On this edition of From the Vault we present recordings of two women who were on Pacifica Radio at very important points in their illustrious careers: artist and educator Judy Chicago, and singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.
In 1979, Judy Chicago, cofounder of the Los Angeles Women's Building and former KPFK host, sat with KPFK producer Karla Tonella to discuss the enormous undertaking of her landmark art installation titled The Dinner Party. The piece, started in 1974, took six years to complete: 39 place settings arranged into groupings of 13, with the three dining tables arranged into a triangle. It s official debut was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on March 14, 1979; it has since traveled the world, and now resides in the permanent collection of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
Buffy Saint-Marie was featured as a guest in 1975 on KPFK's program Focus on Feminism, hosted by Pat Denslow - at this point in her career, she had just released her first two albums on MCA Records: Buffy, and Changing Woman (these followed several previous albums on boutique label Vanguard Records). In this interview, Sainte-Marie relays both a feminist and indigenous perspective with regards to her songwriting and its evolution, and her survival as a female musician and writer in the corporate music industry.
From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio Listeners.
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