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okeefe, p. 3

suffrage was the womens issue then.  we worked very hard for it.  after we got suffrage, the women's party formed.  i was always interested in them.  they went about their business in a very dignified way.  i didnt much like the other people, who made so much noise, but it was a difficult time- women were like colored people, you didnt associate with them if you could avoid it.  as for the feminists now, i get embarrassed with the way they go on.  they would be better off if a lot of them stayed home and did their work.  i think it all began when a got a mailing from judy chicago.  i thought to myself, why this is horrible.

i was the one women in the group of men around stieglitz.  the men did more for me than the women, to help me.  they didnt understand me, they didnt know why i wanted to paint flowers or paint new york but they helped me.  the women would come to see my work tho.  when my shows would open they would jam into the small space in the anderson gallery.  they used to call my shows the fur coat show.  but the women saw the paintings differently than the men--they got it in a more emotional way; the men thought of it as painting.  i still get a lot of emotional fan mail from men.  they think of me as a recluse in the middle of the desert.  but of course im working 7 days a week.

i have this house in abique to look after.  every spring i move in and garden when it begins to grow up, i come back out there to the ranch.  and there is a lot of art business.  a while ago i went on a 4-stop trip to new york, d.c., tucson, and milwaukee.  i had to tend to a lot of unfinished business.  i am stieglitz's executor--ti archives/fotos.  i am in a continual dialogue with institutions.  there is constant research being done on the period i lived through and the work -10 or 20 letters a day.  its just like being in an office in new york.

i wanted to disberse the stieglitz collection because i knew so single museum was going to take all of it.  we had terrible fights about this.  i told him if you want to do it my way ill do it; if you want to do it your way, get someone else.  it was 25 years ago when i disbersed it, to chicago, new york, fisk university, but time has gone by so quickly and still there are problems and unfinished business.  at the national gallery they havent even catalogue the collection--of all of stieglitz's best fotographs, 1430 of them, the mounted ones.  so i went to see them about that, and i went to tucson to see the new photographic center and to attend an ansel adams exhibition.  in d.c. i saw dillon ripley about turning my house in abique into a museum to show my paintings or better yet a museum in santa fe.  oneday in washington we went to the feer, to the hirshorn, walked the mall, and all the way up the steps of the lincoln memorial.  then we ended by going to the ncfa.  friends told us they couldnt believe we did all that in one day.  but it was a holiday and beautiful weather--columbus day.  i sat down on a rock near the reflecting pool.  i got anidea for a painting in washington that will by my next painting.

in milwaukee i was taken by harriet bradley through her sculpture park.  i was ver impressed by the monumental sculpture--there were 2 pieces i couldnt get out of my mind, 1 by clement meadmore.  i was very excited.  we walked around 2 acres of park in the frezing cold, i had several coats on, but i couldnt stop, and so now i am thinking of making a large sculpture.

i have done sculpture in the past.  i have a small maquette of one that i think is good.  we are going to try to make it large, in corten steel or some other material.  it is all white and might not be best for steel.  we have 7 acres out here where it could be placed.  were thinking of it being 10 feet high.  since ive seen those big pieces ive been working and designing in cardboard shapes that can be fabricated later.  this is a dream but i think we can do it.  i have a lot of unfinished business.