Lynn Randolph's Website

Lynn Randoph's Resume

The University of Texas - Houston Medical School - Randolph's work was displayed at the medical school at the University of Texas - Houston, which hosted an exhibit in 1997 that focused on women.

Other Sites - Installation at O'Kane Gallery at the University of Houston. This is a shared exhibit; there are no Randolph pics on line, but there are pics of art by other artists.

Millenial Myths - The website for the Randolph exhibit, entitled Millenial Myths (1998), at the Arizona State University Art Museum at the Nelson Fine Arts Center. The catalog for the exhibit by Marilyn A. Zeitlin, curator of the exhibit, includes essays by Donna Haraway, Walter Hopps, and Marilyn A. Zeitlin.

     Donna Haraway uses the artwork of Lynn Randolph to illustrate her books. The following links will lead to sites that present several of Randolph's images. Their relationship is collaborative and Randolph's work is more than illustration; Haraway uses it as speculative fiction, as a site from which to theorize. Randolph is a feminist and environmentalist activist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Her artwork reminds me of Frida Kahlo. It is self-referential, colorful, and frequently body-focused.

     The following passage is Haraway's explanation of the cyborg picture on the cover of Simians, Cyborgs, and Women.

"The image, entitled Cyborg, is a work of Lynn Randolph in 1989. The image itself is full of iconic representations and rich with ideas concerning the cyborg existence. The central figure is one of a woman of color with a large spirit-like feline draped atop her. Behind this figure is a screen with symbols of the Milky Way and the gravity well of a black hole. There is an interesting figure at the center of the screen. A tic-tac-toe game is scrawled on the screen but instead of knots and crosses, this game is played with the European female and male astrological signs. In fact, if one were able to observe closely, the winner in this particular game is Venus. What is most important about the image is the central figure. 'She embodies the still oxymoronic simultaneous statuses of woman, 'Third World' person, human, organism, communications technology, mathematician, writer, worker, engineer, scientist, spiritual guide, lover of the Earth. This is the kind of 'symbolic action' transnational feminisms have made legible.' This image draws upon the ideas of the feminist cyborg theory and the cyborg's relations to feminism. With elements of both nature and science depicted in the image, the complexities of the cyborg identity are almost fully represented.

     The cyborg is existing on the little bits of everything that makes it real; it is the embodiment of various ideas and lives as an icon of endless social thoughts."

     Of Transfusions, Haraway writes, "A print of Randolph's vampire story sits on a shelf above my bed where it can inform my dreams of kinship in a reworked primal scene" (from Living Images: Conversations with Lynn Randolph)

     In November of 2001, shortly after 9/11, one of Randolph's paintings received some attention from the FBI. The painting, installed at a private Houston art museum called ArtCar is part of an exhibit called Secret Wars.  The "exhibit investigates artistic dissent to covert operations and government secrets." The museum was investigated as part of Attorney General John Ashcroft's anti-terrorism campaign. The following links contain reports and analyses of the event.

The Progressive -- The New McCarthyism
Refuse and Resist -- Reprint of Houston Chronicle article
Arts for All Newsletter -- The New American Landscape Under The Threat of Terrorism
Alternative Press Review -- Domestic Terrorism: Criminalizing Art
Houston Press -- Quirky Yes, Al Qaeda No
ArtsWire

     Lynn Randolph was married to sociologist William Simon, who passed away in July 2002. Randoph illustrated the cover of his book, Postmodern Sexualities; a gif and thumbnail of the cover are available at Amazon.Com.  Simon was a professor of sociology at the University of Houston. Before that he was at the Center for Sex Research. His obituary on the ASAnet of the American Sociological Association is extensive and touching.