The Issue: L'interview Artist Slater Barron.
Hermette spoke to Jenny Lin about Slater Barron: Artist and Linty Person.
One of the great pleasures of being a Hermette is going down rabbit holes.
This time, I fell into a lint trap.
While looking for an illustration for The Magazine’s recent I AM LINTY article, I found the art of Slater Barron , who made portraits and l’installations out of dryer lint.
I am particularly moved by the many linty portraits she did of her mother who had Alzheimer’s disease.
These maternal lint-works are hilariously and tragically about domestic drudgery, frailty and the ephemeral and disposable nature of women and their work. About waste and the hidden hazards that haunt domesticity.
Jennifer Lin, Slater Barron’s daughter, kindly agreed to let me use her mother’s work for the Magazine.
I spoke to Jennifer Lin about being a Hermette, about houseflies, poisonous pies, 70s West Coast feminist performance artists, Johnny Carson, and about where her mother got ahold of all that lint.
Clink here to hear the l‘interview with Jennifer Lin, daughter of Slater Barron.
Six O’Clock Evening News by Slater Barron. L’installation 8 feet x 15 feet x 20 feet. Media: Lint, found objects, mixed media, slides, and recorded sound.
Some of the things I asked Slater Baron’s daughter, Jenny Lin, (and some of the things I didn’t):
Did your mother enjoy being alone?
How did she guard her alone time?
How old were you when she began making art?
Did you make art together?
Why was lint something she wanted to work with?
Did she buy and wash colorful things to make her work?
What are some of your favorite pieces?
There’s something so maternal about lint. What do you think?
What are your ambitions for your mother’s work?
What would you think of it if she weren’t your mother?
How did she feel about her work? What was her relationship to it?
How can people collect her work?
My mother put drier lint outside for the birds to use in their nests. Did yours?
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE UNFILTERED, TENDER AND VIVID SHORT DOCUMENTARY of Slater Barron, including her relationship with Johnny Carson: LINT LADY: A film by Joseph Bolinger
Lastly, a totally charming interview of Slater Barron by Californian historian Huell Howser.
Biography of Slater Barron
by Carol Norcross
Slater Barron (1930–2020) was a Southern California feminist artist known for her use of unconventional materials, controversial themes, and supportive nurturing of artists.
She was strongly connected to the Orange County/Long Beach art community and she became well known throughout California due to her interviews with PBS host Huell Howser. Barron attended Orange Coast College, University of California, Irvine, and California State University, Long Beach. She taught at UCI Extension, Brooks College in Long Beach, FIDM/Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Interior Designers Institute, and other colleges. She organized exhibitions of Orange County women artists in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s when the art world was virtually closed to them, wrote articles and poetry, and was featured in national magazines (Time) and on television (Johnny Carson and others).
Barron’s work could explore difficult topics such as child abuse, the terror of war, the hope (and heartbreak) of marital bliss, and the ravages of her parents’ Alzheimer’s disease, often with a light touch and humor. Her lung cancer was the inspiration for lyrical paintings. Family life made her explore what is now considered a “feminist”medium, dryer lint.
Barron’s name itself was a statement of life as a female artist at that time. Born Marylou Slater, she created an alias cobbled from this and her husband’s last name, Barron, hoping that her work wouldnot be dismissed out of hand because of her sex.
Barron seriously started exploring art when she was in her mid 40s, but led an interesting life long before that.
After college, she became a social worker, for her it was heart wrenching to see families in tragic circumstances. Needing a career change, Slater joined the U.S. Navy as an officer where she helped young service members and their families.
Marriage to a Marine officer followed, they lived on military bases around the U.S. and in France with four children in tow. They settled in Southern California in 1969. In 1970, a permanent home in Orange County, allowed her to pursue her passion for art at Orange Coast College. She soon transferred to University of California, Irvine, where she completed a bachelor degree in Studio Art.
Whileshe was much older than most of the students, she became part of the Orange County art scene, participated and created some of the first feminist exhibits in the area, and collected ephemera from everything she attended or was a participant. Her life experiences found their way into her art.
From 1974 to 1978 Barron attended California State University, Long Beach, for an MFA in Studio Art and created two large works, Barrons of Seventh Street about a summer spent with her family in a sketchy Long Beach motel and Reality and Romance, possibly about her abusive marriage.
It was in 1974 that she realized that lint produced by her clothes dryer was an abundant, inexpensive material at hand. She became a “freeway flier” teaching wherever she could, attending CSULB and always doing art. Her main diet during this time consisted of coffee, cigarettes, and a box of Hostess Ding Dongs.
She realized that both of her parents were showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease and in 1981 she acquired 1000 pounds of upholstery stuffing made from recycled lint and bathrobes and began doing large installations, often about Alzheimer’s. She felt that this material was painterly and impressionistic but also expressed their fragile world.
My Mother’s Garden and Six O’Clock News were about her parents’ deteriorating condition. The Magic Laundry Room (I, II, and III) about home life, Escape from the Castle about the wives of Henry VIII were shown at university galleries in California and Arizona. Barron embraced this alternative, feminist material that was intimately connected to a woman’s sphere.
Because of the novelty of dryer lint, Barron was given the nickname “the Lint Lady” early on. PBS host Huell Howser interviewed her in 1988 for his Videolog program about her installation of Six O’Clock News at Whittier College. He would interview her again in 2007 for Visiting with Huell Howser. Both exhibits dealt with Alzheimer’s disease.
Over the years, Barron explored lint in many different ways, creating books, portraits,“paintings,” and delicate reproductions of sushi and candy using this material. She continues to have exhibitions on her art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Long Beach Museum of Art, Chapman University, and the Smithsonian White House Collection.
- - April 2024
To purchase or exhibit work or to learn more about the artist, contact Jenny Lin at www.slaterbarron.com
Weirdly, the very day that the I AM LINTY issue was published, this came up in the NYTimes puzzle! Thank you Herms. Maria R and Margaret B. for sending this.
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