One Hundred Men or More by Ellen Lesperance
Ellen Lesperance’s One Hundred Men or More is a hybrid work of long-form essay and personal memoir focused on examining the life and work of 1970s feminist painter Sylvia Sleigh. Lesperance’s interest of Sleigh paintings acts as a site of departure as she investigates feminist theory, art history, and the unfolding occurrences of her own everyday life in Portland, Oregon.
Through a natural intersection of personal narrative, historical research, and art criticism Lesperance creates a dimensional prose that sustains a conversation between herself and Sleigh’s work—two artist’s of two different generations whose artistic practices are connected through shared feminist projects. Through Lesperance’s committed and inciting writing, One Hundred Men or More offers readers an adept and interiorized look at Sleigh as an understudied figure in the world of art history.
One Hundred Men or More features illustrations by artist and Sleigh model Robert Lucy, and an Afterword by Amy Tobin, author of Women Artists Together: Art in the Age of Women's Liberation (Yale, 2023).
About the author
Ellen Lesperance is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of feminism, craft, and activism. Their work has been exhibited widely and is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, MOCA Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center, and Museum Ludwig, among others. Lesperance was a 2022–23 Fulbright Global Scholar and was awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Art. Lesperance has written two prior self-published books, Velvet Fist (2020) and Peace Camps (2017). They are an assistant professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene.