March is Coming in Like...a Gorilla!

Each end of February I hear the echo of my mother's voice wondering, "if March will come in like a lion or like a lamb".  In Illinois where I grew up, winters were often tenacious and March tended to come in like a lion often and like a lamb, rarely.  This old picture shows me bundled against the Illinois cold with my siblings as late as May!

My mother's notation on the photo back.

This past New Jersey winter has been as mild as if the whole flock had lambs at the same time, thus spawning wide speculation about a wicked spring coming along to balance things out.  On a rainy February day last week a friend sent me an email that came through my inbox like an invigorating March wind gust, "short notice: The Guerrilla Girls are going to make a presentation at Princeton University this evening.  Want to go?"

I've been a fan of the Guerrilla Girls, "the conscience of the art world", since I first heard of them.  Their attention-grabbing posters and billboards that illuminate the art world's inequities through creatively presented statistics and graphics have plastered many cities since 1985. The posters point out things like the shockingly low number of female artists and artists of color whose work is exhibited in major museum and gallery solo shows each year.  This number has barely budged since they first began their educational work 25 years ago!  This group of artist/scholars has done their research and found plenty of examples of stunningly talented artists in those overlooked groups, proving that the Western art world has operated all through it's history as a good old white boy's network, continuing that way even now.

Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo

Guerrilla Girl Kathe Kollwitz

These guerrilla artist/scholars have maintained their individual anonymity by wearing gorilla head masks whenever appearing in public.  The masks have powerful expressions, and like their individual wearers, each is different from the other.  "Frida Kahlo Guerrilla Girl" wore one that was fierce and fang-baring.  (Oddly, it's open-mouth sometimes seemed to express laughter,too.  Evidently, reading expressions correctly relies upon hearing the accompanying sounds.)  "Kathe Kollwitz Guerrilla Girl" wore one that expressed an old, wise, much calmer primate.  Wearing the guises, the artists  presentation was part slideshow and part performance art.  One can't help but get drawn into thinking about how they navigate the befores and afters of their events... When and where do they take off the guise?  Isn't it uncomfortable?  Both times I've seen them they were asked about the comfort aspect.  They admitted to being very hot under those masked hoods.  Art commitment often means suffering!  More importantly, they tried to make suggestions for "creating trouble", such as "leave notes enclosed in the pages of books", or "put sticker labels on items telling how they were produced"..."don't compete with each other but rather work collaboratively", or "don't take part in the gallery/museum system; find your own ways to get your work out there." In other words, when things are monumentally stacked against you, go guerrilla!

After all their talking about the art world needing to be inclusive of all kinds of artists, there was still the audience member who asked, "Do you have to be a lesbian to be a Guerrilla Girl?"  All of the heads in the audience turned to behold the person who asked this bizarre thing. Frida and Kathe's stunned expressions somehow showed through the masks at this dimwitted question.  They repeated to this proper-looking Princetonian woman their commitment to inclusiveness.  Another lesson:  you can't force a person to hear what you say if wind has never cleared the jabber out of their head!  

Well, the gust of Frida and Kathe did blow through my creative thinking and although March is still a a week away, it looks like this year March is well on its way to coming in like a gorilla!