopen to it, Joyce.

Okay. Well, let's just see how far we go.

Okay.

It's like we're still 40 years back, so it's not
too good.

But this is a formative period. Right. Okay.
So now Heresies. So now what wasthe difference between this
Heresies group in New York andthe groups you were in in
California?
Were there differentconversations going on?

Well, Heresies was later. It was around 1975
when we formed Heresies.

Got it.

We felt some of us have been speaking among
ourselves, that we needed tohave a publication. Mhmm. And
that it had to be issue orientedand had to be around the issues
that we were interested in.There were some feminist art
publications, but they were moremonographic about an individual
people's work. We were we wereinterested in more thematic

(42:05):
issues.

Sure. More about the collective.

Yeah. So there were 21 of us that formed this
collective. And we weren't allartists. There were some
writers. There was ananthropologist.
There was filmmaker. But we'repredominantly artists. Mhmm. And
it was a magazine about art andpolitics. Mhmm.
Feminism Art and Politics. Andit was supposed to be a
quarterly, but it never came out4 times a year. And it existed

(42:31):
until 19 9 1993.

Oh, wow. Okay.

I mean, different people were involved with it.
Totally. And there weredifferent groups that worked on
each issue. The issues wereformed around the people's
interests.

Got

it. Like a group of women involved with music
could say, we wanna do an issueon that. And then they would get
that issue to do, or women inarchitecture.

Did you do any issues?

I worked on women's traditional arts, the
politics of aesthetics, issuenumber 4.

Nice.

That was the decorative arts issue. You know,
each of these issues, thecollective on that issue would
work on it for a year, arguingabout each thing, collecting
that you probably know,collecting the material,
reviewing and having peoplerewrite, collecting the visuals.
It was all black and white. Thisissue went through a
transformation. Our originalidea was to talk about the

(43:21):
decorative arts, and ElizabethWeatherford, who's an
anthropologist, was veryinvolved.
We were talking about itglobally as an homage, but we
began to discover that in manycultures, it's a form of
oppression. That, you know, inEurope, little girls went blind
making lace. They had the littlegirls making the lace because

(43:43):
their eyes were the best.Absolutely. And in the near
east, they have little girlsweaving.

That's right.

That's why we had slash women's traditional arts,
the politics of aesthetics.

Got it.

Because it became a much more complicated thing
than just making an homage.That's the thing about pattern
decoration. The the criticismsthat we've received for
appropriating from othercultures, which we saw as an
homage, not not takingsomething. But we were naive. We
didn't see the full complexityof it in the beginning.

Sure.

And I I can see that now. Mhmm. And I really try
to be a little more clear aboutit. But I was painting those
pattern paintings during thetime that I worked on the issue.
The issue didn't come out till1978.

Oh, so like at the peak of

Yeah.

Pattern and decoration. Yeah. So that was
that was probably veryformative, the influence of that
issue.

It was all interwoven. Yeah. And Valerie
Jardin and I coauthored a piecethat was in that issue Got it.
Which was a collection of quotesabout decoration.

So what was your first pattern in decoration, or
a PND, as we sometimes call it

Okay.

Work?

I think my first pattern decoration painting was
about 1973, and it's calledThree Facades. It's based on
sketches from Triguresque churchfacades in Mexico. Oh. Okay.
Those churches were, I think,16th century, and they're
interlocking brick and tilefacades.

(45:11):
Got

it. Got it.

Got it. And very, very rich. Very, very rich. And
we'd been in Mexico, and I madesketches of them. There's 3
zones in the painting, and thereare 3 different patterns.
And And

how large was it?

Or

is it, I should say?

It's 60 by 40, something like

that. Okay. So it was quite large.

Yeah.

Okay.

And some people thought it looked like a quilt,
but it wasn't based on quilt. Itwas based on architectural
ornament.

Was that a dismissive comment when they say
it looks like a quilt at thattime?

No. Women always think everything looks like a
quilt.

Okay. Well, I was just trying to think if that
was one of the coded words likedecorated or something. No.

I don't think so.

Okay. I don't

think so. Anyway, to me, it looks like what it is.
I like the painting and I sentit up to Tibor's. It was between
shows. And he had it in the backroom.

Okay.

And Clement Greenberg came in

Okay.

And saw it and said it looked like ladies'
embroidery.

What a great compliment.

And Tibor freaked out, called me on the telephone,
and told me to take it away.

Wow.

He was his voice was shaking when he called me.

So I guess he didn't think of it as a
compliment.

No, he didn't. But the weird thing was I put it
in my next show. I sent it backup there with the other
paintings in my next show, whichwere all pattern paintings, and
he didn't say anything.

Maybe it took a while for him to process. Maybe.

Or maybe Maybe he was like maybe Clem didn't come
in again.

Or maybe maybe he was like, you know what?
Screw that guy. I don't agree.

In 1975, Miriam moved back from California.
Mhmm. And she said, we're gonnastart an art movement. We're
gonna meet with a couple ofother people doing this pattern
deck. Well, we didn't have thename yet, doing these pattern
paintings.
And she had met Bob Zukanich inCalifornia, who was doing a
visiting artist gig. And so themeeting was at his loft, and Amy

(47:09):
Golden was there, who was an artcritic, who had it was a big
California connection. She hadbeen at UCSD, and so had Bob
Zakanich, and so had Mimi. And,Bob Kushner and Kim McConnell
had been there too. And thenTony Robbins knew Bob Zukanich,
and that was the very smallfirst meeting.
And then there were there werejust a couple meetings, but it

(47:31):
grew. And then there wereexhibitions, and then it became
a thing. And then it was writtenabout, and then people loved it,
and then everybody turnedagainst it and hated it.

