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Feb 11, 1976

Dear Jael,

I'd be happy to send you information about the Feminist Studio Workshop, and I hope if, after reading this letter and the included information, you have any other questions, comments, information about yourself you would like to share you will write a book. It would be nice to hear more about who you are, what your particular needs, ideas, feelings are, so I could respond more directly.

I'm enclosing information on a white sheet about the Feminist Studio Workshop...it may give you some of the facts, but probably won't give you any of the flavor of the experience. To come to the workshop is to decide to experience a lot...to learn more about who you are, what you want from your life, from your relationships, from your work...to determine what it is you have to say, through your work, to other women, and to the world. We don't start with the teaching of skills: we first focus on your content, and later begin to evaluate what is the best means to say it. We are intent upon creating a community of women which will serve ourselves as a model of creative, cooperative living, a place in which women are treated equally, listened to equally, and have an equal chance to express themselves. We feel committed to that expression taking place in the arts, but our definition of art is not so narrow as that in the art world. We believe art is a means of raising consciousness and inviting dialogue, essentially political in nature (and that political includes, in the true sense) and the personal). We also feel what we do feminist 
with each other and how we relate to each other serves us as models for our own ideas of a more humane world, so in the FSW you can expect we will focus upon our own process, in small consciousness raising groups, an large dislcussions in the community, and in individual classes. When you first arrive you will find the openness different than in ordinary schools...the range of what is appropriate to express includes feelings, emotions, as well as ideas and activities.

You will be encouraged to develop your art by a set of standards which you, in conjuction with all the rest of us in the community, will begin to formulate, and which willalso be different from the art schools. And you will have the opportunity to expand your skills in performance art, video, art, art history, writing and design and graphics within the workshop, and several other areas throug p articipation in the extension program (FSW students can take one class or two workshops free each term...see pink bulleting for sample offering).