For me, Kiki Smith symbolizes everything I have felt and wanted to be as a woman artist.  Partly because I’m of her generation and partly because she couldn’t be talked out of doing it like so many of us (women) have been. Her work has addressed themes of sex, birth, gender and AIDS with a female voice. Her work in the 80s and 90s dealt with women (menstrual blood, urine and feces) and the AIDS crises (death, blood).  Needless to say this brought her much criticism, but social significance. Her recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature using natural materials.  Her sculptures have been placed in many world-wide public spaces, including the consulates in Istanbul and Mumbai. She’s a craftsman working in sculpture and printmaking.  She’s also a writer and painter and social activist.

“Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn’t, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one’s own vision.”                                                                                               ~ Kiki Smith, American. 1954 

In honor of International Women’s Day, March 8. This day is a focal point in the movement for women’s rights.

After the Socialist Party of America organized a Women’s Day on February 28, 1909, in New York, the 1910 International Socialist Woman’s Conference suggested a Women’s Day be held annually. After women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8 became a national holiday there. The day was then predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted by the feminist movement in about 1967. The United Nations began celebrating the day in 1975.