1
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Drawing for me is a sort of meditation.

2
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Everything begins and ends with the drawing.

3
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Whenever I do a project, I draw it out.

4
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So it's kind of a basic language,

5
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and then I do some things in between.

6
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It's all about collaging.

7
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A lot of what I do as being an artist

8
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is creating a voice for myself

9
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because I didn't have one for so long.

10
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In 1965, I got pregnant.

11
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In the fifth month of my pregnancy,

12
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I was having trouble breathing

13
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and came down with a heart condition
called cardiomyopathy.

14
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I went into heart failure.

15
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I was under an oxygen tent during that pregnancy,

16
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in a hospital.

17
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I was unable to walk

18
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or to do anything for many, many months.

19
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When you are experiencing the threat of death,

20
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you become so aware of time.

21
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That's really a gift,

22
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to become so sick early in my life.

23
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It made you value the time you had

24
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and the fact that you can't really waste time.

25
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Because so much of my illness
depended on breathing,

26
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I added the sound as it was getting better

27
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to a couple of my wax sculptures.

28
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[PLAYBACK OF RECORDED BREATHING SOUNDS]

29
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[VOICE FROM CASSETTE PLAYER]
--Oh, there you are.

30
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--I've been waiting for you all day.

31
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--I'm so glad that you've come to see me.

32
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--What's your name?

33
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I took a night class at UCLA

34
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on how you cast wax.

35
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Since I didn't have anybody else around,
I cast my face

36
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and made the wax cast from myself.

37
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When you're so isolated, you hear more.

38
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[RECORDED BREATHING SOUNDS]

39
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After my breath itself, I added interaction
and dialogue.

40
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To me, it was sort of like a drawing.

41
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It was sound that extended into space.

42
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So that became part of the work.

43
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In the seventies,

44
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women artists were just becoming aware of
how they were made invisible.

45
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The early challenges were getting somebody
to show my work.

46
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Nobody would.

47
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Eventually,

48
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the University of California at Berkeley invited
three women to have exhibitions

49
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and I was one of them.

50
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But they wanted to show only my drawings.

51
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I think they thought that drawings were safe

52
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and good draftsmanship and all of that.

53
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But along with that,

54
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I put in a couple of my wax sculptures
that talked.

55
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Within two days, the museum closed the show.

56
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They said, "Media isn't art."

57
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"Sound isn't art."

58
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And they completely closed
the exhibition down.

59
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Being rejected and being made invisible by
the museum system

60
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was really the best thing
that happened to me.

61
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The cultural experience of
having your voice suppressed

62
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has made speech, and talking,

63
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and having a voice,

64
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really important in what I do.