So who's the first that called it pattern and
decoration?

We did.

So who's we?

The group. Okay.

So how many of you were how many of you were in
the we?

I I think it was maybe like the second or third
meeting when there were maybe adozen people there.

Okay.

We have to have a name. And there were the people
on the pattern side and thepeople on the decoration side.

And where were you meeting?

I think it was like also at Bob Zicana's loft.

Okay. And where was that?

In, Tribeca.

Tribeca. Okay. Got it. And by then, you had
already moved to SoHo?

I I moved to SoHo in 74. 74.

Okay. In the same place you still live?

The same place I still

live. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. So now pattern
and decoration becomes a thing.

It became a thing.

There's about a dozen

of them. And the Holly Solomon gallery open.

Okay.

And she was really promoting it big time,
and she had a lot of decorativeartists. And she was really
pushing the decoration part.

So why did you think she she it spoke to her?

I think it related to her sensibility.

Got it.

I think she loved it. Got it. You know? And she
took it to Europe, she took itto the art fairs. And then there
was a show, I think, around 1978at PS 1 curated by John
Perrault, in which there wassomething like 45 artists.
So it it be it did become athing for a couple of years. And
then there was a real backlashagainst this.

Why? Tell me a little bit of a backlash.
Because, you know, when Istudied in the nineties, pattern
and decoration was in certaincircles was kind of
disparagingly talked about.Right?

I'm sure.

Do you know? But at the same time, artists never
stopped looking at it. Do youknow? Like, a lot of artists
were still inspired by it indifferent ways. Now where did
the backlash do

you feel? Snooze to me.

Well, I mean, I saw it. Maybe it wasn't such
grand scale, but I definitelysaw, like, snippets of it here
and there. Where do you thinkstarted the backlash? Where do
you think that was coming from?

Maybe there were too many women. I don't know.
Really?

You think that might have been part of it?

I don't know. I mean, I think the aesthetic had
a feminine component to it, youknow. And a lot of people don't
like that. But I but I thinkthat what happened is there was
a pendulum swing away.

Right.

There was pendulum swing toward, neo
expressionism around 1980. Imean, the seventies had a much
looser time in terms of the artmarket. It wasn't the seventies
weren't so art market driven theway the eighties were.

Right. Well Reaganomics had a big effect.
Right?

I think so.

Do you think Reaganomics had an effect of
this kind of like rejecting ofthis kind of feminine or
something?

Well, I always thought that it was Reagan's
politics, you know, that Yeah.

Tell me about that.

That well, I mean, I just the whole country
kind of turned to the right.Right. You know, and

So what was it about PND you think that didn't
fit in with that image?

I I think maybe it was just seen as, frivolous.

Touchy feely or other things. Who knows?

You know, kitschy.

Right.

Those are the kind of words that are used.

That's the disparaging words

right there.

Got it. So one of the things about this

But it, you know, wasn't. I mean, we really took
it very seriously.

Totally.

I mean, we we really studied the decorative
arts. We used to go to theCooper Hewitt and the Met. And
the Islamic wing opened at theMet in 1975, and that was a big,
big influence on me and many ofthe others.

Yeah. I guess we forget about those little
things, like the opening of anew gallery is gonna have a huge
influence.

And the Cooper Hewitt opened around that time
in New York. And they hadwonderful shows in those years,
and we used to go together andlook at them and talk about what
we were looking at.

Got it. So now part of these works in the
seventies, we're looking rightnow at an image of short silk
from 1978. Definitely has afeeling of, like, different
pattern books and stuff. Now wasthat something that you were
passionate about? Becausethere's, like, such a beautiful
coming together of these really,like, I mean, frankly, disparate
and, like, diverse patterning.

I made those silk pieces at the fabric workshop.
They're printed. Yep. And Iwanted to make this total room.
I was challenged.
I was going around the countrygiving lectures like artists do
Mhmm. About my work. And I'mtalking about P and D. And I
didn't only talk about my work.I had, like, a whole P and D
lecture too.
Mhmm. And there would be peoplein the audience who were in

(51:53):
craft, and they would challengeme. You're not because we talked
about breaking down thehierarchy. Art, decorative art
High hierarchies. Yep.
Hierarchies. You're not breakingdown the hierarchies. You're
just taking from low art andmaking high art. You're just
taking from us. In other words,you're downwardly mobile and
we're upwardly mobile.
Do you know what I mean?

Oh, wow.

You know? And I got that a lot. Really? And I
started thinking about it. Istarted thinking about it.
And I started thinking thatmaybe they're right. Maybe I had
to get my hands dirty. And Ionly knew how to paint. That's
the only thing I ever did. Youknow, I never learned how I
certainly I failed ceramics inart school because I couldn't
throw a pot.

(52:34):
I just couldn't throw a pot onthe wheel, and that was a
criterion. But I decided I hadto get my my hands dirty. I had
to sort of listen to thesepeople, and if I really wanted
to break down the hierarchy, Ihad to do that.

Learn the skill.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's when I started making the tiles, which
are very crude in the earlyones. I mean, I rolled out the
clay with a rolling pin and cutthe shapes with cookie cutters.
And then I wanted to make thistotal room at the gallery. And I
made it at the Tea Board andNagy Gallery. And it was shown
in 1979, and it had acombination of the tile work and
that hangs silks it that I didat the fabric workshop.

