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200.
A Utopia for Some: Morningstar and Wheeler's Ranches Reconsidered.
Los Angeles: privately printed, 2018. First edition. Stapled wrps. Unpaginated (34pp.). Illustrated. Produced in conjunction with the installation by the Los Angeles-based artist Cathy Akers at Pitzer College Art Galleries in February/March 2019 in which she explored two Northern Californian communes that closed in 1973.
The exhibition included a number of Akers' exploded ceramic vase-like forms, each combining photographic fragments from the communes' archives with texts inscribed onto the surface of the objects. Extracted from stories narrated by women, the texts articulate different aspects of communal living - surviving off the land, drug experimentation, sexual violence, and utopian idealism: "Through personal stories of former commune residents and archival photographs, this project examines utopian aspects of these intentional communities, as well as their potential for dysfunction, misogyny and abuse" (Cathy Akers). Her self-published booklet prints sixteen quotes, twelve of them by women, taken from 'Home Free Home: A History of Two Open Land Communes' (item #199).
Fine. 100 copies printed.
