Metuchen resident's exhibit to showcase female artists
BY KATHY CHANG Staff Writer
Joan Arbeiter said that as an undergraduate art student at Rutgers University Douglass College in 1959, she was clueless about how much women artists were segregated from male artists.

"Can Anything Be Better Than Tide" by Joan Arbeiter

"It was an all-women's college; however, there were no women teachers," she said.

About four years later, in 1963, fellow Douglass College student and artist Joan Snyder realized this and would later start the Douglass Women Artist Series in 1971.

"She asked the school director [at the time, Daisy Brightenback] 'Wouldn't it be nice to see more art by women?' " said Arbeiter.

In a statement that Snyder did for Douglass College's 20th-anniversary catalog, she said she was aware of the wonderful work being produced by women who had few places to exhibit.

"I was also aware that students at Douglass had no role models," said Snyder. "The creation of theWomenArtists Series was the solution to both problems."

According to Rutgers University's Web site, the series was one of the first exhibition series in the United States that was dedicated to women artists, and the first on the East Coast. It remains the longest-running continuous series of exhibitions in the U.S. dedicated to women artists.

"Joan Snyder" by Joan Arbeiter

Arbeiter, of Metuchen, is currently displaying her portrait series of 12 influential women artists at the Voorhees Hall Art Library at Rutgers University, 71, Hamilton St., in New Brunswick.

The portrait series opened on April 11 and will continue to be displayed until June 13 at the library. The series is a companion project to the book "Lives and Works: Talks withWomenArtists, Volume 2," co-authored byArbeiter, Beryl Smith and Sally Swenson, and published by Scarecrow Press in 1996.

The book emerges from interviews with selected artists who originally exhibited in the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, Rutgers University Libraries.

The book documents the lives of 14 contemporary women artists. Included both in the book and the portrait series are the artists DottyAttie, NancyAzara, Cathey Billian, Agnes Denes, Patricia Lay, Charlotte Robinson, Ce Roser, Miriam Schapiro, Mimi Smith, Joan Snyder, Kay WalkingStick and Jackie Winsor.

Arbeiter said the feminist movement as well as the women's art movement have taken place within the context of the women's liberation movement, which in turn grew out of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Women took part in protests, sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, drives, demonstrations, marches and even riots. Eventually, male authoritarianism drove many women radicals to set their own agenda, thereby becoming radical women.

"Feminism begins with an understanding that gender roles and expectations have been largely shaped by social constructions and historical circumstances," she said. "Men, as well as women, have been affected by this and may share this consciousness."

Arbeiter met with each artist to make the portrait series possible.

"I did the portraits on clay board and used watercolors, pencil, and crayon," she said. "I've provided notations about each artist around the borders of their portraits indicating what they have expressed in their artwork. Also, I have intertwined their artwork in each of their portraits."

Snyder is part of the early women's movement, which she discusses in her 1992 interview with Sally Swenson for the "Lives and Works" book. When asked if the movement hindered her in any way as an artist, she said in some ways it did.

"I've gotten the label of a 'feminist,' and it's a dirty word in most art circles," she said. "But I think I am a feminist, and I think I am an artist. I don't know if I make feminist art. I certainly have female imagery in my art. It helps us all and it hurts us all. I don't think I'm unique in any of that experience."

Arbeiter said artist Patricia Lay's experience as a woman artist is an example of the differentiation between women and men artists.

Lay, who received her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Rochester Institute of Technology in ceramics in 1968, said she went into graduate work with the idea of making clay sculpture.

"They [the faculty at RIT] insisted that I learn how to make pottery also, because they felt that if I was going to go out with a masters, with an MFAin ceramics, that I would end up teaching and I should know how to make pots," said Lay in her interview with Sally Swenson in 1988. "If I had gone to a graduate school where the training was in sculpture rather than ceramics, I would have had much more of an understanding of all the materials for sculpture. I would have learned how to weld, which is something I always wanted to do."

Lay currently is a professor at Montclair State University concentrating in welding.

Along with the artist series, Arbeiter, an artist who concerns herself with people and the human condition, is displaying her "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl Fulfilling Society's Limited Expectations."

"Each display has a vintage photo of myself during my formative years in the 1950s, then documents the time frame in question with an authentic period magazine illustration, and finally, updates and completes the message by including position statements from contemporary feminist books and periodicals," she said.

Arbeiter said it took the women's movement to help her to see the cute snapshots of herself growing up in a different light.

"It shows that I was being groomed to be the gender role of the times," she said.

One display shows a vintage snapshot of Arbeiter as a 6-year-old artist at play with doll clothes, a clothesline and clothespins. In the background is a 1950s detergent advertisement of a pretty housewife who is ecstatic over her clean laundry a "Girls' Bill of Rights" from the time.

Arbeiter received her Bachelor ofArts degree from Brooklyn College and her MFA in painting and drawing from the Pratt Institute in New York. An art educator for 30 years, she directed the Joan Arbeiter Studio School (1976-1988) and in 1978 joined the faculty of the duCret School of Art in Plainfield, where she continues to teach. Additionally, she served as artist in residence for the New Jersey School of the Arts from 1995 to 2003.

Arbeiter is also a member of the Ceres Gallery and an honorary member of the board of TheWomen's Studio Center in New York. Her work has been seen in more than 20 solos and nearly 100 group exhibits and is in the permanent collection of the NoyesMuseum in New Jersey and in public and private collections throughout the United States and abroad.

For more information about the portrait series, e-mail Joan Arbeiter at joan_arbeiter@ hotmail.com.