Mexican Folk Pottery
Editorial Statement
The Aesthetics of Oppression
Is There a Feminine Aesthetic?
Quilt Poem
Women Talking, Women Thinking
The Martyr Arts
The Straits of Literature and History
Afro-Carolinian "Gullah" Baskets
The Left Hand of History
Weaving
Political Fabrications: Women's Textiles in Five Cultures
Art Hysterical Notions of Progress and Culture
Excerpts from Women and the Decorative Arts
The Woman's Building
Ten Ways to Look at a Flower
Trapped Women: Two Sister Designers, Margaret and Frances MacDonald
Adelaide Alsop Robineau: Ceramist from Syracuse
Women of the Bauhaus
Portrait of Frida Kahlo as a Tehuana
Feminism: Has It Changed Art History?
Are You a Closet Collector?
Making Something From Nothing
Waste Not/Want Not: Femmage
Sewing With My Great-Aunt Leonie Amestoy
The Apron: Status Symbol or Stitchery Sample?
Conversations and Reminiscences
Grandma Sara Bakes
Aran Kitchens, Aran Sweaters
Nepal Hill Art and Women's Traditions
The Equivocal Role of Women Artists in Non-Literate Cultures
Women's Art in Village India
Pages from an Asian Notebook
Quill Art
Turkmen Women, Weaving and Cultural Change
Kongo Pottery
Myth and the Sexual Division of Labor
Recitation of the Yoruba Bride
"By the Lakeside There Is an Echo": Towards a History of Women's Traditional Arts
Bibliography
I am a compulsive collector. Having just concluded a small survey, I now know that this is true of other women artists as well. These list were made by people who don’t admit to “collecting” as much as they do to "saving" or not throwing anything away.
I asked a number of women to let us in on their secrets. The letter of inquiry was sent—xeroxed copies were made by the women who (in the tradition of the chain stitch xxx letter) reached other women. When the replies came in I realized that people save things that "touch" them rather than things which display the "proper touch".
The survey showed that savers are not comfortable about their hoards and that artists provide the highest rationale for not throwing anything away; they save so that they can incorporate their "junk" in to their art. No one can fault a moral glutton.
Underneath all of this collecting there is a strong emotional tie to a specific experience. A physical diary in a sense. A woman's personal history, her humanity, her old postcards, succulents, charms for bracelets, ticket stubs, anything free... life itself has to be saved.
Muriel Castanis is a woman, a wife, a mother and a sculptor, soon to change the order to a woman, a wife, a sculptor and a mother.