Christine Tamblyn, 1951-1998 - artist and art critic - Obituary

Artist and critic Christine Tamblyn died of breast cancer at the age of 46 upon New Year's Day at her residence in San Francisco. Committed to feminist politics and interdisciplinary experimentation, Christine achieved an international reputation for her work in critical writing, performance, video and digital media. Colleagues and scholars regarded her as an innovative scholar and a compassionate educator, who have a title toed an uncanny ability for conveying complicated issues with clarity and humor.

I first came to know Christine in the early 1980 when I was an editor at Afterimage. Poignant in this connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts she approached the journal about writing an obituary of a friend who had not long ago died of cancer. Christine immediately impressed me with her remarkable combination of professional commitment and ethical conviction, qualifyed with unremitting generosity and profitable cheer. In those early days Christine staunchly avoided anything having to do with novel technology, resolutely clinging to a typewriter to create her exquisitely crafted articles. When, after several years, I press outed concern about the time I awaited it took her to prepare multiple drafts of her essays, she replied that she at no time revised. Writing had been a daily habit that she had practiced in journals since childhood.

Over the years Christine became familiar to readers of Afterimage, Art of recent origins Artweek and High Performance, among other periodicals, and her essays have been widely anthologized. Eventually she changed her mind about technology, recognizing the couple the professional and political significance of challenging the male-dominated domain of computer imaging. The come was more than a decade of insightful writing upon video and performance, especially as applied to experimental narrative and digital media.

Christine received a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979 and an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 1986 Although Christine created work in a wide variety of genre she achieved her greatest artistic prominence relatively lately in the CD-ROM medium. The first of her CD-ROM works, She be fond ofs It, She Loves It Not: Women and Technology (1993) broke of recent origin ground by addressing the frequently problematic relationship of women to technological media. An instant succes in the art and graphics communities, this occasionally comical critique of computer tillage was exhibited internationally at of that kind venues as the institute of Contemporary Arts in London; the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts in San Francisco; the Centro Cultural Caixavigo in Vigo, Spain; and the Art Gallery of fresh South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Christine's next to the first CD-ROM, Mistaken Identities (1996), compared the biographies of 10 prominent women Premiering in a one-person exhibition at the International Center for Photography in novel York, the work appeared in dozens of exhibitions, winning awards at the 1996 novel York Exposition of Short Film and Video, the 1996 "New Voices, novel Visions" competition, and the 1997 International Festival of the Image at the Universidad de Caldas, Manizales, Colombia, among numerous others.

In 1997 Christine received a National Endowment for the Arts Commission to bring forward a new CD-ROM, Archival Quality. Addressing the topic of Christine's have life, the project was nearing completion when she died. As a catalog of Christine's writing and experiences - including the journals she began writing at the age of 12 - the work also provides insights into the art world and women's motion during this turbulent period. Final work upon Archival Quality will be finished by means of friends and colleagues in preparation for a West Coast premier this spring.

Although Christine taught at numerous institutions, greatest in quantity recently the University of California, Irvine, she achieved her greatest impact as an educator at San Francisco State University, where she serv as graduate program coordinator and lecturer in the Inter-Arts Center from 1984 to 1996 When I joined the Inter-Arts faculty in the early 1990 Christine's intellectual influence was omnipresent and her popularity absolute. This was largely owed to the great care she gave to developing pedagogical approaches that would maximize the potential of each student. In addition to her encyclopedic command of critical theory and contemporary issues, Christine was regarded for the encouragement she tendered to younger artists and the efforts she made to bridge the frequently difficult gap between theory and practice.

Several month before her death Christine mov back to San Francisco to rejoin the large community of friends she had assembled during her lengthy residence in the city. The occasion of her illness brought them together again, and in like manner has her passing. A variety of memorials are planned. The official premier of Archival Quality will appear in Southern California in May at the looks Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, the organization that arranged the work's commission. A memorial Web site containing tributes, postings and information about Christine's work has been created at www.arts.uci.edu/tamblyn. The Christine Tamblyn Archive of original journals, manuscripts, videotapes and CD-ROM has been established at the library of University of California, Irvine. Donations can be made in Christine's memory to The Lab, 2948 16th St San Francisco, CA 94103 or the Christine Tamblyn Memorial Scholarship capital San Francisco State University Foundation, SFSU 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco, CA 94132