INSTALLATION + PERFORMANCE PRESS DOSSIER · LOS ANGELES · 1993
WHOSE MYTH ARE YOUSE WITH?
Two years out of Otis, Barbara took a grant from the City’s Cultural Affairs Department to the Watts Towers Arts Center Gallery. The project was an installation and a performance, not a hang: a Saturday on which the public painted beside her on ten large canvases, and a Sunday opening led by her brother, the Philadelphia saxophonist and poet Elliott Levin, with students from Art Options—the program she had co-founded the year before—reading texts written for the occasion.
The record is small and exact: the Los Angeles Times preview of March 28, 1993, with Barbara quoted in it; her own numbered list of works, which names the ten participatory murals and the Velcro poem; the poem itself, copied out in her lyric sheet; and the paintings that survive—Whose Myth Are Youse With?, its Velcro companion, the ten panels named for the Tree of Life, and Tree of Life itself. No photograph of the installation has surfaced.
THE VENUE
Watts Towers Arts Center Gallery
1727 East 107th Street, Los Angeles, beside Simon Rodia’s towers. A City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs facility; the same department funded the project. Admission was free.
THE DATES
March 1993
Previewed in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, March 28, 1993: a mural-painting day on a Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm, and the opening installation with performance and reception on a Sunday, 2 to 5 pm. Which weekend the paper meant—March 27–28 or April 3–4—the Estate has not settled.
THE TITLE
A line from her brother
“For 2B or not 2B’s the question in 3-D 4 me / and… Whose Myth are Youse With?” The words are Elliott Levin’s, from a poem written with his ensemble New Ghost. She painted the title in 1991; for Watts she cut the whole poem into words and Velcroed them to a second canvas so the viewer could rearrange it—“like refrigerator magnets,” she said in 2021. “It’s big, it’s like six feet big.”
WORKS FEATURED
Whose Myth Are Youse With?, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 1991
Whose Myth Are Youse With? #2, acrylic and cardboard on Velcro, the poem rearrangeable by the viewer, 1993
#01 – Crown, acrylic on canvas, 1993 — one of the ten participatory murals
#02 – Wisdom, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#03 – Understanding, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#04 – Mercy, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#05 – Severity, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#06 – Beauty, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#07 – Victory, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#08 – Splendor, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#09 – Foundation, acrylic on canvas, 1993
#10 – Kingdom, acrylic on canvas, 1993 — “one of 10 participatory murals,” in her own list
Tree of Life, acrylic and marker on canvas — named in her list as part of the installation
ARTIST STATEMENT
Barbara in print
I have been a painter for more than 30 years. In 1984 I was diagnosed with a retinal degenerative disease and since then, I’ve been legally blind. I seriously questioned my ability to continue painting. I slowly transformed my thinking and techniques to incorporate and even exploit my physical limitations as an integral part of the work.
As a result, I am increasingly inspired by aural influences—music and language. I use language as a gestural element—to create patterns, weavings, and layers of information. The viewer is invited to form associations and meanings. In some works, the viewer is able to manipulate and rearrange small modular paintings which create a whole. In larger mural projects, the public has been invited to participate. This work is compatible with my interest in improvisation and spontaneity in painting, which has been inspired by my work with experimental theater artists, jazz musicians, and poets.
Since 1992 I have been working with inner-city teenagers at Art Options, an arts-based education program I co-founded with Mira-Lani Bernard. The energy and imagination of these young people has been inspiring.
“A lot of symbols and mythological figures in one culture correspond to some in another. Marking on walls, expressing things symbolically, is a universal impulse. It goes back to cave paintings.”
— Barbara Romain, quoted by Erin J. Aubry, “Don’t Myth It!”, Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1993
THE PRESS RECORD · 1993
What was written, printed and photographed
Filter by kind. Each box opens its source; grey boxes are held in the Estate archive and open on request.
1993
Watts Towers Arts Center Gallery · Los Angeles (March 1993)
1993
Watts Towers Arts Center Gallery · Los Angeles (March 1993)
1993
Watts Towers Arts Center Gallery · Los Angeles (March 1993)
RELATED
Portfolio: Whose Myth Are Youse With? · Whose Myth Are Youse With? #2 · #10 – Kingdom · Tree of Life