(53:11):
And I knew that I couldn't coverall the walls unless I used some
print process.

Got it.

You know? So I repeated the they're silk
screens. I repeated the screenon different colors with
different inks to give avariety, and the patterns
themselves, these are mostlymostly Egyptian and Islamic. It
had to do with what I waslooking at. There was a So yeah.
There was a King Tut show in theI

was about to say that this one we're looking at
now from 1979 is Tut's WallpaperRight. Which is the same period
the giant blockbuster King Touchshow came to New

York. That's right.

I mean, I love it. I never really quite thought
of it, the fact that, like,these are also a reflection of
the visual environment

Yes.

In the art world at the time.

For me, it was. I mean, I stayed very close to my
sources and probably too close.I mean, a number of the other
artists were much more playfuland loose with their sources. I
was deeply respectful of mysources. So, you know, that was
just me.

Totally. Absolutely. So now the backlash,
like, how did that manifest? Imean, did it mean, like, all of
a sudden, gallerists didn'twanna show the work? Did it mean
that, critics were being verycritical and mean about it?

I mean, what did it mean? All of the above. All
of the above. Many of thoseartists haven't had a gallery in
decades.

Got it.

And

So it really felt like a real rejection.

Feminist, we were called essentialists, and that
was very hurtful.

So how were you essentialists?

The next generation, and I'm gonna say
this very crudely, and I'mactually very interested in
their theory and their work, butthe next generation criticized
my generation for havingessential ideas about women,
about gender, that gender isconstructed. So what we're
doing, which is, glorifying thehandiwork of women, was

(54:56):
considered essentialist. Thatwas more painful to me than any
of the other

Sure.

Objections. Yeah. You know?

So what do you think of that criticism now?

So my work is so much about Islamic art, which is
mostly male.

So why do you think you the the appeal of
Islamic art? What what was that?Was it partly just the Met,
like, gallery and this, like,whole new world opened up to
you?

Yeah. Yeah. I loved I loved it. And in the
seventies, I went to Morocco andTurkey. Mhmm.
And later in my life, I went toother other countries. I went
to, Tunisia and and Egypt andIran and India. But during the
seventies, during that time, andspecifically went to see the

(55:37):
things I was interested in. AndI was very interested in
architectural ornament. I stillam.
And then in the eighties, Imoved into public art, which
comes right out of this.

So let's talk about the eighties.

Okay. So this project that I put together with
the hanging silks and the thetile floor piece and the tile
pilasters, I called an interiordecorator. And the travel It was
I showed it in 4 differentvenues. In each place, I I
adapted it to the room. It was 2years of work making those
pieces, and they would exist for3 weeks and take a week to

(56:10):
install.
And I thought, this is justdoesn't make sense. Mhmm. You
know? I mean, there are peoplewho do installation are here
much more flexible in the waythey work. And I wasn't able to
think of a way to work that wasmore flexible.
This my work is very inflexible.So I wasn't thinking about doing
public art, but I got this, formin the mail that probably

(56:32):
hundreds of artists got to fillout to apply for, the transit
stations in Cambridge,Massachusetts, which was the
first transit program in the US.

Amazing.

They had it had been in other cities. And I said
in my slides, and I think thefact that I was working in tile
was was a a useful thing.

Absolutely. You can imagine for public art.

Yeah. So 6 months later, I I was a finalist for
Harvard Square.

Amazing.

And I did my proposal, and it was accepted.

So I'm speaking to Maya Pantone, who is a
reporter here at Hyperallergic.Hi, Maya.

Maya Pontone (57:07):
Hi.

So, okay, you've been doing some reporting on the
Joyce Kozloff mural in the TeaStation at Harvard Square. And
so tell us a little, like, getus up to speed. What's going on
with this mural? And tell ustell for the some of us who
haven't been to Cambridge, inMassachusetts, what what they
would see if they were in frontof this mural.

Yeah. So this mural, New England Decorative
Arts, it was installed in 1985.Mhmm. So it's been there for
quite a while, and it'sdefinitely changed over time.
It's super colorful, almostlooks like a quilt, which is
purposeful.
There are lots of imagesreferencing New England's
regional history. You havesilhouettes from European

(57:49):
settlers to displaced indigenouscommunity members. You have
allusions to New Englandcemeteries, flora, fauna,
houses. It's 85 feet long. It'slocated big.
It's really big. 85 by 8 feet, Ibelieve, and it is located in
the bus terminal. So when youwalk into the station, you go

(58:12):
down several flights of stairs,and it'll be off to your left.
Harvard Square's tea station,like most of Boston's tea
stations, that's what its publictransit is called, the tea. The
station is in severe disrepair.
So the mural is also indisrepair. It is cracking. The
ceiling is falling apart.There's water damage, and there

(58:36):
are at the moment are no plansto repair this mural.

So And that seems to be an issue with the
wider Boston Tea System. Right?

Yeah. The tea system is a complete mess. If
you talk to anybody from theGreater Boston area, they will
probably have more than just onegripe with the tea. Especially
in recent years, it has gottenreally bad. There have been
several accidents.
There's so many delays.Sometimes the trains don't come.
Yeah. It's it's a really bigproblem. Yeah.

(59:06):
And, yeah, the lines have beendown, periodically.

So what did you learn, you know, talking to
Joyce and and understanding whatwas going on? What did you learn
about the mural, and what aresome of the issues it's facing
in general?

