Terry Berlier and H.Drew Crosby

“She was just an everyday person, no fame or extraordinariness. She was a box of contradictions, closeted and cantankerous. I wonder if she would want to be in the archive at all?” -Terry Berlier

Terry Berlier is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with sculpture, installation, and video. Her work is often kinetic, interactive and/or sound based and often focuses on everyday objects, the environment, ideas of nonplace/place and queer practice. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally. She received an MFA from University of California, Davis and a BFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She currently teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.

H. Drew Crosby moved from Chicago to San Francisco in the late 30s with her partner Marion Pietsch. They were lesbians of the old order–that is, with lots of good reason, they were paranoid about being gay, stubbornly ambiguous about labeling themselves gay or lesbian, and generally suspicious of strangers. Nevertheless, she lived for fifty years in physical intimacy with another woman and amassed a huge collection of queer books and ephemera, including an amazing Henry Miller and lesbian pulps collection. Marion ran a bookstore on Polk Street, though most books where priced “NFS.” They lived at 7th Avenue and Lake Street where they installed wooden shutters on every window and kept them closed. When they came home from work at night, they would close the door and say, “Lets shut the world out.”

From H. Drew Cosby’s archive

NFS (2010)
Video, wood, MAKE controller, computer, speakers, shutters, sensor, wires
MAX programming by Ricardo Rivera
ìBroken Appointmentî from Prelinger Archives
37 x 87 x 14”

From H. Drew Cosby’s archive