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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

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Drawing for me is a sort of meditation.

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I think everything begins and ends with the drawing.

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Whenever I do a project, I draw it out.

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So, it's kind of a basic language,

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and then I do some things in between.

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It's all about collaging.

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A lot of what I do as being an artist

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is creating a voice for myself

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because I didn't have one for so long.

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In 1965, I got pregnant.

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In the fifth month of my pregnancy,

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I was having trouble breathing

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and came down with a heart condition
called cardiomyopathy.

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I went into heart failure.

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I was under an oxygen tent 
during that pregnancy,

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in a hospital.

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I was unable to walk

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or to do anything for many, many months.

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When you are experiencing 
the threat of death,

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you become so aware of time.

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That's really a gift,

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to become so sick early in my life.

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It made you value the time you had

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

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Because so much of my illness
depended on breathing,

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I added the sound as it was getting better

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to a couple of my wax sculptures.

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[PLAYBACK OF RECORDED BREATHING SOUNDS]

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

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

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

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--What's your name?

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I took a night class at UCLA

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on how you cast wax.

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

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and made the wax cast from myself.

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When you're so isolated, you hear more.

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[RECORDED BREATHING SOUNDS]

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After my breath itself, I added 
interaction and dialogue.

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To me, it was sort of like a drawing.

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It was sound that extended into space.

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So that became part of the work.

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In the seventies,

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

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The early challenges were getting somebody
to show my work,

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and nobody would.

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Eventually,

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

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and I was one of them.

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But they wanted to show only my drawings.

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I think they thought 
that drawings were safe

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and good draftsmanship and all of that.

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But along with that,

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

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Within two days,

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the museum closed the show.

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They said, "Media isn't art."

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"Sound isn't art."

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And they completely closed
the exhibition down.

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Being rejected and being made invisible by
the museum system

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was really the best thing
that happened to me.

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The cultural experience of
having your voice suppressed

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has made speech, and talking,

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and having a voice,

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really important in what I do.