Education and Early Career
While at UCLA she became politically active, designing posters for the UCLA chapter NAACP and eventually became its corresponding secretary. In June 1959, she met and fell in love with Jerry Gerowitz. She left school and moved in with him, for the first time having her own studio space. The couplehitch hiked to New York in 1959, just as Chicago's mother and brother moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her. The couple lived in Greenwich Village for a time, before returning in 1960 from Los Angeles to Chicago so she could finish her degree. Chicago married Gerowitz in 1961. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1962 and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Gerowitz died in a car crash in 1963, devastating Chicago and causing her to suffer from an Identity crisis until later that decade. She received her Master of Fine Arts from UCLA in 1964.
While in grad school, Chicago's created a series that was abstract, yet easily recognized as male and female sexual organs. These early works were called Bigamy, and represented the death of her husband. One depicted an abstract penis which was "stopped in flight" before it could unite with a vaginal form. Her professors, who were mainly men, were dismayed over these works. Despite the use of sexual organs in her work, Chicago refrained from using gender politics or identity as themes. In 1968, Chicago was asked why she did not participate in the "California Women in the Arts" exhibition at the Lytton Center, to which she answered "I won't show in any group defined at Woman, Jewish, or California. Someday when we all grow up there will be no labels." Chicago began working in ice sculpture, which represented "a metaphor for the preciousness of life," another reference towards her husbands death.
In 1969, the Pasadena Art Museum exhibited a series of Chicago's spherical acrylic plastic dome sculptures and drawings in an "experimental" gallery. Art in America noted that Chicago's work was on the forefront of the conceptual art movement, and the Los Angeles Times described the work as showing no signs of "theoretical New York type art." Chicago would describe her early artwork as minimalist and as her trying to be "one of the boys". Chicago would also experiment with performance art, using fireworks and pyrotechnics to create "atmospheres", which involved flashes of colored smoke being manipulated outdoors. Through this work she attempted to "feminize" and "soften" the landscape.
During this time, Chicago also began exploring her own sexuality in her work. She created the Pasadena Lifesavers, which was a series of abstract paintings that placed acrylic paint on plexiglass. The works blended colors to create an illusion that the shapes "turn, dissolve, open, close, vibrate, gesture, wiggle," representing her own discovery that "I was multi-orgasmic." Chicago credited Pasadena Lifesavers, as being the major turning point in her work in relation to women's sexuality and representation.
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