Artists in My Life

Margaret Randall (Author) Margaret Randall is a feminist poet with a long history of social activism (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as the United States). More than 150 published books reflect her personal experience and generational struggles. She has also translated much poetry by others. In Mexico, she co-founded El Corno Emplumado, a bilingual journal that published more than 700 writers from 35 countries. Returning to the US in 1984, the government ordered her deported, claiming her writing subversive. She won her case in 1989. Among her recent awards are the Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize (Quito, Ecuador 2019) and the 2020 George Garrett Award given by AWP.

Panoramic yet intimate, Artists in My Life brings Margaret Randall's poetic and photographer's sensibilities, as well as her superb prose, to these portraits of artists who have touched her life. The examples are far-ranging, from well-known Elaine de Kooning and Frida Kahlo to contemporaries like Jane Norling or the unknown creators of 10,000-year-old petroglyphs and the Nazca lines of southern Peru. Male power, female resistance, the pain of childhood abuse or physical disability shaped the lives and art of some, but all persisted in claiming their independence and unique artistic creativity. This is a fascinating read. -- Louise Lamphere, Past-President of the American Anthropological Association These essays on the radiant living that art enables are crafted with an eye to scene structure and narrative economy within the accidental landscapes of recollection. Randall's accounts relate forms as configured differently by artists, many of them women, who have challenged the social calibrations of power and its interpersonal complexities. Animating the work of Elaine de Kooning, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lucy Lippard, Sabra Moore, Jane Norling, and Barbara Byers, among others, Randall underscores the distinct ways materiality "draws us into meaning" and collective memory. This generous tribute confirms the enduring impact of Randall's form of storytelling where "perspective is everything"-such that it reconfigures the impact of the singular on the horizon of the plural. -- Roberto Tejada, author of Still Nowhere in an Empty Vastness Margaret Randall's Artists in My Life clearly shows how a writer can gain sustenance and guidance from the work and the lives of a range of visual artists, photographers, and architects. Randall also gives us a glimpse into the journeys of her own life-the importance of art, community, place, and politics-providing sustenance and guidance to all of us. -- Kenny Fries, award-winning author of In the Province of the Gods Margaret Randall composes an intimate portrait of influential artists and creators through the lens of a feminist, lesbian, revolutionary, poet and photographer who herself has lived an extraordinary life. . . . Perhaps it's a product of Covid-19 lockdown but she makes me want to travel in time and place. From the '60s in New York City to "pre-history" Yucatan, this writing is the closest I will ever come. -- Catherine DeMaria, artist, Warehouse 1-10, Magdalena, New Mexico