Archives of the First Majority Gallery

America’s susceptibility to celebrity extends even to the arts. We laud the famous to the skies while neglecting those who have never gained the spotlight. We gladly pay premium prices for concert seats to hear a performer we know by reputation and ignore first-rate regional talents. We turn in a literary journal to the names we recognize and never get around to the rest. In order to succeed in the arts one must be as clever about publicity as about one’s art. In this way most artists work in darkness and leave no trace. The merit of an aesthetic work does not entail its longevity.

All the more do those who embrace counter-cultural ideals and eschew conventional markers of achievement prepare their own obscurity. Ted Joans was always just too hip for the mantle of fame while Allen Ginsberg found it fit him well. Patti Smith doggedly pursued every opportunity for advancement, so we can say her name today, while dozens of other punk poets are forgotten.

During the 1970s my wife Patricia Seaton, sometimes called “Ia,” was an exhibiting member of the First Majority Gallery in Berkeley, a pioneering all-female gallery in Berkeley. In a few decades the First Majority, has all but vanished from memory. Virtually nothing of its history is recorded online beyond its place in a few artists’ résumés and scans of old journals listing shows. Surely such grass-roots artistic formations have their own story to tell of the cultural history of our time. I record below some haphazardly surviving records concerning the group which were kept in increasingly battered cardboard boxes through all the artist’s travels and subsequent ventures. Having witnessed so very much of lesser importance preserved apparently forever in digital form, I list these documents here to record available details of one small and twisting tendril winding through the history of the age.

Reading the guest book comments for Patricia’s show, I am struck by the number of visitors who thought the work pointed important new directions. They felt the presence of something meaningful, beautiful, and novel in the arts. Decades later their enthusiasm cannot be recaptured, but it is possible to preserve a few fragmented traces of what once excited it.



Multiple copies exist of some documents.

call for submissions for two group shows during the summer of 1975 signed Ginger, Janet, Judith, Rosalie, and Sheila.

call for submissions for a group show inviting work “whether or not you consider yourself to be an artist,” on the theme of the Great Mother scheduled for April 24, signed “Rosalie, Sheila, Ia, Ginger, and Evelyn.”

call for submissions for a show on the theme “Illumination: words, pictures, & light” opening June 24, 1975.

letter dated June 18, 1975 signed Patricia Seaton indicating a wish to join the collective.

note accepting Seaton’s work for group show July 12, 1975.

“An Interior Landscape” Nov. 3-Dec. 7 (1975) poster with drawing by Ia and, following the title, the words “women’s environment . . .mental contours . . .collective art work.

“Spirits Clothed in Flesh” Jan. 27-Feb. 8 (1976) with drawing by Ia from a painted plate and, following the title, the words “paintings, drawings, ceramics, phantoms demonic & delicious."

“A Women’s Art Show” Oct. 1-Oct.31 (1975) with drawing perhaps by Janet Cannon-Unione including Virginia Atkin-Murray, Janet Cannon-Unione, Evelyn Hinde, Patricia Seaton, Sheila Seguin, Judith Sutliff, and Judy Todd.

Catalogue for “Spirits Clothed in Flesh” including three drawings by Ia.

press release for a slide lecture on “Patriarchal Mutilation of the Great Mother” by Lili Artel on September 18 and 25, 1975.

press release for “Spirits Clothed in Flesh” Jan. 27-Feb. 28 with remarks attributed to Euterpe of Chicago.

Women’s Art Center Newsletter, Winter 1976, with notice of Ia Seaton show, labeled gallery copy.

