Weaving Together: In Memory of Bernice “Bee” Colman

November 15 to December 10, 2021

Bernice "Bee" Colman: Mother, Traveler, Teacher & Artist

The last time I saw Bee Colman was on an art-viewing excursion to see the
"With Pleasure: Pattern & Decoration" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary
Art (MOCA). It was on display October 2019-May 2020, in other words, right before
the COVID pandemic shut down so many of our art institutions.
Bee and I were both retired by that time. We joined California State
University (CSUN) art professors Patsy Cox, Samantha Fields, and Lesley Krane at
MOCA. Then we submerged ourselves in the work of several astonishing artists--
including the great feminist icon Miriam Schapiro--and luxuriated in the visual
pleasures of Bee's favorite period in contemporary art history. Afterwards, we
walked across the street to a yummy restaurant and indulged in lots of trendy food
and wine. We spoke at length about the work at MOCA, and our own work, as the
afternoon slipped away under the very-sunny California sky.
It was a perfect Bee day: exquisite art matched by exquisite cuisine, all in the
company of beloved friends.

Little did we know that it was the last time the five of us would be together.
Little did we know that we would be separated by the pandemic and then lose Bee
the following year.

MOTHER

Bee's greatest love was her family. She believed in holding her two children
close. (Most of Bee's artworks in this exhibition were in the collection of her son, Ed,
who lived just a few blocks from his mom in Venice, CA.) Bee also embraced the next
two generations of her family, sharing cooking tips with one of her grandsons,
sewing a colorful dress for one of her great granddaughters. She cherished her
sister-like relationship with her cousin Mary Ann Danin, who was another longtime
member of the CSUN faculty. (Sadly, Mary passed this summer as well.)
Ed Colman speaks of his mother as "generous, inspirational, caring, involved,
and incredibly curious." (This writer feels the same way and would wager that's
true of most of Bee's many friends and acquaintances as well.)

TRAVELER

Bee loved to travel, often with students and friends. She went to Japan
several times, once with her dear friend Lauren Deutsch. Bee fell in love with
Japanese origami, kimono construction, and tie-dyeing techniques (shibori). Later,
she hosted gatherings for hamani (wisteria blossom viewing) at her Venice, CA
home. Bee journeyed to India with friend and former student Chetna Mehta. They
studied saris and other traditional garments, as well as the varied dyeing
techniques. Bee also traveled to Italy, to look at art, especially textile art. She took
cooking classes there and became an even better cook. (Her friends were all lucky
recipients of her Italian excursion, eating many meals and drinking much
homemade limoncello. afterwards.)

In addition to travel, Bee loved music. She believed in careful listening and
often attended performances of the Los Angeles Opera. She started piano lessons
late in life and stuck to them.

TEACHER

Bee Colman was already a respected and powerful member of the Art
Department faculty by the time this writer arrived on campus in the late 1970s. The
department valued her so much, they honored her with Emeritus status when she
retired. Bee mentored and inspired hundreds, if not thousands, of students in her
long tenure at CSUN (1971-2006). And she continued to do so long after she retired,
with workshops, social gatherings, and one-on-one advisement/career counseling
out of her home studio in Venice. She maintained ongoing relationships with many
of her students, helping them build community and support groups to sustain their
creative practice.

Bee's students remember her fondly. One of her students, Julie Kornblum
(who studied with Bee from 1996 to 2002), speaks of her mentor as "kind,
considerate,, inspirational, and fair." She realized that Bee's goal was to help her
students find their own voices. Karen Schifman (who studied with Bee in the late
1990s) noted that Bee was careful to connect with each student. She was always
"full of magical ideas," and inspired her students to learn as much as possible about
the wide range of fiber processes.

