Persimmon Blackbridge

Persimmon Blackbridge
Born	1951 (age 65–66) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	Canadian
Known for	writing, performance, installation art, sculpture
Awards	Ferro-Grumley Award 1997 Lesbian Fiction VIVA Award 1991

Persimmon Blackbridge (born 1951) is a Canadian writer and artist whose work focuses on feminist, lesbian, disability and mental health issues.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Blackbridge moved to British Columbia with her family as a teenager, and has worked and resided in Canada ever since. Along with artists Susan Stewart and Lizard Jones, she has been a member of the Vancouver-based Kiss and Tell collective.

A portrait of Blackbridge, by her Kiss and Tell colleague Susan Stewart, is held by the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives' National Portrait Collection, in honour of her role as a significant builder of LGBT culture and history in Canada. She is also featured in the 2006 National Film Board of Canada documentary film Shameless: The Art of Disability.

Blackbridge's work as an artist has been in a variety of domains, including performance art, installation art, video art and sculpture. In 1991 she was the recipient of the VIVA Award for her sculptural installations.

Doing Time was Blackbridge's 1989 exhibition at the Surrey Art Gallery, created in collaboration with ex-prison inmates Geri Ferguson, Michelle Kanashiro-Christensen, Lyn MacDonald and Bea Walkus. Incorporating twenty-five life-sized cast-paper figures of the four women, the installation also included texts written by the participants. This marked the first exhibition where Blackbridge worked with large-scale multi-media assemblage.

Still Sane was her 1984 exhibit in collaboration with Sheila Gilhooly at Women in Focus gallery. This exhibition focused on Gilhooly's experiences of being institutionalized for being a lesbian. To create this exhibition, Gilhooly and Blackbridge spent 36 months creating a sculptural and written record of Gilhooly's time incarcerated in the hospital.

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