Smith, Barbara Turner, 1931-

Barbara Turner Smith (born in Pasadena, California in 1931) has been at the forefront of artistic movements in California for over fifty years, particularly in the areas of performance and feminist art. Her work – which has taken the varied forms of painting, drawing, installation, video, performance, and artists’ book, and often involves her own body as a vehicle for her art – explores concepts that strikes at the core of human nature, including male and female sexualities, physical and spiritual sustenance, ecology, technology, and death.

Barbara Turner Smith born 1931, Pasadena, California; known for her performance art in the late 1960s; part of the Feminist Movement in Southern California in the 1970s; attended Pomona College, graduating in 1953; after raising children, went to study at Chouinard Art Institute, 1965; MFA from University of California, Irvine in 1971, worked with other artists, Nancy Buchanan & Chris Burden to found F-Space; Smith's early work focused on collaged photographs of herself and her three children