Andrea Bowers, March 2026:

Letters to an Army of Three, 2005, is a single channel video that records thirty men and women reading aloud letters sent to abortion rights activists prior to the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. The letters were written by people who were desperate to obtain safe abortions for themselves or loved ones.

The activists were a group of three women working together from 1964–1973 in the San Francisco Bay area. Nicknamed "The Army of Three," the women—Patricia Maginnis, Lana Clark Phelan and Rowena Gurner—crusaded for legal abortions and women's health rights and were a major force behind the nation's biggest underground pro-choice movement. They started and maintained a list of doctors who would provide safe abortions outside the United States, primarily in Mexico and Japan. The Army of Three received letters from all over the country requesting this list.

In the video, words from the past come through the voices of those in the present, contextualizing historical events in our current situation. The setting emulates 18th- and 19th-century portraiture and the tradition of still life painting. Each actor is shot with a different floral arrangement and colored fabric background. In the history of portraiture, women are displayed as decorative and their bodies become synonymous with flowers. This video attempts to reverse the tradition of objectification. The flowers are used as a visual tool to emphasize the voices of the actors and the content of the letters.

I made this work in the early 2000s, amid a rising conservative wave sweeping the United States, focused on overturning Roe v. Wade. It ultimately took twenty years but as of June 24, 2022, that effort culminated in the reversal of the ruling, ending the constitutional right to abortion. The urgency to protect a woman’s right to choose remains as pressing today as it was in the 1960s and 1970s when the Army of Three were at work.

Army of Three Selected Letters & Archives, Displayed, 2023 continues my interest in the use of photocopies as a political tool for making zines and fliers. The work is based on archival materials given to me by Patricia Maginnis, one of the Army of Three. The first version I made of this work centered Maginnis’s prolific production of political cartoons. I highlighted a broad selection of her cartoons that focus on women’s health care and reproductive rights and span a period of more than 40 years. Also included in the original version were an assortment of articles, pamphlets, fliers and texts from Maginnis’s archives from women and men desperate for access to safe abortion care. These documents were pinned to the wall and separated by individual sheets of decorative wrapping paper. The contrast of brightly colored floral motifs act as a provocative smokescreen as the viewer begins to read the political cartoons and documents.

The version at Glenstone, which is the largest installation I have made to date, includes everything given to me by Pat Maginnis over the years of our friendship. The totality of this historic archival material is presented on enlarged sheets in two bound volumes on display here and across the more than 600 pieces pinned to the wall.