“The First Majority: Conversation with Sheila Seguin and Ginger Atkin,” four-page document citing a founding statement from February 1974 and list of the current collective members: Ginger Atkin, Rosalie Cassell, Evelyn Hinde, Patricia Seaton, Sheila Seguin, and Judy Todd. The document discusses the gallery and its vision, past shows, the current “Internal Landscape.”

announcement of an April 1 showing of tapes from “Just Us” and from International Women’s Video letters and of a program “Meet the First Majority” on April 25. Both are noted as “women only” events.

poster for the April 25 “Meet the First Majority” program, including “women only.”

poster for first show opening Feb. 15 with a group show including Virginia Atkin-Murray, Janet Cannon-Unione, Rosalie Cassell, Ellyn Rabinowitz, Diane Rusnak, Sheila Seguin, and Judith Sutliff.

poster for “Hindsight,” sculpture and environment by Evelyn Hinde with a drawing (by Hinde?) September 14-October 18 (1975?).

poster for “Bay Area Women: part 2” August 10-September 4, 1975 with unsigned drawing.

poster for “Ghost Images,” paintings, prints, and photos by Judith Sutliff with photo by Sutliff June 15-July 10.

poster for show featuring “The Drawings, Paintings, and Poems of Janet Cannon-Unione and Virginia Atkin-Murray with unsigned drawing.

poster for “Camilla Hall: her paintings, drawings, poetry” March 16-April 15 with drawing by Hall.
poster for Paintings and Sculpture by Sheila Seguin May 17-June 12.

poster for “Witch’s Retort” art by Rosalie Cassell and Judy Todd March 6-April 3, 1976 with unsigned drawing.

poster for the “Great Mother” show including Lina Allertons, Diane Rusnak, Pat Henshaw, Karen Berkan, Lougran O’Connor, Benita Mirabelli, Elizabeth Ennis, Maxene Galkin, January Nice, Leslie Markham, Nan Parry, Sara Sunstein, and Rossi Stewart, April 24-March 29, 1976.

poster for “Bay Area Women” July 12-August 7 with unsigned drawing.

poster for “Womanrise” Amazon art by Virginia Atkin, Dec. 23-Jan. 27 with drawing by Atkin.

poster for video evenings Feb. 9, March 11, and March 25 featuring the Just US Video Collective, the Iris Video Collective and CCAC Women’s Video, the latter two to admit women only.

poster for open poetry readings (women only) in the gallery starting April 9.

poster for lectures Sep. 2 by Evelyn Hinde on Käthe Kollowitz [sic], Sep. 18 Lili Artel in the Great Mother, and Sep. 25 Lili Artel on “Fragmentation of the Great Mother in Patriarchy.”

text of proposal to Berkeley City Government for grant, dated December 1975.

report to Berkeley Civic Arts Commission detailing programs in the First majority Gallery space, undated.

photocopy of new story “First Majority: more than just a gallery” September 1975.

press release following the gallery’s first show opening February 15, 1975, discussing the history of the project, two pages.

“The First Majority: Evolution of a Women’s Gallery in the East Bay” discussing the first show, February 15, 1975, copied from an unknown journal.

copy of article by Brenda Kahn from The Daily Californian February 25, 1975 “New Gall;eryto Shpwcase Women Artists Only.”

Calendar of First majority events for January through March showing numerous programs undocumented elsewhere.

unspecified: letter from Chico State professor asking for slides of “Octopus Woman” for a course on Women and the Arts, newspaper announcements of shows, visitor book with comments for “Spirits Clothed in Flesh,” six pages from what seems to be a gallery sitter’s book, list of Bay Area media outlets, poster for “Persona, a women’s art show" in the Berkeley Library.

Documents of the first Surreal Cabaret

1. the announcement
A Surreal Cabaret will be presented at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 2 [2011] at the Orange County Citizens Foundation, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf. Admission is free. The event will feature a series of short acts with local artists in performance.
In tribute to Surrealist émigré Kurt Seligmann (on whose estate the Foundation’s offices are located) each work will contain elements influenced by Surrealism. Breton’s “Manifesto of Surrealism” maintains, “in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.”
Acts may cross genres from poetry and drama to dance and music. The audience can expect conceptual play, experimentation, improvisation, and audience involvement.
The performances will be presented by the Lama Swine Toil. Participating artists are David Horton, Jennifer Kraus, Daniel Mack, Oliver Olive-Eyes, Steve Roe, Patricia Seaton, and William Seaton.
Surrealism Festival events will continue indefinitely.

