This thread embodies WARM’s spirit of connection and shared experience—through the process of art making—that is the basis of forward progress for all waves of the feminist movement: past, present and future.

From the introduction of How to Be a Feminist Artist: Investigations from the Women’s Art Institute, authors (and artists and teachers) Elizabeth Erickson and Patricia Olson share the connection between their experiences in WARM and the inspiration for the Women’s Art Institute:

“We, Elizabeth Erickson and Patricia Olson, met in the cauldron of the 1970s women’s movement, when we helped to found a women’s collective gallery in Minneapolis. The WARM Gallery was the coming together of a group of artists who were invisible to each and the world, and longing to see if anyone else was attempting the serious endeavor of reflecting through art what we were experiencing as women. Part of the international women’s art movement, the WARM gallery primarily presented exhibitions by its 40 members (making it the largest women’s art collective in the country), and it also mounted invitational exhibitions, hosted lectures and poetry readings, developed a mentor program, published a [tri]annual journal of essays and criticism, and put on a national conference ... Together we formed—and attempted to answer—the questions that came from our lives and art, and shared the studio practices at the core of our inquiry.” 

“By the early 1990s [while teaching painting and critical studies at an art school, Elizabeth] observed that women art students were not being encouraged to learn and experience their full power. In fact, the reverse was happening. Women students were suffering with low self-esteem seen in not speaking up in class, and by their body language fraught with media interpretations of seduction. On the other hand [while teaching at a liberal arts women’s college, Patricia was] impressed with how empowering same-sex classrooms were for young women … While they thrive in an environment of cooperation and collaborations, Patricia noted that women students still need[ed] permission to fully engage with their own ideas and experiences, and to trust that they will not be abandoned as they pursue their quest.”

“How could women artists regain the confidence won in the 1970s, and have their art be taken seriously in the art historical and cultural discourse? One day in 1996, Elizabeth told Patricia that she had an idea. That idea was the Women’s Art Institute, the seed of which had grown out of those heady days for women artists in the 1970s, but also from our work with students. Pat recognized an idea whose time had come when she saw it, and that turned into teaching together the first summer studio intensive course of the Women’s Art Institute, and has continued every year since 1999.”

“Based on the premise, ‘Contemporary Women Artists: What are the questions? What are the answers?,’ the Women’s Art Institute [always] begins with students’ questions about their work and the world they are negotiating as artists.”
– Elizabeth Erickson & Patricia Olson

The Women’s Art Institute does more than teach. It has facilitated the growth of approximately 320 women artists over the past two decades. Artist AK Garski has been a student, a teaching assistant (twice) and a faculty member of the Women’s Art Institute. Garski’s artwork is figurative and focuses on self-portraiture. 

Erickson, Olson and Garski unanimously nominated Ana Laura Juarez for inclusion in this thread. In their nomination of Juarez, Garski shared: “The work that [Juarez] created during WAI was personal, provocative, and political. [Juarez is] an active educator within multiple communities and combine[s] creativity with social justice. For these reasons, [Juarez embodies] the contemporary spirit of WARM.”