Monthly Archives: June 2019

Library of Congress

In 2007, Georgia Fee and Catherine Ruggles launched what would become a twelve-year commitment to emerging artists, arts writers, and critics. Beginning in LA as a network for local artists, ArtSlant Magazine ultimately expanded to fifteen cities and countries around the world, bringing on board fresh writers, editors, and artists to critique, unpack, reflect on, and generally chronicle art and its engagement with contemporary culture. For nine years, ArtSlant also awarded the ArtSlant Prize, celebrating outstanding work from emerging artists. From 2013 to 2018, ArtSlant hosted a Residency for artists and writers in Paris, founded in honor of Georgia Fee following her passing in 2012.

Georgia Fee helped to advance many with her resources, building open pathways to success in an industry that can be hard to break into. ArtSlant Prize winners had their work evaluated by respected gallerists and curators, and exhibited at art fairs in Miami and New York City. Many have gone on to have major gallery representation and exhibit their artwork widely. Likewise, countless writers cut their teeth in this small company to go on to edit and write for mainstream arts publications, a trajectory that made her very proud.

Archive and legacy

Now the good news! ArtSlant will live on as a resource in the digital archives of the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress welcomes ArtSlant as important part of [its web archive] collection and the historical record. Initially, the ArtSlant archive will be available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement. After one year, the Library may also make the collection available more broadly by hosting it on its public access website. Learn more about the Library’s Web Archiving program goals here , this is where ArtSlant’s digital archive is stored click here and check out the other numerous web archives

Victoria Delgadillo

Victoria joined the ArtSlant project in 2008, where she maintained a profile page for 10 years. Below are her 34 art images (prints, film stills, multi-media paintings, digital posters, experimental material work, performance concept images, non-traditional sculptures, etching, pen & ink, photos, community project interventions, stickers) that will be inducted into the Library of Congress web digital archive in 2019.

by victoriadelgadillo

La Moda

La Moda was created for Caught Between A Whore and an Angel, a women’s performance exhibit at Regeneracion/The PRC in Highland Park.  La Moda (1996), shot on VHS with a separate cassette sound track was filmed in 1 hour, with the soundtrack taking 8 hours to construct to compliment the footage.

Mexican Spitfire, Victoria Delgadillo filmed La Moda in a straight shot, no edit format (mainly due to a lack of resources). Each time she began to shoot a segment, the borrowed camera rolled back the tape, sadly losing some of the action. The sound track was edited from music left-behind by friends except for The Last Poets on the closing credits. The sound became Victoria’s presence in the story line of a neighborhood cabaret-style beauty pageant.

La Moda was made in a Direct Cinema style, characterized by a desire to directly capture reality and represent it truthfully, and to question the relationship of reality with cinema. Captured were Marco Trejo’s (†) love of Elvis practicing karate (opening credits), Patricia Valencia dancing flirtatiously and kissing the camera (a huge hit at the premiere) and Elizabeth Delgadillo Merfeld wearing clothes with sales tags still on it, an early hip-hop fashion statement about the “haves and have nots.”

Victoria studied Video Filmmaking at UCSD, during the growth in popularity of the Cinema Verite and the early stages of the portable video camera. Drawing from personal experiences as a non-conformist artist, her artwork and ideas have been profoundly influenced by growing up in a predominately African-American neighborhood in San Diego, California during the civil rights era, as well as by a word-of-mouth Mexican cultural experience in America living on the international border.

View LA MODA here