"Lo and behold, I can do it!"

The announcement on the last page of What She Wants was short and to the point: "Cindy. Levy Waronker is legally changing her name to Cynthia Betty and moving to Santa Monica, California to work with Judy Chicago and her associates on the Dinner Party Project."

The Dinner Party Project? The name hardly evokes visions of feminist organizing. It almost sounds more like a suburban competitor of the Tupper Ware Party.

But the Dinner Party Project is a far cry from hors d'oeuvres and veal cordon bleu a la belabored homemaker. For those who haven't yet heard of the project, it is a multi-media art piece which contains a symbolic history of women in Western civilization.

Conceived of five years ago by Judy Chicago, the piece since then has included the work of many dedicated and talented women who have donated their time to make sure that the vision becomes a reality.

Chicago worked for a year alone at first and then, cating the time-honored apprenticeship system g art, began bringing more women artisans into her studio. Gradually the studio grew to the point at which they recruited help and offered workshops to women throughout the country.

When feminist artist Chicago arived here to speak last spring, bringing with her a brilliant burst of inspiration and energy, Cleveland women artists separated by time, space and tradition were ready. We soaked up her words like dried earth welcomes the late summer rain. Out of her visit grew a connection of local women artists -The Cleveland-Chicago Connection. The group began a network among women in Cleveland and with it a faint hope that the energy blown in from the West Coast would stay with them through the cold winter days ahead. The other result of the visit by Chicago was the recruitment of several local women to join The Project. Women like Cindy Waronker and Dorothy Goodwill who went last summer. Goodwill left her three teen-aged daughters and her husband to fend for themselves for two months, a step few modern families are able to survive.

Another woman who was recruited indirectly from that visit was my mother, Betty Van Atta.

Buoyed by the excitement of an all-day exposure to Chicago's electricity, I called my mother who has been doing creative stitchery for years. It was hard to contain myself as I told her about my impressions of the work that was going on in Santa Monica, California.

"It is a triangular life-sized table with 13 women's place settings on each side. It is a take-off on the Last Supper (which had one long table at which there were 13 men)," I explained. "There are china painted plates and chalices and hand embroidered Irish linen runners. The place settings are each dedicated to a woman chosen to represent a specific period of history. In keeping with that concept, the needlework of the runner is being done using the stitches of the era in which that woman lived. Thus there is not only a history of some specifically named woman, but also the history of needlework." Some traditional women's art forms were being dignified and preserved through this magnificent work which will then be shown in museums throughout the country.

My mother was interested but skeptical about her potential involvement. She was planning to move to Arizona to be near my sister and her children and to be in a warm climate during her retirement years. That was a big step in itself, but to think of running off to California to join a group of strange women in an art project was almost overwhelming.

Nevertheless, having reached age 67 with a lot of energy, she decided she could at least write a letter and ask about it. She sent off a humble tale of her situation: "... retiring to Arizona, want to keep busy, like people and like to stitch.'

Page 6/What She Wants/April, 1978

The reply from Susan Hill, who called herself the "head needler," was warm and enthusiastic. "We are very interested in having you join us. How about sending us some slides of your work.'

I visited my mother soon after that and took color slides of just about everything she had ever stitched, from table cloths to wall hangings. With some misgivings she sent them off to California. Again the reply came quickly and enthusiastically: "When can you join us? We'd love to have you stitch with us.'

She left for Santa Monica in early February. Her first letters were discouraged. "I can't possibly sew well enough to meet the high standards they expect here. The runners are so beautiful and so perfect and so delicate and minute in detail it seems as though they couldn't have been made by anyone."

Betty Van Atta by Jean Van Atta

But then she went out and bought a new pair of bifocals and a magnifying glass and "Lo and behold. I can do it!" She wrote that she was sewing a runner for Isabelle D'Este whom I had never heard of. And suddenly she was talking about how she absolutely had to see the finished piece when it was exhibited at the opening in November at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Then she wrote that she was going to a CR group at night and out to dinner with different women who are involved in the project. Each letter was more enthusiastic than the last. At the end of a month she sadly noted that it was time to leave. She had to return to her responsibilities in Arizona.

"What responsibilities?" I had to ask. "You are retired, you have no dependents, you get a social security check every month (big deal), and you can do whatever you want -probably for the first time your whole life.

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The reply: "I have decided to stay on longer. I will be moving in with a woman I met here, her husband, his mother, and three cats in a big, old house." She wrote not even knowing exactly where the place was.

And her letters go on and on. The experience of stitching and sharing the work with other women. The experience of joining a CR group and working out problems among themselves. Sharing the pain and the joy of this monumental project. And now I get collect phone calls from California from my mother.

She presently has the distinction of being the oldest person who is working on the project. And I have the distinction of being the only member of my immediate family who had not been there (my

sister spent a week there last summer). But I never learned the gentle art of stitchery at my mother's knee. Not that she and my grandmother would not have been glad to have taught me. But I discarded the old ways for the new.

Jeanne Van Atta

A studio brochure from the project describes the Dinner Party as "the story of women's history told through images, needlework, the names of 999 women who have made a mark on history and an accompanying text. The piece includes 39 china painted plates placed on a fully set, open-triangle table 462 feet on a side. the piece preserves the traditional arts of women and expands them to a new scale and aesthetic dimension." The entryway to the exhibition will have large handwoven banners combining images with some words from the manuscript, "Revelations of the Goddess."

A studio workshop will be offered by the project in Santa Monica on the following dates: June 5 July 28; July 10 Sept. 1; and Sept. 5 Oct. 27. For more information, write:

The Dinner Party Project, 1615B 18th Street

Santa Monica, CA 90404

A Piece of Herstory

On Wednesday, February 21, 1838, people from all over Boston crowded to the State House. By one o'clock, the crowd was so great that guards were posed inside the Hall of Representatives to reserve seats for the members of the Legislative Committee scheduled to meet at two. Why all the excitement? Because today, a woman would address a Committee of the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts; until this day, no American woman had ever spoken to a legislative body.

Women in 1838 did not vote nor stand for office and had no influence in political affairs. They received inferior elementary schooling and were, with the exception of recently opened Oberlin College, excluded from all institutions of higher learning. No church, except the Quakers, permitted women any voice in church affairs or in the ministry. The belief that a woman's name should properly appear in print only twice in her life, on her wedding day and in her obituary, described accurately the popular dread of female "notoriety."

The woman who addressed the legislators that day, however, was not only American-born, but the offspring of wealth, Southern refinement and the highest social standing. Angelina Grimke and her sister Sarah, notorious as the first female antislavery agents, were ladies whose piety and respectability had been their shield against all attacks during their recent precedent-shattering nine months' speaking

tour.

Angelina Grimke was well aware that the people of Boston regarded her as a curiosity and came not so much to listen to her as to stare and scoff. "For a moment a sense of the immense responsibility resting on her seemed almost to overwhelm her," a friend reported later. "She trembled and grew pale. But this passed quickly, and she went on to speak gloriously, strong in utter forgetfulness of herself."

Angelina Grimke reached far back in time for a precedent to her appearance before the legislature. Like her, Queen Esther of Persia had pleaded before the King for the life of her people.

Mr. Chairman, it is my privilege to stand before you on a similar mission of life and love....I stand before you as a citizen, on behalf of the