Description
The collection comprises
Coffin, a unique set of twenty-five hand-bound artist's books documenting Barbara T. Smith's experiments with an early Xerox 914
copy machine, and a set of working materials and other works related to the
Coffin series.
Background
Barbara T. Smith, a pioneer in performance and body art, was born in Pasadena, California in 1931. She studied painting, art
history and religion at Pomona College, graduating in 1953. In 1965, she began to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in
Los Angeles, and in 1971, she received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine. While attending UC Irvine, she founded,
together with Nancy Buchanan and Chris Burden, the student-run experimental art gallery F-Space. It was at F-Space during
the late 1960s where Smith launched her career as an artist at the forefront of feminist, body, and performance art.