Artists Didn’t Deserve Harsh Criticism

I am an artist, a poet and a grandmother who attended the “Baking Cookies” art exhibition at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana on Jan. 8. Your art critic Cathy Curtis (Calendar, Jan. 11) directed strong criticism at the 27 artists, who did not deserve such harshness. Their energies did much to further the cause of Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art.

Men have been recognized as artists for centuries, and women are only beginning to find their way to recognition. I doubt that the 450 people who attended the exhibition agreed with Curtis’ painful comments.

LAURA V. COLLINGS

Laguna Niguel

First of all, the exhibition was not conceived around a programmatic theme, as stated in the review. The exhibition was merely an introduction to Orange County of a newly formed women’s collective.

Second, the recurring use of certain symbols, imagery and formats is necessary for participating in the universe of discourse and to affirm women’s culture. Affirming culture is one of the oldest functions of art.

Third, according to my Britannica-Webster dictionary, the term feminist means (1) someone who advocates political, economic and social equality of the sexes, or (2) someone who organizes activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.

I’m still trying to figure out how a landscape painting can be “vibrantly feminist in a broader sense.”

ROSA M. HUERTA-WILLIAMSON

Orange

Cathy Curtis replies: By calling Elaine Kennedy’s landscape paintings “vibrantly feminist in a broader sense,” I meant only that they reflect an abstract vision of landscape as flux and flow--which could be seen as a metaphorical embodiment of the female body.