Phyllis Yes

Phyllis Yes
Artist and playwright
Yes with her lace-painted Porsche entitled "PorShe"
Born
Phyllis Dankers

1941 (age 84–85)
Red Wing, Minnesota, United States
Known for
  • Painting
  • Contemporary Art
  • Drama

Phyllis Yes (born 1941) is an Oregon-based artist and playwright. Her artistic media range from works on painted canvas to furniture, clothing, and jewelry. She is known for her works that “feminize” objects usually associated with a stereotypically male domain, such as machine guns, hard hats, and hammers. Among her best-known artworks are “Paint Can with Brush,” which appears in Tools as Art, a book about the Hechinger Collection, published in 1996 and her epaulette jewelry, which applies “feminine” lace details to the epaulette, a shoulder adornment that traditionally symbolizes military prowess. In 1984 she produced her controversial and widely noted “Por She,” a silver 1967 Porsche 911-S, whose body she painstakingly painted in highly tactile pink and flesh-toned lace rosettes. She exhibited it at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York in 1984 and drove it across the United States as a traveling exhibition in 1985. In 2016, she wrote her first play, Good Morning Miss America, which began its first theatrical run at CoHo Theatre in Portland, Oregon in March 2018. The play had its New York off-Broadway premiere at Theatre 80 in October 2019. Her exhibition of paintings, "Dusty...at Home" appeared at the Water Tower in Portland, Oregon in June 2024. Her work most recently appeared in the Portland Art Museum's "Nine Women Artists," June 26, 2026 to January 31, 2027.

Hood detail on "PorShe"
Installation of lace-painted ladder and paint buckets at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon
Lace-painted hand gun entitled "Mrs. Johnson's Gun"


Phyllis Yes early 1970s artwork at Seattle Art Museum; sculptor Clint Brown looks on.

Key influences

Phyllis Yes's interest in socially prescribed gender roles dates to her youth, when she realized that her elderly neighbor was helpless to care for himself after his wife died. She noted, “He didn’t know how to use the dishwasher, the can opener...If it had been the wife who had survived, she probably wouldn’t have known how to find the fuse box.” In her mid-20s, when she was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer teaching art in northeastern Brazil, she encountered Brazilian gender roles that were different from those she grew up with, such as women who smoked pipes and men who sold fabrics. The experience heightened her awareness that cultures vary widely in their perceptions of “feminine” and “masculine” traits and artifacts. Yes's key artistic influences include the sculptor Louise Nevelson, as well as feminist artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who urged other women artists “to discover personal imagery and imagery that might honor the neglected and unfairly denigrated women’s decorative and domestic arts of the past.” This impulse influenced Yes's “highly praised” paintings of lace in the 1970s and 1980s.

Early life

Phyllis Yes was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Austin, Minnesota. She earned a B.A. in art from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She earned an M.A. in art from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in art from the University of Oregon in 1978. Upon earning her Ph.D. she dropped her former husband's surname and replaced it with “Yes” so that she might be addressed as “Dr. Yes.”

Career

Phyllis Yes taught art at Federal University of Ceará, Brazil, the Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon University) in Monmouth, Oregon, and Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, before becoming a professor of art at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, in 1978. In 1987 she traveled to Bali and New Guinea on a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study gender-related art forms. She served as Chair of the Art Department and Dean of Arts & Humanities at Lewis & Clark College and became a professor emerita of art, painting, and drawing in 1998. Her work has appeared in more than 150 exhibitions. In 2016, at age 75, she wrote her first play, Good Morning Miss America, which had its theatrical debut in Portland, Oregon in 2018, and its New York premiere in 2019. Her most recent exhibitions opened at The Water Tower in Portland, Oregon ("Dusty...at Home"), the Lakewood Center for the Arts in Lake Oswego, Oregon, both in June 2024, and the Portland Art Museum, June 26, 2026 to January 31, 2027. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Accomplishments

Awards and honors

Publications

Selected exhibitions

Notable collections

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "Luther College". 20 January 2021.
  2. ↑ Timothy Foote, "Tools as art", Smithsonian, April 1996. Retrieved 2013-10-20.
  3. ↑ Liane Grunberg, "Epaulettes: Instant Heirlooms by Phyllis Yes," Ornament, Autumn 1987.
  4. ↑ Meg Cox, "Either That Car Is a 1967 Porsche, or the Quickest Doily on Wheels," The Wall Street Journal, April 18, 1985.
  5. ↑ Zan Dubin, "Coast to Coast in a Gender Bender," Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1985.
  6. ↑ "'Good Morning,' Phyllis Yes". 12 March 2018. Archived from the original on August 7, 2018.
  7. ↑ portlandtribune.com
  8. ↑ https://www.orartswatch.org/yes-says-no-to-gender-stereotypes/
  9. ↑
  10. ↑ Liane Grunberg, "Paintings Have Grace of Lace," The Japan Times, March 31, 1991.
  11. ↑ John Perreault, "Affirming Yes," New York Arts Journal, April 1982.
  12. ↑ Matthew Kangas, "Straining at the Bit of Realism," The Seattle Times, April 15, 2005.
  13. ↑ "Luther College". 20 January 2021.
  14. ↑ Jennie Knoebel, "Artist Shows Off Eclectic Side" Austin Daily Herald, July 20, 2013. Retrieved 2013-10-20.
  15. ↑ portlandtribune.com[dead link]
  16. ↑ https://www.orartswatch.org/yes-says-no-to-gender-stereotypes/
  17. ↑ https://lakewood-center.org/festival-exhibits/
  18. ↑ https://portlandartmuseum.org/event/nine-women-artists/
  19. ↑ "A visit with: Phyllis Yes". 6 March 2018.
  20. ↑ https://www.orartswatch.org/yes-says-no-to-gender-stereotypes/
  21. ↑ Michael Dipleco, "Legends of the Autobahn Report". Retrieved 2013-10-20.
  22. ↑ David Grube images and story,"Legends of the Autobahn 2013". Retrieved 2013-10-20.
  23. ↑ Porsche Club of America on YouTube. Retrieved 2013-10-20.