HISTORY PROVIDES US WITH relatively few examples of women with the time, education, guts and money to make art," says North Vancouver publisher and editor Caffyn Kelley. So Kelley is making history. Her 1988 Gallerie Annual ($12 Gallerie Publications, 2901 Panorama Drive, North Van, B.C. V7G 2A4) contains over 250 photographs and essays from 45 contributors, including Judy Chicago, Sue Coe, Nancy Spero and many "unknown' , female artists. "I have made no attempt to present a coherent or comprehensive picture of women's art," says Kelley, "The structure and function of the publication is to provide each woman with a space to present her art, her story, her own sense of significance." The book's introduction quotes Alice Walker's impression of an "anonymous" black woman who made a quilt that now hangs in the Smithsonian Institute. She was "an artist who left her mark in the only materials she could afford, and in the only medium society allowed her to use." The 1988 GalIerie Annual is dearly in sympathy with 20 years of demonstrations and exhibitions by women's groups such as The Guerrilla Girls -who identify and address discrimination against women and non-white artists by the art-world establishment. The Gallerie collective of Kelley, Mearnie Summers, Shaunah Baxter, Meaghan Baxter and Claire Rubach is also establishing an "Image Registry" of women's art from all over North America. Publication plans are for three magazines and one book-length Annual each year.

[Autumn / BCBW 1988] "Publishing";