Sarah Williams is co-founder and executive director of the Women’s Center for Creative Work (WCCW).
What was your background before WCCW, and how did it influence your approach to the organization? I grew up in Hawthorne, CA, left to go to UC Santa Cruz, and came back to L.A. in 2006 to attend grad school. Since then, I have been been working in the visual arts, mostly with Bettina Korek at ForYourArt, where I learned so much, before founding Women’s Center for Creative Work in 2013. Being from L.A., I am very interested in the art and artists that emerge from this place, and the particularities of making work, living, and forming community here. What sparked me wanting to start WCCW came from an uneasiness of what I observed working in the art world, that behind the scenes, it’s largely women. However, within the industry of contemporary art, we by and large see the inordinate success of cis white men. I was interested in what it would look like to have that labor of support, production, dissemination, promotion, directed towards more holistic support of women and nonbinary artists. It felt like there was a real opportunity to consider alternative systems for the support of creative production and presentation that are more equitable.
Since WCCW was founded in 2013, what are some specific workshops, panels, or other types of programming that you would say are exemplary of the focus and cornerstone tenants of the organization? A few current programs that I am really excited about, that I think show a variety of avenues through which WCCW is working, are Human Resources for Art Workers, our Artist in Residence program, Community Chorus, and Fem Synth Lab. Human Resources for Art workers, led by Christy Roberts Berkowitz, is a group working towards a service-based art workers union or HR service, with the intention to utilize tools such as restorative justice, mediation and conflict resolution, legal council, support groups, and mutual aid resources. This program shows the way we are interested in creating models that can be useful beyond WCCW, and that work towards a more equitable creative field.
One way we offer support for emerging artists is through our Artist in Residence program. We offer three month residencies three times per year. The artists are almost always people who have not have significant institutional opportunities yet. In addition to using the space as a studio, and later mounting an exhibition, they are also invited to do programming. This offers an opportunity for the artist to discuss and exhibit influences or ideas that surround their work, outside of the end product, and it offers the community, those who may be well-versed in contemporary art as well as those who aren’t as familiar, an opportunity to engage with the work and the artist and gain more insight and understanding.
Community Chorus and Fem Synth Lab are both more musically-inclined community programs. Community Chorus, led by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and conducted by Tany Ling, is a open chorus project that meets twice a month to learn new songs and technique, often with guest musicians. The songs have political leanings and the group meets to go to protests and sing together. Fem Synth Lab is geared towards women and nonbinary folx looking to form community around electronic music, an especially male dominated field. They also often have guests come and lead, but in many ways it is also a co-teaching environment, where attendees teach each other and experiment together.
How has WCCW evolved over the years? Did the 2016 presidential election have an impact of shifting the focus of WCCW, and if so how? Yes, I think so much has shifted since the 2016 election. From an organizational perspective, for sure, but also I think the individuals who make up our community have also really shifted their thinking and political activism in light of the current climate. From what we have seen, many artists are questioning the nature of their work and how they can bring the politics that they care about into their art, or alternatively how they can give of their time, resources and skills to causes they care about. Making Art During Fascism was an event we hosted, and pamphlet we published, right after the election, lead by our board member Beth Pickens. It was one of the places artists in our community began gathering after the election, to ask the question “What now?”
You also see a lot of this in our more political programming, conversations around issues from abortion access and immigration, to gentrification and non-violent communication practices. WCCW is a space where both politically engaged art can be created and disseminated, but also a place where those working in creative fields can learn about and organize around these important issues.
The mission of WCCW seems to be much more inclusive of just women, aiming for intersectional inclusivity of trans, POC, and other marginalized people. What does WCCW do to put that into effect? Yes, intersectionality is one of our premiere core values at WCCW. One of the most important ideas that I think we can take away from intersectional feminism, is the identification of, understanding, and dismantling of all types of structural oppressions.
On a programming level, we prioritize projects led by people coming from marginalized communities, and presenting intersectional frameworks. Often spots from programming are reserved, or cost less, for members of specific communities, depending on the focus. With our artists in residence, we are looking for artists that deal with a variety of topics beyond gender: race, religion, queerness, the environment, current politics, etc…
From an organizational level, we’re trying to set anti-oppressive standards for HR policies and pay scales, which we’ll be publishing in early 2019. We have firmly articulated core values that address our vision and values, and we work towards applying these at every level. We deal with issues that affect artists but are generally considered outside of an art organizations purview, like out Emergency Health Grant for Artists. Over the past 3 years we have granted over $200,000 to Southern California artists, who identify as women, trans or nonbinary, a person of color, or low income. But I think at a really core level, we have a diverse staff that is able to work together in consideration of how we address these issues, as there is of course no one time answer of how to be an inclusive organization. Leadership from this core staff level, with the variety of perspectives present, and a deep commitment to intersectionality is where these considerations are able to grow from, and extend out into the larger organization.
Are there any artists in particular that you have been excited to work with through WCCW? This past year we were able to begin an artist in residence program in earnest, and it has been an incredible pleasure to work with the three artists who have participated in 2018: iris yirei hu, Yasmine Diaz and Sarita Dougherty. Each transformed the space and brought incredible programming inline with their project. Each project and artist also offers really incredible depth and perspective to what is happening at the space, and have really contributed generously and thoughtfully to the community.
Hu’s project, Survival Guide: inheritance continued her ongoing practice of constructing installations based on allegorical survival guides (Survival Guide: joy, 2017 and Survival Guide: when the Sun devours the Moon, 2017). Following the aftermath of the Sun devouring the Moon, she turned to weaving as the necessary next step of a practice addressing the care and legacy of inherited traditions.
Diaz’s exhibition explored personal, family, and cultural histories as the source material for an installation and series of public programs, navigating the overlapping tensions around religion, gender, and third-culture identity, through the lens of a U.S. born Yemeni-American girl.
Lastly, Dougherty’s project exhibits her pedagogical practice at the intersections of earth-based spirituality and ethnoecology, that she cultivates in tandem and in relation to her visual work. This work is unfolding as her DIY PhD Dissertation in the Postnational Department of Transcultural Youth, and integrates composting, greywater systems, ecofeminism, ancestral knowledges, mapping, visioning, native habitat rehabilitation, decolonizing methodologies, critical theories, incantations, plant medicine, and an ofrenda to Pachamama, her matrilineal deity of the Earth. This research lives in her installation as a community resource center for generating visitors’ own unique living cosmologies and reflecting Sarita’s field work from her home habitat, in Yangna (Los Angeles) ecosystems, and at the Women’s Center for Creative Work.
What artists/events/plans/ ideas do you have for WCCW’s future? Besides our ongoing residencies and programming, one of our new projects I am most excited about is that we are developing our print studio into a proper press. Headed up by our Design Fellow MJ Balvanera and Print Studio Manager Lindsey Eichenberger, we’ll be publishing our own materials out of Women’s Center for Creative Work, as well as writing, poetry, and prints from members and our larger community.
Ideally, what sort of impact does WCCW wish to create for artists and the community? I am most excited for WCCW to exist as a place of experimentation for modeling a more equitable art world, and world at large. On a small scale, we can challenge ingrained ways of relating to each other, develop supportive economies, set examples for what holistic creative support can look like, and build towards a joyful, generous, and inclusive community.
