The self which enacts learning, a research with/through the Bay Area Artists for Women's Art (BAAWA)

Abstract

This thesis reveals and clarifies through creative research practices and forms a movement towards, and a recognition of, embodied arts learning through and as a result of an association with the Bay Area Artists for Women's Art (BAAWA), a particular feminist art educational community. Interpretive inquiry on a present learning process both locates and frames this research. The components which inform this interpretation include: a study of the associated literature on feminist art communities, a participant research study with the BAAWA community presented as a notated theatrical performance script, and an exhibition. They relate to and through each other in a complementary relationship and record the various values, perspectives and orientations I have taken on at different occasions in my learning. It is the relationship and specificity of these occasions or events which point to naming my learning process as curriculum as I have understood it from, and applied it beyond, BAAWA. This research is multi-layered, multi-textured, dialogic, open and aesthetic and points to the particular complexities, needs, and practices of contemporary North American women artists in reaching to name, affirm and expand their practices as artists.