So, yeah, the mural has been these issues have
been long standing. Joyce knewabout these issues from the
beginning, actually, because shehad to return to the mural 2
years after it was installedbecause tiles were cracking. She
said that there's somethingwrong with the wall's structure,
so it keeps repeatedly causingcracks in the mural. On top of

(59:43):
that, she has also talked aboutwater damage, due to runoff from
the street. That is also a bigissue in general in Boston,
flooding.
The city has been dealing withflooding issues and leaking all
over the place.

Joyce Kozloff (01:00:01):
So

Hrag Vartanian (01:00:01):
It sounds it sounds like the the subway
system didn't figure thosethings out before they had all
these things installed.

Maya Pontone (01:00:08):
No. It it it is the country's oldest subway
system.

Right.

So it Right. You know yeah. It's in it's
definitely long overdue for somerepairs. Let's put it that way.

Yeah. Infrastructure, like like many
places in this country,unfortunately, has been
suffering. So did talking toJoyce, help you see the artwork
in a different way?

Yeah. It definitely did. So she was a
pioneering member of the sixtiesseventies pattern and decoration
movement. So An

important art movement.

Yeah. And knowing more about her own role in that
movement totally made me seethat artwork in a different
light. You look at it and yourealize it is it's a tiled quilt

Right.

Which is definitely referencing her her
other public artworks that she'sdone. The work was initially
presented at Momo p s 1 the yearbefore it was installed. So,
yeah, I I just did not knowanything about her practice as
well as also the MBTA's arts onthe t program, which is another

(01:01:07):
whole issue, because, yeah,there's a lot of public artworks
along the subway lines,alongside Joyce's that are also
falling into disrepair that havebeen deinstalled because the
subway system can't maintainthem.

So what can be done to save this? Because I
know that members of the, thetransportation Authority are
interested in potentially doingthis, but it sounds like it's
gonna be expensive.

Yes. So Joyce has been working on this for a long
time.

Right.

And she's drawn up all these different budget
estimates. She believes it'llprobably cost upwards of
$1,000,000 because in order toreplace she would need to be
completely replaced,essentially. So she has actually
been digitizing all the tiling,that is in that mural on an
iPad. She's in her eighties andhas been digitizing it. And so

(01:02:00):
that way, it can hopefully bereplaced whether it's in her
lifetime or not.

Right. And it would be, you know, it'd be a
real shame. I mean, a prominentfemale artist, really wonderful
work that sort of connects tothe tradition of quilting in New
England and and many Americansort of traditions. It would be
really sad to see from such amem major member of the Pattern
and Decoration Movement to belost. So what what how can how

(01:02:25):
can people help?
I mean, what are they waitingfor at this point? Is it the
state? Is it the city? What whatare some of the obstacles?

1st and foremost, money, for sure. The MBTA is
concerned about its publicartworks, especially when I
reached out to them to ask aboutthis, but they have a lot of
other issues that they need toaddress. They're currently
trying to repair the entiresystem, and that's gonna cost
more than a $1,000,000,000according to the agency.

Like, tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars.

Tens of 1,000,000,000. Yeah. I shouldn't
say just a 1,000,000,000. Verylow.

Nowadays, a 1,000,000,000 doesn't seem to go
that far, unfortunately, withinfrastructure.

Yeah. So money is the biggest obstacle. But then,
yeah, she has said that shewould need a sign off from
either the governor or the CEOof the MBTA.

Got it.

She has gotten support from the Cambridge Arts
Council as well as from theformer Cambridge mayor. But,
unfortunately, they don't havethe authority to replace the
work.

So maybe people should be writing maybe the
governor's office or the CEO ofof the transit or something
maybe to advocate for thispiece. That might help.

That's what Joyce definitely feels. She believes
right now, the biggest way to,help this artwork is to make
some noise, because, yeah, she'sbeen making noise for a long
time, but it would be a lotlouder if others joined.

Good to know. Thank you so much, Malia. Thanks
for reporting.

Thank you for having me.

Around the turn of the century, I had so many
ideas I couldn't get to in myhead because the public art was
taking up too much of my mylife, so I started I stopped
doing public art.

Got it.

And I basically returned to the studio.

And so what year is that around?

Around the turn of century. These projects go on
for years.

I mean, they're huge projects.

Yeah. And I just did 2 recently again, but I
hadn't for a very, very longtime. And I didn't think I would
ever do it again. And I wasburned out.

Makes

sense. So anyway

So this century, you're back in the studio.

Much more, yeah.

So So tell me tell me a little bit about that
experience, how that's been, andhow did things change there? Did
you start doing exhibitions ingalleries again Yeah. At that
period? And who were you showingwith?

I've been with DC Moore for 25 years

Mhmm.

Which is a very long relationship.

Yes, it is.

Truly is. Everybody's wonderful there. I
feel so lucky Great. Andprivileged and supportive. I'm
not a good seller, and they keepshowing me.

So so now when you started showing there, like,
what is it when you startedgoing back to, I mean, painting?
Like in a studio? I neverstopped. Okay. You never
stopped.
Never stopped. Got it.

Okay. But I wanted it to be my total
concentration.

Gotcha.

And I have now, I've had a number of shows there

over

the years.

Got it.

And I started getting interested in
cartography.

So is that, a new influence in that period?

Yeah. Got it. I started getting interested in
cartography early in thiscentury. And that became my
major subject and still is.

Yeah. I see there was a piece at the
American consulate in IstanbulRight. That seems to be
connected to that largercartography Right. Interest.
Okay.
Got it. Right.

