Paula Cohen

Found objects, interpersonal relationships and fat politics are all themes that define her reality and the world for feminist artist Paula Cohen's , who was our guest lecturer on March 26th for our Women, Art and Society class. She shared her personal story chronologically, about what influenced her as a women, her Catholic upbringing and how this informed her art and what was the starting point of her own feminism, what she studied during her education, what she worked at, how she became an artist and why.

Her art practice was wide and varied ranging from print making, woodcuts, dry point etching, lithography, silk screening, drawing, animation and soft sculpture.
Her lecture was entertaining, informative, and very engaging and I could listen to her all day because she is a natural story teller with a keen wit and intelligence.

Her talking about fat politics was very interesting to me, being a fat woman myself. She shared the story about her addressing the issue of her own body image, the response and perceptions of others who don't know how to react to her honesty surrounding her direct approach to her being fat, by saying out loud. " I'm fat."
This seemed to empower and free her from the tyranny of what I'll call, thin politics. It's been said that , "it's not obesity, but the panic over obesity, that's the real health problem."