Today, Lowe is the founder of Art Girl Army (AGA), a fast-growing collective of women creatives—including those who are gender nonconforming, transgender, and genderqueer—who make art, films, graphics, and music. And while they might not be armed with weapons, they certainly have missions.
“It happened organically,” Lowe says, while driving to her day job in Los Angeles. “We were a group of five that first night. Now we’re 3,450.”
2 comments:
There’s nothing I love more than when women support each other. So often we get used to this idea that there is space for one powerful woman in any room, the one token woman on the board of directors or in the writer’s room, that we think we have to push down the women around us to get to the top. I think changing the environment of creative industries such that women feel like they can both support and be supportive of each other is so important. The fact that Art Girl Army started as a group of friends getting together to share stories and grew into an international community with close to 3000 members really speaks to how needed a community like this is. A community like this shows us that one woman’s success does not take away from another woman. There is room for all of us to realize our dreams. And when we help each other to do so we will begin to see a significant change in the demographics of women in leadership roles. I believe that we can shift the sexism embedded in these institutions, but it is not a one-woman battle where an exceptional female defies expectations to become incredibly successful, it is communities like this coming together to create a force of thousands of women who will lift each other up.
This is a beautiful and genius way to create a platform for a supportive system for an artist, a female one in this instance, to continue doing what they love and have the weight of feeling alone and helpless. I could also image how difficult it was to grow this organization. It is definitely an awesome idea that people would be excited about, but sometimes bringing in people can be hard with people’s lives being busy in one way or another, which is way to go from first to five to thousands of people in any period of time is truly amazing. I think we all of that idea or dream that we want to pursue, but because of one time, or scheduling or availability we are afraid to start it. It is also another thing to be a person of diverse background and a female, where there may be opportunities, because of our own predispositions of failure, we could be too afraid to approach these opportunities. If it were me, I would be more comfortable sharing my ideas and desires with this group, because of the open-minded and encouraging environment, which gives me the push that I needed.
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