Joyce Wieland is known as a painter, sculptor, quilt designer and filmmaker. She consistently resisted traditional boundaries, such as those that exist between disciplines such as between art and craft. A feminist, a patriot and an environmentalist, Wieland created an art that is at once intensely personal, and universal. Her art is open to interpretation on many different levels but is also often playful. New Yak City was painted some months after moving to New York. It evokes Wieland’s childhood of drawing comic strips, her experience as a filmmaker and her knowledge of Pop and neo-Dada art. It speaks of her immersion in an exciting new community, full of opportunities, but it also comments somewhat mockingly on New York and male bravado through the use of exaggerated hand-gestures, dialogue bubbles and phallic cigars, all superimposed with hearts.