Susan McAllister Papers, circa 1975-2016

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Summary

Creators:
Susan McAllister Cheryl White A Broad Selection of Mail Art from International Artists
Abstract:
Extent:
3 linear feet (3 archival cartons)
Language:
Preferred citation:

Susan McAllister Papers. Bay Area Lesbian Archives

Background

Scope and content:

This collection spans the years 1975-2016, and is arranged in 5 series: A Personal Life, A Political Life, An Artistic Life, Photos, and Ephemera.

Biographical / historical:

Susan McAllister was born in Salisbury, Maryland on April 21, 1948. She had a brother and a sister, a father she described as “cold” and a mother she loved. She often thought her mom may have been a lesbian, having had a “special friend,” with whom she spent extended time. Susan had a brief marriage before she changed her life dramatically. Around the age of 28, Susan traveled across the country in a VW van with her friends, Rick and Harry, a gay couple, headed for Southern California. Living together in Long Beach, they worked for Montgomery Ward where she met George Fields, a gay male who would become a lifelong friend. She attended Long Beach Community College and participated in many feminist demonstrations in the late 70’s, getting her picture in the local paper. As an ardent feminist she was quick to correct friends’ sexist language and behaviors. While in Long Beach she heard about a feminist theater collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area called, Fat Lip Readers Theater. These fat women wrote and performed material about their lives with a feminist and fat liberation analysis. Susan couldn’t wait to get up to the Bay Area. Eventually she would join the company and become a writer/performer committed as an activist in this movement. Fat Lip offered workshops, training, and for 18 years performed on stages, street corners, and at conferences. It was initially made up of white lesbian, and bi-sexual women in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Increased diversity would come with longevity. Susan embraced the label “lesbian” as an important political statement in a patriarchal society. In 1983 Susan met Anne Moore in the audience at a Fat Lip performance. She and Anne began a devoted relationship until Ann died suddenly in 1989. They lived together with Anne’s son, Kish and Kish’s father Jack and his partner Sparrow in a large, old Berkeley house. Susan attended UC Berkeley and received her master’s in social Welfare on June 4, 1983. She completed an internship at Creative Growth working with disabled children. She had worked as a switchboard operator in Long Beach and later in Berkeley helped with the “family” business distributing flyers in the East Bay. Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s Susan was a dedicated activist, learning techniques of civil disobedience in trainings given by Anne and others, participating in many demonstrations for peace, feminist and women’s issues, and in opposition to nuclear power plants. She strutted her fat self in Pride Parades, occasionally on one of the spectacular floats. Another consuming interest of Susan McAllister’s was Re-evaluation Counseling, (a.k.a. Co-Counseling). She took classes to learn the process, attended workshops on racism, feminism, disability, personal growth, GLBT+ issues, and gave a 12-week class on fat liberation and feminism. She had daily short sessions every morning with her friend Peni and made numerous dates with others to have one-on-one appointments. Susan joined the East Bay artist community, enthusiastically exploring artistic expression using a variety of methods and tools. She loved taking art classes at Studio One in Oakland. For her, art was about the process and not the product. It was about using art to find and build community both locally in the East Bay as well as internationally. She, Peni, Cheryl and others would frequently meet in the basement community studio of the Berkeley Museum and Film Archives to do art together. She experimented with a number of modalities, using materials provided, to try collage, stamp art, sharpie art and focused on the color’s red, black and white in her paintings and drawings. They called themselves the Art Brigade. Her creativity led her to do a series of “tea pot self-portraits” and used unlikely items, such as, old tennis shoes as her canvas. She participated in groups formed by another Bay Area artist, Carla Cryptic, to do “trading card art” applying pen and ink and paints to the small surface of trading cards and then trading them. Susan had no interest in keeping hold of her art but preferred to give it away. She joined the post card art community when she joined the International Union of Mail Artists, with thousands of members around the globe. Over the years, she received pounds and pounds of mail from these artists, sometimes with personal notes and encouragement. This collection includes a random selection of this correspondence showing the range of media including stamp art, fabric, collage and so forth. While this collection offers numerous examples of art from international artists, there are scant examples of Susan’s own art. She preferred to give it away. In addition to her post card and trading card art, Susan enjoyed making jewelry. Found in this collection are two pins she made as well as a photo of one of her dramatic necklaces. Several years after Anne’s death, Susan moved to a small apartment in Berkeley for disabled persons. As she became less and less mobile, she made more and more art from her small space sitting in front of the tv. Off it would go to her artist pen pals. Susan McAllister died on July 15, 2016. She lived a life full of passion and commitment to loved ones, creativity, and social justice.

Acquisition information:
Donated by good friend Cheryl White

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research. Advance appointment is required.

Terms of access:

The owner of the collection is Bay Area Lesbian Archives (BALA). The copyright is retained by the estate of Susan McAllister. All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be obtained from BALA staff.

Preferred citation:

Susan McAllister Papers. Bay Area Lesbian Archives

Location of this collection:
P.O. Box 18684
Oakland, CA 94619-0684, US