Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building

by Terry Wolverton

In the 1970's, the West Coast feminist arts movement coalesced around the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Founded by artist Judy Chicago, the Woman's Building was conceived as a "public center for women's culture." Women from across the country were drawn there to be part of a community engaged in the exploration of what a female-centered culture might mean.

In Insurgent Muse, Terry Wolverton chronicles her own 13-year involvement in the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872864030
• ISBN13: 9780872864030
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Passion's History

I saw Wolverton speak at a California Studies Conference and felt astonished that an organization like the Women's Building existed in Los Angeles and isn't better known. Her memoir will correct that, melding her passion for bringing a dream to reality with her attempts--not always successful--to change lesbians' own ideas of how they are in the world. This is a beautifully wrought and constructed book and worth reading as a woman's journey even if you have no special interest in Los Angeles, lesbians, art, or feminism. Ms. Wolverton's work serves to remind us that the personal IS political and that one person really can make a difference.

Extremely Important Book for Understanding Art and Feminism

A woman has to search high and low to find any book that comes close to Wolverton's Insurgent Muse when looking for a truly feminist history of women and art in this country. Wolverton takes the feminist discourse course by blending in her own story with very honest critique and appraisal of the influence of Los Angeles' Women's Building on helping women bridge the gender gap in visual and performing art. True to the notion that "the personal is political" Wolverton recounts her own journey from the Midwest and her own journey on her way to becoming a self-realized artist and person. I think some of her points along the way are very important and do blend with feminist literary criticism, for example, that the developing woman and the developing artist are most often one and the same, that these two stories cannot be separated out from a woman's personality.Though, it must be said of Insurgent Muse, the best thing about it is just that it is a damn good read. Historical and feminist criticism, many times, can be so dry and theoretical (on purpose, you think. Maybe academics think they get brownie highbrow points for that.) that many women are discouraged from reading it. Wolverton's book blends theory, personal history, historical anecdote into something that is insightful, informative, and enjoyable!

Terrific book

I loved this book. I found the historical aspects fascinating and it made me feel as though I was in the thick of it. It expertly weaved personal history within the social context of the feminist art movement. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good read.

poignantly informative but also funny as hell

I found Terry Wolverton's memoir about her time at the Los Angeles Women's Building not only poignantly informative but also funny as hell in all the right places. She seemed to me to approach her memories and experience there with a sincere sensitivity as well as a sense of humor about the general self-seriousness of youth. Never poking fun at the accomplishments or goals of either the women's movement itself or the feminist art movement within it, she still manages to make an historical (though personal) account of an important time feel like a clear and simple story that a smart, witty friend is telling you. I found Insurgent Muse to be an insightful, sometimes grave, often amusing, always loving account of one woman's coming of age in a time when some specific expressions of feminism were themselves just being born. And as a younger generation feminist myself, I loved reading about the trailblazers who took their own explorations and discoveries seriously enough to create a reality they wanted to live in, both artistically and otherwise.

Personal, Moving and Powerful

In writing about herself and the "glory days" of the Women's Building in Los Angeles, Terry Wolverton has given us a deeply personal and moving account of women's struggle for recognition, not only in the arts, but in society, in life and in one's own eyes. "Insurgent Muse" ultimately becomes the story of the redemptive nature of creative expression.