So how that happened was it came out of the
public art. You you you when youstart a project, all in the old
days, you'd be sent blueprints.Mhmm. The blueprint was like a a
scaffold or a map. Mhmm.
And then I would enrich it. Iwould put content into it. I
would put decoration, but alsocontent. Mhmm. Because all the
public art art projects, I tryto have some content connected

(01:06:04):
to the place.
Right. Of course. And thenthat's what I've been doing all
those years. And I thought maybeI can use this in my private
work. Maybe, I can think of themap as structure for content and
elaboration.
And it's been just great. Imean, you know, I've worked with
so many different kinds of mapsover the last 20 some years. And

(01:06:25):
each series is another idea,another kind of map, another way
of approaching it. I keepthinking I'm gonna run dry on
this, but so far I haven't.

So what's interesting to you for about
maps?

Well, I think that maps and patterns are
similar in that they're,carriers of popular culture.
They're they're accessible toeverybody and used by everybody.
Mhmm. And they're full ofinformation.

Totally. So now, how did the art world change in
that in that period? You wereshowing in the seventies in
galleries. You took a little bitof a break for public art, and
you went back to galleries inthis century.

I never stopped showing in galleries.

Oh, you never so you still always showed.

But much less frequently. I'm I was I've had a
lucky career because a lot ofthe P and D artists have not
been able

That's right.

To continue showing.

So but how did the art world change for you?
Like, how did like, I mean, youknow, people often say things
were more there was morecamaraderie before. Now it feels
much more business. Like, whathow's your experience been?

I I don't know. Community's always been very
important to me, and I'm still Istill treasure my community. I I
don't

By the way, you have a very good reputation of
helping artists.

A lot of artists have helped me.

I know, but I mean, you know, I I will say
Joyce in, like, asking peoplepreparing for this. One person
in particular said you've beenvery generous to artists. So I
just wanna note that because Ithink that's, you know,
unfortunately not as common asit should probably be.

But It should be.

It should be. Absolutely be.

It should be. But how did So, you know, and in
this century, I've done a I'vedone a lot of political
activism, and the work hasbecome more political.

So you've always been political, it seems.

Yeah. I've always been political, but I think the
decorative work doesn't reallyread as political. It it was
political in its day.

I don't know. I think it kind of does Okay. To
me anyway.

Yeah. I mean, it it was political when we first
did it, and I think it's beenabsorbed into the larger
culture. But I've taken ondifferent kinds of political
issues in in in recent years.

So one thing I've always wanted to ask about
the pattern decoration movementwas, you know, in this fifties
sixties, it was something peoplewould talk about all over
painting or like this. Was thereever kind of an inside joke
about this kind of like takingthat all over concept and sort
of playing it in a differentway?

I think that Carter Radcliffe wrote about
that, about how this was anextension of earlier American
abstraction.

I mean, it feels connected, at least in
retrospect now, looking at itback. Like, it feels connected
more.

And some of the other artists, like, I think
that Bob Zukanage would be areal link.

Well, because he was more gesturally too.

Yes. And he's a little bit older. And he came
out of that kind of painting.And he talked about how hard it
was for him to make a break withthe things that he had grown up
with and done before.

So there was some kind of something there.
There was something there.

So now how More for some people than for others.

Right. Which always is the case, I guess.
Right? And then in terms ofpolitics too, I mean, also the
idea of one of the things that Ithink is kind of political, but
I'd love to get your take on it,is because you're kind of taking
something that traditionally isnot the focal point. Right?
And you're making it a focalpoint. Right?

Mhmm.

Which feels very political in terms of, like,
directing attention.

Mhmm.

Do you know in a place that is often considered a
frame or overlooked or, youknow, decorative, which is the
word that kind of comes up. Now,how much was that conscious?

Oh, I think that was conscious.

That was conscious. It was conscious.

Yes. Definitely.

And so why did you think that was important?

I I grew up with Western painting. I love it.
Mhmm. But the baggage was tooheavy for me. Mhmm.
The, you know, the baggage ofthe geniuses and all of that.
And and and and now, we've justblown it open anyway. But I had

(01:10:17):
to look at other things.

So one other big topic I really wanted to talk
with you about was sort of yourown sort of political work. You
know, your own activism, yourown passions. Because I think
sometimes when artists,particularly painters,
strangely, when they're notmaking representational work so
much or at least not, like,blatantly figures or something

(01:10:40):
like that. There's this there'sthis, sense that somehow
everyone's made everyone's sortof apolitical and stuff. And I
one of the interesting thingsabout you is I find that there
you have a very active politicalactivist life as part that seems
parallel, maybe intertwined.
I'd love you to talk a littlebit about that and where you

(01:11:00):
think the latest sort of wave ofthat act political consciousness
came from.

The latest wave? I mean, there have been 2 things
I've been essentially involvedin, the peace movement and the
women's movement Right. Over theyears. And there are many, many
other things that I care about,but these are the things that
I've had an active role in.Mhmm.
And, during the period of it wascalled the lead up to the war in
Iraq when there were massiveworldwide demonstrations, I was

(01:11:31):
part of a group called ArtistsAgainst the War. Mhmm. And I'd
been in anti war groups before,but I was very active in that
group. And

This is after 911? Yes. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. When, you know, there was all that
discussion, but we knew thatthey were going to invade even
though millions and millions ofpeople all over the world were
taking to the streets. We madethings for the marches. We made
banners. We made placards, andwe did actions in public places.
It was very it was you know, itdidn't stop the war, but we were

(01:12:05):
we were part of a larger alarger phenomenon. And I just
couldn't imagine sitting backand not doing anything. Mhmm.
This is, you know, the goodGerman syndrome. So I mean, I'm
assuming knowing you that youmay have been doing the same
thing.

