Evalina and I: Crimes, Quilts, and Art, 1975–80
Performance
As artist-in-residence at the Guy Miller Homes, a HUD-funded urban housing project for the elderly, Lacy developed a years-long friendship with Evalina Newman. Over several years they designed a series of activities, performances, and installations that grew out of their relationship and New- man’s activism in her own community.
In another collaboration Newman and Lacy worked on a durational performance on crime and fear that began in Watts on a Saturday night. From Newman’s home they placed a call to artist Nancy Buchanan at a gallery in downtown Los Angeles where an audience waited. Hanging up the phone, Nancy announced the piece had begun, showing slides of Newman and Lacy and playing a recorded phone conversation where Newman said her heart condition would prevent her from riding the bus in that part of the city. Newman walked Lacy to the bus stop, with a small pistol in her apron pocket. Lacy rode the city streets for over an hour; a brick shattered a window but the driver did not stop. She exited the bus on a desolate downtown street and ran the final mile to the gallery. The performance was completed when Lacy arrived without fanfare, at a party in progress, and called Newman.