'Wolfwoman' by Nancy Buchanan. She's speaking tonight at CalArts' Bijou Theater.
The Structuring Strategies screening series welcomes artist and CalArts faculty member Nancy Buchanan tonight at the Bijou Theater.
For more than two decades, Buchanan has taught in the School of Film/Video, while building upon an art practice that includes, video, drawing, artist’s books and work with fabric. She first used video as an outgrowth of live performance and installation pieces, but she quickly realized the possibilities of the medium.
Some of her more recognizable pieces are small sculptures in which video is a key element, shown on two-inch monitors that fit the miniature scale of the sculpture. In American Dream #6 (1988), Buchanan created a scale-model (1”=1’) of a 1950s American living room that’s overflowing with consumer goods, with home improvement books are scattered about. In the center of the work, a two-inch black-and-white TV monitor plays a tape montage of Army-McCarthy hearings, old TV commercials and a 1950 children’s space program.
About her art, Buchanan states on her website:
My thirty year art production focuses on themes of power and personal place. Chosen media is related to selected themes. Because art is not ‘truth,’ and remains open-ended, I believe it is most important to reframe subjects avoided in polite social discussion, both for clarification and as social sculpture.
In addition to producing her own work, Buchanan has also curated and reviewed exhibitions, and has a storied history with the feminist art movement in the 1970s, including as a founding member of the Grandview Gallery at The Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, and Double X, a feminist art network.
In the video below, produced by Otis College of Art and Design, she discusses The Woman’s Building as well as her experiences at CalArts.
Structuring Strategies with Nancy Buchanan
Bijou Auditorium at CalArts
Tonight (Tuesday, Sept. 28)
7 pm
Free