Collection Guide
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Bowen (Gaza) papers
MS.293
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Contributing Institution:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Title: Gaza Bowen papers
Creator:
Bowen, Gaza, 1944-2005
Identifier/Call Number: MS.293
Physical Description:
26 Linear Feet
16 boxes, 1 oversize folder, 39 oversize objects
Date (inclusive): 1980-2008
Abstract: This collection includes files,
notebooks and slides as well as artist's books and installation pieces from "Biblioteca
Memoria".
Physical Location: Stored in Special Collections &
Archives: Advance notice is required for access to the papers.
Language of Material:
English .
Collection open for research. Some of the oversize objects are not available for research
because of their size, weight and condition.
Property rights for this collection reside with the University of California. Literary
rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. The publication
or use of any work protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use for research or
educational purposes requires written permission from the copyright owner. Responsibility
for obtaining permissions, and for any use rests exclusively with the user.
Gaza Bowen papers. MS 293. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University
of California, Santa Cruz.
Gift of Dennis Wheeler in 2002, 2006, 2009.
Gaza Bowen (1944-2005) was an internationally known sculptor who exhibited extensively
since 1978. In the broadest sense her work was an inquiry into the non-verbal communication
between people and objects.
For nearly twenty years she focused her attention on shoes: their construction, history,
cultural meaning, and social significance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she made
functional shoes that sported vibrant colors and unusual patterns. Then she explored shoes
as sculptures. Her work has been featured in museums from Berkeley to Los Angeles to
Germany. Perhaps her best-known series, "Shoes for the Little Woman," was a group of shoe
sculptures created mostly from cleaning supplies: elaborate high heels constructed from
kitchen sponges or wooden clothespins, sometimes decorated with pot scrubbers.
In 1995, supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the
California Arts Council, Gaza stepped away from the shoe idiom and began exploring the
relationship between the personal and the political, building mixed media sculptures based
on childhood memories.
From 1997 to 1999 she continued her investigation into how the history of use becomes
indelibly etched into the fiber of matter and how those traces of memory evoke meaning in
the viewer. This work culminated in "Bibliotheca Memoria", a library/reading room
installation of books and furniture built from salvaged materials.
Her use of detritus as art material led her to an artist-in-residency at the San Francisco
dump in 2000. Her final project from this four month residency was the "Waste Not/What Not
Catalog". She also produced many artist's books including "Red Shoe Reader" and "The Secret
Game".
Gaza Bowen's work is included in many private and public collections including Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; The Getty
Center for Art and the Humanities and The Norton Family Foundation, Santa Monica,
California; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia and Duetsches Schuhmuseum, Offenbach am
Main, Germany.
Excerpted from Gaza Bowen, Artist, Biography at gazabowen.com & SF Gate obituary,
6/11/2005, by Kelly Hill, Chronicle Staff Writer.
A resume of Gaza Bowen's work can be found under "Additional Guides" to this finding
aid.
Scope and Content of Collection
This collection includes files, notebooks and slides as well as artist's books and
installation pieces from "Biblioteca Memoria". Many of the objects were fabricated from
material from the San Francisco Land Fill and are rusty and sharp edged. Please handle with
care.
Red shoe reader [Gaza Bowen, compiler], and Waste not/what not catalog : new paradigm
products, [designed, photographed, written by Gaza Bowen] have been cataloged
separately.
- Processed by:
- M. Carey
- Date Completed:
- February 2014
- Encoded by:
- M. Carey
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Artists -- California -- Santa Cruz
County
Installation works (Art)