CATHEINE OPIE
Opie was influenced early in life by photographer Lewis Hine. At the age of nine she received a Kodak Instamatic camera, and she immediately began taking photographs of her family and community. Opie spent her early childhood in Ohio.
She completed a Masters of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1988. Her thesis project Master Plan (1986–88) examined the planned communities of Valencia, California, from construction sites and advertisement schemes, to homeowner regulations and the domestic interiors of residents' homes.
In 1988 Opie moved to Los Angeles, California and began working as an artist, supported herself by accepting a job as a lab technician at the University of California, Irvine. Opie and her companion, painter Julie Burleigh, constructed working studios in the backyard of their home in South Central Los Angeles.
At the Hammer Museum, Opie was on the first Artist Council (a series of sessions with curators and museum administrators) and served on the board of overseers. Along with fellow artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Ed Ruscha, Opie served as member of the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2012, she and the others resigned; however, they joined the museum's 14-member search committee for a new director after Jeffrey Deitch's resignation in 2013. Opie returned in support of the museum's new director, Philippe Vergne, in 2014. She is also on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Along with Richard Hawkins, Opie curated a selection of work by the late artist Tony Greene at the 2014 Whitney Biennial in New York.