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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
DEBORAH WILLIS (1948 - ) I Made Space for a Good Man.
Color lithograph, from photo film and drawing on mylar, 2009 381x762 mm; 15x30 inches, wide margins. Signed, dated and numbered 24/28 in pencil, lower edge. Printed at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
In a 2010 interview with the Huffington Post about the print, Dr. Willis recalled: "I was an undergraduate at Philadelphia College of Art and one of my professors said to me, 'you're taking up a good man's space, you should not be in this program. All you're going to do is get married, get pregnant, have a baby and a good man could have been in your seat.' I'll never forget that moment. I was so humiliated and embarrassed because this was a public event. And of course what happened? When I graduated, I got pregnant. [Laughs] I was embarrassed. I couldn't celebrate the fact that I was having a kid. Recently, my son found a contact sheet with photographs of my pregnant belly and he said, 'mom, you never printed these.' I remembered this story. What I realized in terms of flipping the script, was that I made space for a good man, by having my son, who is a photographer. Flipping that into positive energy and still creating work." Martha St. Jean, "A Portrait of Deborah Willis," The Huffington Post, April 6, 2010.
