I ‘d like to invite you to join in helping to complete an exciting new documentary and arts education project called: Art As Action. This film began one year ago when I decided to make a small personal film about my mother, painter and fabric artist Gloria Torrice. As a young woman in the 1940’s Gloria and a group of rebellious and talented women artists rented a cold-water flat in Manhattan and dedicated themselves to creating a new form of art they called Action Painting.

As I began researching this story I quickly realized that this was not just a story about my mother, but a story about an entire generation of women artists who were at the forefront of the new movement of Abstract Expressionism, and who challenged conventions not only in visual arts but also in gender roles, politics and society as a whole.

Art As Action celebrates the contribution that some of the lesser known women artists made to Abstract Expressionism in New York City in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Included in the film are interviews with my mother, paintings and rare archival photographs of other women artists, and some of the photographs of Fred McDarrah of the Village Voice, who documented the art scene at this time.

While the stories of their male colleagues, Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko and Motherwell, are by now well known, the tales of these women and their role and contribution to this important historical moment are for the most part untold.

The film is close to completion, your tax-deductible donation is needed to help finish the editing and to clear the rights for the art and music, so it can be screened at museums, community groups, arts organizations, festivals and broadcasts. We are raising funds through USAProjects and only have 45 days to reach our goal of $5000, so please donate today by visiting our project page here:

http://www.usaprojects.org/project/art_as_action

As a thank you for your contribution, we offer a variety of gift perks including advance releases of the DVD, limited edition posters signed by Gloria and more.

You can preview the posters here:

http://torriceproductions.com/gloria_posters.html

Gloria Torrice will soon be celebrating her 90th birthday! Please join me in bringing this story to the world and celebrating women artists’ role in the history of American Art making.

Thank you,

Andrea Torrice

Women artists, the unsung heroines of Abstract Expressionism left an indelible mark in mid-20th century Manhattan, yet their oeuvre is relatively unknown. Although their contemporaries, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning may be more familiar names, Art as Action aims to give women artists their due and fills a critical gap in the history of American Art’s seminal movement.

Polly Guerin
Author and Journalist
Pollytalk.com