Gallerie: Women's Art Journal
$20.00 / year, $50.00 / 4 years (3 issues of Gallerie magazine and The Gallerie Annual)

Review by Ellen Woodsworth

Sophia Isajiw, Walking Woman

Gallerie began publication with its first Annual, a beautiful glossy magazine featuring 45 North American women artists. This magazine is a sumptuous feast of diverse media and widely different women's voices.

Published in June, 1988, the first issue begins with an editorial by Caffyn Kelly, a visual artist and writer living in British Columbia and founding editor of Gallerie. She talks of the legacy of memories left by her grandmother, a painter, which inspired her many years later to pull together this journal. That and her need, as she found herself "in middle age, quite unexpectedly in love with a woman," to find a culture that would rebuild her relationship with the world. 'The women who responded to Gallerie," she writes, "have enriched this process beyond all expectations."

There are two introductory articles, the first by the wonderfully clear writer/poet Judy Grahn entitled "Drawing in the Nets." The second article by Bettina Aptheker considers the state of women's art today. "Standing on Our Own Ground" leads into the essence of the journal by analyzing the work of three influential artists in the U.S.A, two of which are included in the Annual. Mayumi Oda transforms Buddhist symbols into outrageous symbols of women's freedom and Judy Chicago's work addresses itself to a mass audience by working with hundreds of women to create public statements that give us back ourselves on our own terms.

In the main body of the issue, each artist is portrayed through four or more photographs of her work, accompanied by a personal essay of what art means to her. This is concluded by a photograph and biographical note about the artist herself, along with a mailing address should a reader want to contact her. One can relax and really enjoy a personal dip into what women artists are doing and thinking these days. It's the kind of magazine that you leave around for months to show to friends, read in the bath or late at night to centre with or to find out why we all try to release the artist in ourselves.

The first issue has a wide range of art and women's statements. I enjoy looking at art that is an expression of growth, change and outrage. A full palette of emotions have been released onto these pages. There is Sophia Isajiw's work "Walking Woman", organic, raw and moving (as opposed to Michael Snow's famous sterile cutout); Natalka Husar's statement, "To me art is that freedom to reveal emotional pain" which is portrayed in her painting "Land of Milk n' Honey"; and the outrageous theatre art of protest of the Guerilla Girls who appear in public in gorilla masks to fight sexism and racism in the art world.

Almost all of the works challenge the male monied art establishment and give strength to women to continue pushing out boundaries and rejoice in who we are. From the wonderful cover color painting "Pregnant at the Japanese Restaurant" by Diane Collet- Larichelere and the profound social statements by Susan Coe that in their severity make me think of Animal Farm, to the latest work by Michelle Christianson, Persimmon Blackbridge and Lyn MacDonald depicting the lives of women in prison, I was impressed and stimulated by the monumental scale and magnitude of commitment these women have to society. They are exposing and exploding the structures that destroy women, an activity that amounts to a frontal assault.

Gallerie expresses the need for us to break through our own imposed silences, repression, fears, poverty and lack of skills to find forms and media that speak to and from our lives. In so doing we can create new lives, perhaps a global village in which finally we find ourselves reflected. After being forced to reject and repress the "I" for so long, whether literal or visual, I find myself starved for this type of magazine which gives us samples of both words and images by the artist herself unmediated by "critical objectivity." Josie Kane's works on incest allow the audience to be a witness to the child's hidden experience and therefore enables us to speak about the unspeakable, to uncover the covered lives of millions of women and children. Such empowerment encourages us all to speak from the "I", from the greater depths of our selves.

I hope that future issues will have more indepth articles by artists and it would also be interesting to hear about artists from the past and non-North American artists. Gallerie is an inspired magazine, refreshing in its contribution to both the art world and to women's lives generally. It welcomes submitters, distributors, and subscribers. Help it grow. You will be glad that you did.

Gallerie is available from Gallerie Publications, 2901 Panorama Drive, North Vancouver, B.C., V7G 2A4 and in bookstores across Canada.

Ellen Woodsworth works in community organizing and political action has been active in the women's movement for the past twenty years. She has completed two years of art school, is an art agent and does her own work.