Cynthia Grace - Transforming the Goddess

San Francisco artist Cynthia Grace is a modern-day Renaissance woman. One of the original group of visionaries at The San Francisco Art Institute, she didn't find quite the receptive atmosphere there that she was looking for, and it took another milieu entirely to give her the confidence she needed as an artist.
"After two years at Santa Rosa Junior College I tried to go straight and get into business at the University of Colorado. I gave up after two years and came back to The Art Institute. That was difficult, for a woman. For a woman to be as good as the men she had to be twice as good and put out twice as much energy. I was there a little before Josie Grant, but it was certainly the same story then, and it still is now.
"When I finished, I was out of school for two years, because it took me that long to be accepted into a graduate program. I came up to Petaluma and spent my time painting the Sonoma mountains, and went to New York to check out the art scene there. When I came back to go to graduate school it was the first time I ever felt supported as a woman. I hadn't even known what I was missing; I went along with the game of plucked eyebrows and perfect makeup. Every hair had to be in place. Then I became like all the other rebels, with long, straight hair and black stockings. Before the sixties there was a big Bohemian scene in San Francisco, which dovetailed into the hippy scene but was definitely different in tone and attitude. But it was still not wanting the middle-American nightmare with all its' trappings.
"By the time I was in graduate school I knew what I wanted to do, art-wise at least. I went over to Mills College, had a nice studio, and produced some good work. I called Mills 'the country club'; it was a terrific place for women to be, particularly then. It convinced me that, at a certain age, it would be very good for girls to go to an all-girl school. Educators have determined that at a certain age they find girls starting to fall back academically, because they're getting the message that they shouldn't be too smart."
Grace never got that message, or she got over it at Mills. She finished her Master's Degree in Art in 1969, but by that time had already served as a studio assistant for sculptor Freda Koblick and as a teaching assistant at the DeYoung Museum Art School. In 1970 she started as a teacher at the DeYoung, and that was when her community outreach work also began with a program that took artists and materials into the San Francisco community to work with children at playgrounds, housing projects and schools. In 1975 she went on to work for CETA as a muralist and teacher, still working with community groups at for the SCRAP Program. These were the golden years for the early visionaries, and Grace worked alongside artists like Nick Hyde and Josie Grant, putting their particular and peculiar brand on the art pulse of San Francisco. She credits one teacher/curator for putting visionary art on the art map, as many other artists have before her.
"There aren't a lot of places in San Francisco for visionary art, not anymore. The galleries haven't really kept pace with the new interest; when I heard about Barbara's gallery and I came up for the reception, it was like old home week running into the other visionaries. There's been a big gap in the visionary art movement; it hasn't been the same since Norman Stiegelmeyer left. He was a moving force in the art community; an art leader who was able to speak and present art in a way that would make it noticed and promoted. He got a Fullbright Scholarship to Germany sometime in the early seventies; he died only a few years ago. But without him, the community in San Francisco wasn't the same. He was more of a curator than an artist, certainly."
What was it, exactly, that de-railed the visionary movement during the 1980's? Apart from a few British visionaries who did well in the commercial sector of the art world, nobody seemed much interested in this type of art. Instead the abstract movement took over the art scene, producing all those blue pyramids and dots on canvas. For Grace, the withdrawal from the scene was a very personal one, and had to do with the early visionaries coming-of-age.
"I know the eighties were a dark time for the visionaries. My generation, the first San Francisco visionaries, were at the age when other things were happening; I had two children to raise, and it was difficult just to continue producing art while raising children and working at another job. I didn't have time to go to meetings and galleries; if I had time to just produce art I was happy. I have stacks of things at home that I haven't yet marketed or shown. When my husband and I split up I stopped showing my art for awhile; he was the master framer and matter, and for a long time I didn't have anyone to do those things for me."
After a number of years teaching yoga, running a massage school and a retirement center, Grace went to work for ArtWorks, in 1983. She is still working for them today, though she is trying to distance herself from this energy-intensive job in order to get back to her own artistic work. 
"I'm still working for ArtWorks, but I keep trying to leave. I go to elderly and home-bound people; people who are depressed and have nothing happening in their lives, and we try to get them interested in art to bring them out into the world again. I worked pretty steadily for them on a part-time basis for ten years; part time because they want artists to have time to do their own art as well. Then I worked for them full-time for five months, pretty intensely. I think there are problems with funding right now, and I'm not high on their list because until going into the Vision and Magick show I hadn't shown my work for awhile. Art is just like teaching; publish or perish. In this case, show or perish."
This is her agenda for the future -- show her work and get on with the business of serious art. Now that taste has turned back towards her eclectic, colorful brand of visionary art, Grace is ready for her public. And we are certainly ready for her; just seeing one of her delightful paintings with its' yellow and purple mountains, red waterfalls and little mythological creatures hiding everywhere could lighten anyone's emotional load.

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