Background

Three artists can be credited for early evolution of WARM: Diane McLeod, Susan Fiene and Lynne Lockie played significant roles in developing the Minnesota-based women’s art group. In the late 1960s, McLeod had returned to Minnesota to begin teaching after receiving her M.F.A. from New York University. In the early 1970s, Susan Fiene and Lynne Lockie had relocated to the Twin Cities where both of their husbands were faculty at the University of Minnesota. Both women had experiences with community-based organizing: Fiene came to Minneapolis after completing her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she and other graduate students had formed a support group for women artists. Lockie came to the Twin Cities from Berkeley, California, where she had been involved in organizing anti-war and social justice movements in the Bay Area. While these artists didn’t know each other yet, all three women felt the Twin Cities was lacking a woman-friendly art community outside of academia. Each was seeking a supportive network of feminist artists.

Around this same time, Fiene and Lockie were introduced by a mutual friend from the University of Minnesota. Drawing upon their previous experiences, they discussed forming a group to support local women artists. Simultaneously and independently, McLeod, too, was seeking to form the same type of group. Though none of them knew it yet, they had begun to plant the seeds for WARM.

A Catalyzing Event 

Renowned feminist artist Judy Chicago spoke at the University of Minnesota on April 4, 1973. The event was sponsored by the Fine Art Department and was one of several feminist happenings at the University in the first quarter of 1973. Fiene, Lockie and McLeod all attended Chicago’s talk, though not together. During the Q&A portion of the event, Diane McLeod asked Chicago how to go about starting a women’s group. Chicago answered, “you just do it.” Spurred by Chicago’s forthrightness, McLeod posted flyers around town seeking women artists to form a group. She also advertised in Goldflower, a local women’s magazine. 

Naming the Group

Around the time of Chicago’s lecture, Lynne Lockie and Susan Fiene had a phone conversation about naming their soon-to-be women’s art group. Both felt it was important for them to have a name in order to be taken seriously among other artists and within the broader local and regional arts communities. They settled on the name “Women’s Art Registry.” Lockie suggested adding “Minnesota” to the title, so the acronym would read WARM rather than WAR. For Lockie, the latter carried violent and patriarchal undertones, while the former was inviting and supportive. With the name established in 1973, the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota began recruiting, mostly by word of mouth.

Confluence 

It wouldn’t be long before the efforts of McLeod, Lockie and Feine crossed paths. Though the artists’ memories about this intersection varies, the timing of their separate search for members and the date of their first exhibition suggests that the two fledgling groups began to meet together in the summer of 1973. Among the very early members were Susan Eggerman, Gerri Mitchell, Ardys Ferman, Quimetta Perle and Carole Fisher. Thus began the prodigious growth of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota.