Winter in Manhattan for National WCA

Access, by Michelle Pred

I took my first trip ever to Manhattan, during a snowstorm no less, to attend this year’s national Women’s Caucus for Art conference at the Hilton on Times Square.
I traveled with our chapter Hospitality Chair Jill Andre, a six year conference veteran, who showed me the ropes and booked the most magnificent view for our hotel room. After five days I was still taking it all in.
The highlights for me was the book fair where I found not one but two books about women photographic artists. Also the Museum of Modern Art is directly across the street from the conference, making it easy to catch a few hours now and then.
This year’s conference theme was about disability and access activism in art. Attendees were pleased with the performances and other work they viewed on the bus tour.

At the Saturday morning Chapter Circle meeting, I listened to the other 20 or so represented chapters report on their activities and found several of their accomplishments sounding relevant to our chapter. 

• One chapter interviews each new member and publishes it to the group as a way to get to know each others work. One of the national goals is to get to know each other. We could do that and even publish it on our website as a “newest member” page.
• Another chapter is making a self-published book of their members’ art. Jill Andre, my travel partner, also discussed this with me at length, about the need to publish books of our work. She considered the possible goal of one book per year for each of us to publish. We could form a subgroup for anyone who needs help to meet.
  

• Another chapter found their show was a great success and has traveled to four other locations and is about to be shipped internationally.  

I was delighted to find SF Bay Area’s Michelle Pred, having a show in the Chelsea district with a timely piece of work by the same name as our WCA show theme; Access. You may remember, Michelle had been our guest speaker at the 2014 Open Board January meeting in Palo Alto.




- Della Calfee, Vice President of Silicon Valley Women's Caucus for Art

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