Julie Curtiss Second Thought, 2017 Acrylic and oil on canvas 18 x 16 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Anna Glantz Traveling Horse, 2017 Oil on canvas 74 x 80 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Cy Gavin Woman, Yawning (Sally Bassett), 2017 Acrylic, blood, chalk and oil on denim 73 x 54 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Jessie Homer French 1st Presbyterian, 1994 Oil on canvas 10 x 7.50 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Katherine Bradford Broom Saddle, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Marianne Vitale Jupiter, 2013 Reclaimed lumber and steel 55.13 x 311 x 256 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Rainen Knecht Ants, 2017 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Sanam Khatibi The hollow in the ferns, 2016 Handwoven wool tapestry 90 x 100 in Image courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles

Hecate Installation view Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, 2017

Hecate Installation view Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, 2017

Hecate Installation view Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, 2017

Hecate Installation view Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, 2017

Hecate Installation view Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, 2017

It’s an awareness that witches and gypsies were the original guerrillas and resistance ghters against oppression — particularly the oppression of women — down through the ages. Witches have always been women who dared to be: groovy, courageous, aggressive, intelligent, nonconformist, explorative, curious, independent, sexually liberated, revolutionary (This possibly explains why nine million of them have been burned.) Witches were the rst Friendly Heads and Dealers, the rst birth-control practitioners and abortionists, the rst alchemists. They bowed to no man, being the living remnants of the oldest culture of all — one in which men and women were equal sharers in a truly cooperative society, before the death-dealing sexual, economic, and spiritual repression of the Imperialist Phallic Society took over and began to destroy nature and human society.”