Visual Arts Gallery at the College of St. Catherine, January 1974 

While not a WARM-sponsored exhibition, many WARM members and soon-to-be WARM members were included in Women’s Work 11 at the College of St. Catherine's Visual Arts Gallery, which was only a few years old*. Even at this early date, the gallery was already notable for the professional quality of its exhibitions. Faculty in the Visual Arts Department had also begun to set its sights on tailoring the gallery’s exhibitions and programming to emphasize the work of women artists.

This exhibition was among the first women-only exhibitions at the gallery. From the exhibition catalog written by Kathryn C. Johnson, curator:

Every woman represented in this show has contributed to my conviction that women’s art demands special attention and deserves the privilege of its own criticism and documentation… The women represented in [Women’s Work 11] do not subscribe to a single point of view or doctrine. Some are more committed to feminism than others, but all are committed to themselves as artists. Anne Tucker [author of The Woman’s Eye, 1973] points out, “The degree to which being a woman may influence…(an artist’s) work is dependent upon the extent to which she uses her art to confront her existence as a woman.

Johnson describes Lynne Lockie’s drawings as “profoundly feminine … [they] relate to the tradition of Tantric art in that they represent all aspects of life (physical and spiritual, sexual and intellectual, ordinary and extraordinary) as a part of totality.” Johnson continues, “The images in the delicate, jewel-like drawings of Hazel Belvo are drawn from a profound level of personhood, the artist relating, again in a Tantric sense, to all levels of human existence.” Belvo recalls that the "Metaphysical Drawings" originally exhibited in Women’s Work 11 were suggestive enough to incite letters from the college's alumnae to the administration demanding the art be taken down. Belvo was asked to an administrator's office where she believed she would be asked to remove the artworks from the gallery. Instead, Belvo was shown the letter that would be sent to alumnae, denying their requests for removal of the work and supporting the artist’s freedom of expression. Though the institution would endure much controversy in later years over the feminist art education of the Arts Core Program for Women, at the time of Women’s Work 11, the College of St. Catherine art gallery represented a safe and empowering place for feminist artists.                             

Artists included in Women’s Work 11
Mary Barret
Hazel Belvo
Virginia Randolph Bueide
Patricia Clark
Susan Fiene
Carole Fisher
Lynn Lockie
Marilyn Larson
Geraldine Mitchell
Judy Onofrio
Char Zhan

* The College of St. Catherine, known today as St. Catherine University, was a small private liberal arts college for women. The gallery at the college was built in 1969 and endowed in 1979 when it was renamed The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery after it's benefactor.