The "Weaving Together" exhibition includes the work of several of Bee's
former students, including Penny Collins, Kiki Garwood, Susan Karhroody, Linda
Kaun, Smadar Knobler, Julie Kornblum, Chetna Mehta, Karen Schifman, Marsha
Shaw, Kristina Staley, Joe Suzuki, Earllene Weiss, and Hiroko Yoshimoto. This essay
is not long enough for each of their works to be discussed, so this brief discussion is
limited to a small selection. Hiroko Yoshimoto was most engaged by Bee's profound
understanding of color theory and her insights about dying fabrics with various
pigments. Hiroko submitted two handsome kimono jackets in exquisite hues to the
exhibition. Among the many textile-based techniques that Julie Kornblum learned
from Bee was coiling. She used it to compose the brilliant cluster of coiled circles in
a wall hanging. (As with this piece, most of the materials Kornblum used in her
artworks came from Bee's collection at CSUN. Bee distributed her huge assortment
of surplus and discarded fabrics, threads, lace, buttons, etc. to her students as the
CSUN textile program wound down.) Following in Bee's tradition of fabric-based
collage, Karen Schifman assembled vintage textiles, printed wallpaper, and graphic
images of historic women and clothes in what Miriam Schapiro called a "femmage,"
that is, a creative technique "practiced by women using traditional women's
techniques to achieve their art--swing, piercing, hooking, cutting, appliqueing..." etc.
In doing so, Schifman produces work that resonates with--but never imitates--her
teacher's.

Community was always central to Bee's life and she was involved with
several groups of women and artists throughout her long career. She was active in
the Southern California Women's Caucus for Art (SCWCA), and participated in
several of their exhibitions. She did numerous projects with Yarn Bombers, creating
vibrant, multicolored street art that was wrapped, crocheted, and knitted. And Bee
was a long-time member of the Hearth Circle.

The feminist group known as Hearth Circle began in the late 1980s,
connecting artists with volunteers from the Rape Crisis Center and other female
social workers. The members designed community-based healing rituals to draw
them together and strengthen their shared bonds. For this exhibition honoring their
member Bee, several members from Hearth Circle performed a [private] ritual in
the gallery and videotaped it for the public. The members involved were: Leslie
Brockian, Valerie Dale Fleming, Nancy Grant, Rosanna Hill, Linda Kaun, Sally
Roberts, Nili Shamrat, Monika Wegner, and Earllene Weiss. (Note that some of these
women were also Bee's students.)

ARTIST

Above all, Bee was an artist. And she spoke in many creative languages. As a
graduate student, she produced large biomorphic sculptures: gorgeous undulations
of dyed silk in layered forms that evoke female body parts. Later, she produced
hanging tapestries of subtle pigments, often with printed images imbedded on their
sewn surfaces. She crocheted banner-like landscapes, lined up kimonos to resemble
notes on a musical score, painted masks to portray characters from a feminist
fantasy. Many of her flat works are collages (actually, femmages) that adorn fabric
backgrounds with ribbons, flowers, and beads. She added vintage photographs,
metallic cutouts, old paper dolls, and fragments of the textiles she'd assembled
throughout her long years of collecting. One piece ("Initials") has a glitter
bumblebee resting on a grid of thin chicken wire and surrounded by a dozen fabric
flowers. It is an elegant garden on a square bed of black velvet. Bee created a series
of Greek goddesses: Aphrodite, Diana, Galatea, Hera, and Nike. Each divinity is
portrayed on translucent layers of fabric, like a ghostly immanence from the ancient
world. In the lower left corner of each composition is a photograph of a historic
depiction of the deity.

The intimacy of Bee's work requires careful, quiet encounters. Viewers can't
rush by and "get" the meaning with a rapid response. Instead, they must slow their
gaze and decipher the visual clues, taking time to appreciate the nuanced
compositions. "Reading" one of Bee's works is like reading a diary, the intimate
record of an astonishingly gifted and generous woman.
A woman we all respected, valued, and loved. One we cherished. One we
enjoyed. One we miss.

Betty Ann Brown
November 2021