Of course. Absolutely.

In Canada or Here.

I was here. You were here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No one was here. Yeah. No.Absolutely. This kind of work
around activism, how does thatfeed your relationships with
other artists?
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat?

Yeah. I think I said to you earlier that I I
became addicted to groups.Right. And they run their
course. You know, I once readthat the the the lifespan of a
group is about 2 years.
And so when there's this thingthat you going on that is so
widespread, and you feel verystrong strongly about it, I

(01:12:59):
don't wanna just stay in mystudio. I wanna be involved in
the street with other people. II don't need to be alone in my
studio all the time.

Right.

I do need to be alone in my studio, but not all
the time. And I'm not. So Iguess I'm not as private as some
artists. And that's the thingabout public art too. That's a
kind of work that isn't foreverybody.
Not for

Sure.

Not for intensely private people. Yeah. You know,
because you do have to interactwith a lot of other people in
the world. And, you know,there's a dynamic to a group,
and, I see you nodding yourhead.

I've witnessed so many groups. I could only
imagine which way you're going.

No. What I was gonna say is when it's really
great, when the energy's great,you make something that none of
you or you do something thatnone of you could do
individually. Absolutely. Butthat doesn't always happen. No.
Sometimes it exists. But that'sthe high when it does happen,
when something clicks and itjust takes off. Mhmm. And you

(01:14:00):
feed off of each other and youhave a dialogue. You know, there
there there there are some timeswhen it's just, you know,
terrible, like allrelationships.

It's so true.

But I wanna say about this latest, political
group that I've been involved incalled We Make America. We
formed the week that Trump waselected.

Right.

And I can tell you how that, Maria de Los
Angeles, a young artist Mhmm.Was very briefly my studio
assistant before she becamefamous. And, so she and I were
in the studio when he waselected.

Right.

And we said to each other we had to do
something. So we both contactedeverybody we knew who we thought
would be interested, and 16people came to the meeting. And
at that meeting, we calledourselves We Make America, and
we decided that we were makers.Mhmm. And what we could
contribute to the resistancemovement was our visual skills.

Right.

And,

You guys made some cool signs.

We did. We still do.

Yes. Still do.

Still do. And at that meeting, because
immigration was already such abig issue

Yep. And I mean, it was a whole year of Trump
essentially saying I'm gonnadeport people and not let people
in.

Right. And Marita was DACA at that time. Oh, wow.
Okay. So, that was one of thethings we were talking about.
And we decided to use the Statueof Liberty to and and Anne Agee
came up with the torch. Mhmm.And that was the first series of
objects that we made, which, youknow, it's really funny. I went

(01:15:40):
to the I went with some of thepeople in this group to the
abortion march and somebody wedidn't know was carrying one of
our torches.

No way.

Yeah. So, you know, we made 100 of them.
Right. And we gave them out. Sothey're around and that feels
really good.

That does, I bet. So now how does that work
seep into the studio?

I'd love

to you know, like,

what I don't know.

Does does it? Or how does it go the other way?
Does it go from the studio tothe to the street? I mean, how
how what is that relationshipfor you?

The work is is collective.

Right.

Not individual. And a lot of times, there's a
discussion, and it leaves tosomething that we decide on that
I don't particularly like.

Right. Sure.

Or there may be something that I like that
someone else doesn't like. Andthe group process, means that's
what you do. But I may not feelvery personally connected to it.

So it's it's a different kind of creativity.

It is.

Yeah. Okay. It is. So that makes sense.

So the other thing is a lot of the, you know,
making sessions have been in mystudio Yep. Because I have a big
seventies studio.

Got it. Yep. Totally.

And so I think maybe it gave gives me a bit of
a higher profile, which is Idon't particularly want, but I
don't actually make much of thestuff. Because it's in my
studio, I'm doing all the prepwork and cleaning up and stuff.
I don't I hardly ever makeanything. There are other people
who are much better at makingthis stuff than I am.

We all play our role. We all play our role.

Yeah. I I see myself as a cheerleader.

Mhmm.

I mean, I just have to be doing something. You
know, I said right now in mystudio this weekend, a bunch of
us are making there's a groupcalled We Make America that
formed the week that Yes. Trumpwas elected. We're we're making
props for next week'sreproductive rights march.

Totally.

And we're making dicks and cunts. And we're
making them funny. And I said tomyself, why am I still doing
this? I'm 78 years old.

So why are you? What did you decide?

I just and and when someone said, but you know,
if I say this to some people,they'll say, do you think that
makes a difference? And myanswer is I think it's all
cumulative.

Absolutely.

And that's my only answer. Not what our little
group does, but just the thecumulative effort. I mean, it's
outrageous we have to be doingthis. Sometimes I make art or I
write something because I getmad.

Mhmm.

And,

Always a good place to go sometimes. And

I did these paintings with civil war battles
with viruses erupting from them.And, you know, it's it's it all
ends up decorative in mysensibility, the way I paint.
But there is a lot of rage inthere.

Where does that come from?

From what's going on in our country.

Right.

And just from reading the headlines every day,
day after day, year after year.

It's been a bad 20 years for watching America in
many ways and living in America.

It is. It is.

And how are you coping with it? Does art help
you process the world? I mean,how I'd love to get a sense of
your process.