2. the artists and their works
David Horton is an award-winning artist whose work is included in major museums and collections. To him “making art is like making magic.” He teaches at William Paterson University. His work was titled Culture is not your Friend.
Director, choreographer, and dancer Jennifer Kraus currently dances with Movita Dance Theatre. She is the artistic director of newly founded HUGE CUP Productions, a live arts production company. She honed her directing skills under director Kristin Martin of HERE Arts Center learning the craft of directing. Her piece was Beautiful Evening to Enjoy the Charm of Being Alive
Daniel Mack is best known for his rustic furniture and for the books he’s written on rustic building. But lately, his own work has turned more to the eccentric. Using river bark he collects in Newburgh, he carves female-like figures, called "anima". He is also making small collages in the style of the Surrealists. He performed acts of Fumage.
Oliver Olive-Eyes Folk-punk-rock-funk singer-songwriter Oliver Olive-Eyes brings his creative blend of wit, irony, and hormones to the stage. Typical themes range from pasta to politics, compassion to compulsion. Finding insight in the unexpected, discovering solace through music, laughing, and crying, Oliver's songs are an enriching journey both wholesome and low in polyunsaturated fat. He sang a tune about love disrupted by an extraterrestrial.
Steve Roe is founder of COPE (Council Of Poetic Experimentation), a performance group dedicated to performing classic and original multimedia experimental works. Steve was Associate Producer for the feature film Under Jakob's Ladder, which won best period piece at the Manhattan Film Festival in 2011. Steve played the role of Hans in the film. He presented Bern Porter’s The Last Acts of Saint Fuck You.
Patricia Seaton was a member of The First Majority, a women’s art collective in Berkeley in the 1970s where she exhibited her drawings, paintings, ceramics, and sculptural works. She was an art teacher in San Francisco, Nigeria, the Midwest and NYC before her long career as an art therapist in psychiatric hospitals. She provided intermittent encouragement and direction of audience response.
Poet, critic, and translator William Seaton has been active in performance and spoken words activities since the Happenings of the sixties. A central figure of the Cloud House group in San Francisco in the seventies, he has presented the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series in the Hudson Valley since 1993. He performed The Soap Opera of the Pair Who Forgot Themselves, But Only Temporarily.

3. welcoming words of the Lama Swine Toil
Good evening and welcome to the Surreal Cabaret. I am the Lama Swine Toil . You may feel pleased, even blessed, that fate has compelled you to this event. As for those of us on this side of the footlights, we deem ourselves impregnable, since, if you don’t like what we do, we can be pleased to have outraged the Philistines, whereas, if you like it, we will be recognized for the geniuses we are.
As we welcome you to the Cabaret, we welcome Orange County to a blinking recognition of that art has evolved since the opening of the twentieth century. In support of this continuing process, here in the headquarters of the OCCF, I look forward to an ever-brighter future when the indoor areas of the government building in Goshen will be abandoned and the courtyards and roofs given to neo-pagan practices and penny socials; when Woodbury Common will have reopened as a theater of dreams with twenty-five stages enacting fantasies and nightmares and nothing costs a single cent, even the popcorn is free; when tourists at West Point will gaze at rubble and old foundations and marvel at the river and at the unapologetic fierceness of war.
Enough crystal-gazing! Look now before your eyes! Prepare to see visions flash by in succession. Should one not please, it is likely to be the one you need. In any event, wait a few minutes and the next will arrive. You may if you please imagine yourselves gods observing the eons pass: our first little act, perhaps, the Hadean, then the Isuan and Swazian to the present. Or it may be that, with enough imaginative participation, this entire presentation will displace itself in the dream-like abyss of the future. You will know.
And when you depart, you will find that you view the world outside with the same acceptance you give to your dreams and, this evening, to the stage.