De Bretteville moved to
Los Angeles around 1969, working as an in-house graphic designer at the
California Institute of the Arts before becoming the first woman faculty member in the design department in 1970. In 1971, she founded the first design program for women at CalArts, and two years later co-founded the
Woman's Building, a public center in Los Angeles dedicated to women's education and culture. In 1973, de Bretteville founded the
Women's Graphic Center and co-founded the
Feminist Studio Workshop (along with
Judy Chicago and
Arlene Raven), both based at the Woman's Building. She designed a necklace of an
eye bolt on a chain, meant to represent "strength without a fist" as well as the biological symbol of women; she gave the first of these to Arlene Raven and Judy Chicago when they started the Feminist Studio Workshop in 1972. Since then, she has given them to other women with whom she shares a vision of the creation of women's culture. Various women including many in the Feminist Studio Workshop submitted entries exploring their association with the color. De Bretteville arranged the squares of paper to form a "quilt" from which posters were printed and disseminated throughout Los Angeles. She was referred to by the nickname "Pinky" as a result. De Bretteville has worked extensively in the field of
public art creating works embedded within city neighborhoods. One of her best-known pieces is "Biddy Mason's Place: A Passage of Time,” an 82-foot concrete wall with embedded objects in downtown Los Angeles that tells the story of
Biddy Mason, a former slave who became a
midwife in Los Angeles and lived near the site. She collaborated with
Betye Saar to create the piece. The 1996 project "Remembering Little Tokyo" is also located in Los Angeles; de Bretteville collaborated with artist Sonya Ishii to interview residents and create brass tiled etched with symbols representing local history and Japanese American identities. She also created the mural "At the Start... At Long Last" for the
Inwood-207th Street station in New York City, which was influenced by the song "
Take the A Train" by jazz musician
Billy Strayhorn. De Bretteville was interviewed for the film
!Women Art Revolution. She is a member of the
Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. == Awards ==