Yes. I think it does. I mean, I I just did a
project in South Carolina

Mhmm.

A public art project. And when I first went
down there, Greenville, acrossthe street from the hotel I was
staying, I was staying in ahotel because I had a meeting
the next morning with the peoplewho were commissioning me. I got
up early. I walked across thestreet to this big cemetery.
Mhmm.
And in the front of thecemetery, there was a civil war

(01:19:25):
monument and a cannon and a,obelisk and a but you expect
that. But when you went inside,there were about a 100 small
tombstones that each had aconfederate flag next to it, a
small cloth and completelyfresh. And I started to

(01:19:47):
hyperventilate.

Wow.

I got really frightened because somebody was
changing them. Someone was doingthat. And I've here I am, this
Jewish woman from New York, youknow. And I just, I had a very
extreme, a physical extremereaction which is very unusual
for me. And I took pictures ofit and it really scared me.

(01:20:10):
And then I started reading aboutthe civil war and thinking about
the civil war. And then sincethen all these things have
happened. Right. And a lot ofthings were already happening
then, but it wasn't so strong inmy consciousness. And I was just
back there this summer, andthose flags are gone.
Wow. But I did take pictures ofthem.

The world changes.

The world changes, and they are talking
about moving the monuments too.

Amazing.

So, you know, that that's a good thing. But
that experience has something todo with the paintings that I
did. Because I do maps, I wastalking to a friend of mine,
Timothy App. He's a painter, andhe participates in Civil War
reenactments. And he told me Ishould look at Civil War battle
maps, that they were veryinteresting, and he was right.
And that was what I startedlooking at. But I didn't know

(01:20:55):
what I would do with them, so Ihad them around for a while. And
then I started painting thesepaintings.

Totally. Totally. So now okay. So let's
let's look at that that sort of,like, the last 20 years of some
of the activism. So you'reinvolved in the anti war
activism.
So how about in now in thestudio, what were you doing and
during that period? So we canjust sort of get

a sense. A lot of work about war in this century.
Okay. And I started thinkingabout it again. You know, I
hadn't been thinking about it somuch in maybe the eighties
nineties.
But in this century, a lot of mywork had to do with war. I went
to the American Academy in Rome,992,000. Mhmm. And I made this

(01:21:38):
large walk in globe calledTargets, and I I wanted to do
something about aerial war,about the bombardment of,
civilian populations, which wasmore and more where war was

Right.

And the fact that we weren't seeing it. So I
wanted to figure out a way toimage it.

So at that period, I guess, what were you
thinking about or looking at?Was it the war in the Balkans? I
mean, like, what was the

There were all these wars.

Right.

There were always wars.

Absolutely.

You know, in the Middle East, in the Balkans, as
there still

are. Absolutely.

And, as long as there weren't many American
casualties, it was not treatedas a big deal here.

That's right. It was

It's only a big deal for the people we were
bombing.

That's right. That's exactly right. That's
that seemed that

became something I wanted to deal with.

Okay.

I had already been mapping for 10 years.

Mhmm.

And, I did these pieces in around 90 7, which
were based on nautical charts.

Right.

And a friend of mine said, you should look at
aeronautical charts. Oh. Andthis friend's father, who he was
completely estranged from, hadbeen a general during Vietnam.
And he had these aeronautical Istill have an image of it, which
I never saw it, but it wasdescribed to me. He had these

(01:23:03):
aeronautical charts in his inhis den or something.
And he would put little stickerswhere where we were gonna bomb.
Yeah. So that I actually don'tthink I've talked about this.
And I I would mention thisperson's name, but I don't know
how he'd feel about it. And sothen I went and I, you buy them
from NOAA, which is a governmentagency.

Yep. National Oceans

and And aeronautic or something.
Something like that. And,they're beautiful and they're
very large, and you can buy thewhole there's a catalog I had
with the whole world, andthere's a number for each
section. So I started buyingaeronautical charts of the parts
of the world that we had bombedsince World War 2, since 1945.

Right.

And, there were a lot of them. You know? Right.
There were, like, 20.

So this is how your interest in politics has
has entered the studio. Yeah.Yeah. Absolutely.

Some of them were major wars, and some of them
were just little things thatnobody remembered, or I didn't
even know about.

Right. Right. Right.

So this piece is about all the places in the
world that we bombed since WorldWar 2 until I finished it in
2000. Because people kept sayingto me, are you gonna add to
this? And I go, no. This is whatit is. Right.
You know? And and that was avery important piece for me. And
it's been shown a lot in Europe,more than here. They love it in

(01:24:27):
Europe.

Are we surprised? No.

It's traveled the Atlantic Ocean more times than I
have.

Yet yet we're not surprised.

So, and the thing about it is when you go inside,
you go inside and you close thedoor behind you, and 3 or 4
people can go in at a time. Andif you speak, there's an echo
because of the shape. Mhmm.Which architects told me, well,
didn't you know that? No, Ididn't.
And to me, that was like a gift.

Right.

Because it it just amplified the feeling of
the bombing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So okay.
So now

So since then, I've done a lot of work about
war.

So what do you think you've learned about war?
Like where's the fascination?Like what what is it that

I'm a girl. I never I never played with war
toys or I never was interestedin it. It's just maybe that's
why. I want to understand. Iwant to understand that
mentality.
My brothers made these drawingsof battles when they were little
children. And my son madedrawings of the battles of the
superheroes. And then they wentthrough puberty, and they

(01:25:36):
stopped. They none of them wereartists. Right.
But I watched that, and Iwondered about it as a child and
then as a mother. So that wassomething I wanted to explore.
And I did this book called Boy'sArt.

