Memories of Art Com and La Mamelle

South of Market in San Francisco in 1975, Carl Loeffler opened
the art space, La Mamelle, and at the same time he initiated an
extensive publishing program with the aim of making contemporary
art more accessible and publishing performance and video art
documentation, conceptual photography, and texts. In the first few
years, performances included T.R. Uthco, Linda Montano, and
Judith Barry; exhibitions included West Coast Conceptual
Photographers, Photography and Language,
Joyce Cutler Shaw, the seminal 1977 Send/Recieve
telecommunications project, and Community Art Radio 1976
on KPFA with performances by Richard Alpert, Hank Bull,
Stephen Moore, Jim Melchert, Doug Kahn, Helen and Newton Harrison
and many others

It was, I think, 1977 when I first met Carl Loeffler.
I remember going to La Mamelle looking for a job for which
I had no experience and coming away instead with the energy
of an art space where conceptual art, performance art,
artists books, and video were brought together. Carl admired
Andy Warhol, and the aesthetic at La Mamelle was somewhat more
pop than the other alternative art spaces of the seventies --
all of which are legendary, but for my work, which was visual
literary and at times what would be called pop conceptual,
La Mamelle was a more welcoming space. At the time I was
beginning or about to begin a landscape documentation
project with filmmaker Doyle Saylor. The idea was that
artists books, videos and small works of art would be displayed
on library shelves where library visitors could experience them
along with magazine and new book displays. Many of the works
were designed to be handled and "read".

Carl was enthusiastic about the project, and through the LOCATION
series, we received some National Endowment for the Arts funding,
administered by La Mamelle, for our project that was created to
bring artists' documentation of local landscape to community
audiences. From April 18- May 27, 1978, at the Noe Valley Branch
of the San Francisco Public Library we installed my maps,
visual card catalog, and xeroxed paintings and drawings designed
for library shelves, a large painting we created together,
and Saylor's photographs and video of the terrain and experience.

As it was for many artists in the Bay area, in the following
years La Mamelle was an important part of my experience of
contemporary art.

to be continued.....

Roy Ascott and Carl Eugene Loeffler, Guest Editors, Connectivity:
Art and Interactive Telecommunications, Leonardo 24:2, 1991.

Suzanne Foley,
Space/Time/Sound, Conceptual Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: The 70s
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1980

Carl E. Loeffler and Darlene Tong,
Performance Anthology: Source Book for a Decade of California
Performance Art, San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1980
(there is also a 1989 edition of this book)