So I wanna drill down a little bit on this,
Joyce. Is it is it to sort ofunderstand their place in the
world? I mean, is it tounderstand your relationship to
war? I would I'd love to, like,understand a little bit about
where the urge is coming from.

I I would say it's partly war and masculinity,
and that goes back to myfeminism, and to understand
things that are so, foreign tome.

The first time you were doing your anti war
activism, it was a verydifferent America in some ways.
So I guess I'd just love to heara little bit from someone like
you who's been doing activismand making work, and engaging
with this material material forso many decades.

In the sixties, I I mean, everybody, in my
generation, practically, was outthere marching.

Right.

And I was making abstract art. Mhmm. You know?
And I never thought there was aconflict. I don't think.
I don't think I thought aboutit. And I had friends who made
political art.

Right.

And I had an idea what political art was. You
know, I do still don't thinkthat people think of me as a
political artist.

Well, that's what I'm kind of interested in,
because because I know you as apolitical person.

Right.

Right? And that's that's why I I guess I'm
I the reason I wanted to havethis conversation is because I
think your situation is notunique. Because I do think we
are often forced tocompartmentalize Mhmm. Or silo
our lives in different ways. AndI think that's only more
recently starting to break down.

Mhmm.

But I wanted to hear from you. What do you
think? Has it been breaking downa little?

I guess I do feel that I've pulled things together
for myself. Mhmm. It's aboutusing your own visual language,
you know? I can't become, youknow, a Succo, or I always say
Diego Rivera.

Right.

You know, or Picasso making Guernica. So if I
wanna talk about these things, Ihave to think about it and
figure out a form in which I canexpress it that's me. Yep. And
the mapping work, I mean, it ismore political than the
patterning that I had doneearlier.

Right.

Or it's political in a different way. Absolutely.
Maps are maps are all aboutpower. Let's do it. And maps
endlessly fascinate me for, youknow, I sit there and I copy
them in great detail, and thenI'm copying this information.
And the information, youwouldn't really know unless you
were looking at it that closely.True.

Maps are kind of, I could see them related to
pattern, right? Definitely. Theyuse a certain code and they sort
of repeat and there's a key andthere's all these.

That's why I'm so comfortable going back and forth
between one or the other.

Right.

I mean, I I I like that. I mean, it's on a
grid.

Now, where do you think, like, for your own
work, like, what do you feellike you've learned making your
work over the decades? Like,what are the things you've
learned?

I used to, if I finished a body of work and I
didn't know what to do next, Iwould panic that I'd never work
again. And I don't know howcommon that is, but I bet I'm
not the only one.

I guarantee you're not.

But I think I've let go of that fear. You know, I
think you just have to give ittime and something will happen.

Right. Right.

And that's something I've learned. That's a
that's like an old lady comment.

I don't think it's an old lady comment at all.
I think that's a really wisecomment. That because I think I
think that anxiety is a veryreal anxiety.

And I won't make things just to make things.
Sure. I I think there's some ofthat that goes on, and I'm not
even criticizing it, because Ithink that people work in
different ways.

Absolutely.

And maybe that that is another way to get
somewhere. Mhmm. But it's notfor me.

So what role does art play in your life now?
Do you know? And I'm not talkingabout just making your work, but
I just mean generally.

You know, I love to look at art, any kind of art.

Right.

And I go out all the time to look at art. It
feeds me. I like to feel likeI'm in a dialogue, and I get
excited about it. And I I haveto see art. I'm not that kind of
artist who can be, you know,always self generating.
So, you know, I don't seeeverything, certainly. Mhmm. I
try to see the work of peoplethat I know Mhmm. Or that

(01:30:31):
relates to my interests.

That's great. So now, advice. Advice to younger
artists. Have you thought aboutthat, Joyce? What would you tell
them nowadays?

I you know, my thing is community.

Yep. I'm with you.

I mean, I didn't ever believe that, you know,
that mystique about the artistand their garret. It's just it's
not possible.

The lone genius Yeah. Toiling away.

I don't believe in genius, number 1. Number 2, I

don't I knew I

liked you. Number 2, I don't believe in alone. No,
I mean, I Yeah. Especially Iwould say, you know, I took
graduate students. You know,when you leave school, that's a
really rough time.

Yep.

Stay in touch with your colleagues.

You gotta build your village

and network. Build your community and look at
one another's work and help oneanother and give one another
feedback, and certainly, it'sbeen essential to me.

So, Joyce, this was a pleasure. Is there
anything you'd like to add? Imean, we've got we've had a full
journey through the life ofJoyce Kozlov. Yeah. You know?
And Yeah.

From my roots in New Jersey.

That's right. Through the tumultuous seventies
to the public art of theeighties nineties and to to this
sort of cart cartographicinfluenced last 20 years. So now
thank you, Joyce.

Thank you.

This was an absolute pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. This episode
was edited by our fabulousproducer, Isabella Cegalovich
and supported by Hyperallergicmembers. If you'd like to
support this podcast and thework we do at Hyperallergic,
then please consider becoming amember. And if you'd enjoyed
this episode, please subscribeand rate it, whether you're

(01:32:23):
listening to it on Spotify orany other platform and hit the
like button if you're watchingit on YouTube. I'm Hanag
Watanyan, the editor in chief ofHyperallergic.
Thanks for listening and see younext time.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Joyce Kozloff’s Patterns of Protest