August 27, 2001

Judy Chicago Bringing
Art Project To WKU

Bowling Green, Ky. - Take an empty house, add 26 Western Kentucky University students and area artists, and put them under the direction of a nationally-acclaimed artist and her photographer husband, and what do you get?

They'll find out this fall when "At Home: A Kentucky Project with Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman" transforms a house near campus into an art installation.

"The purpose of 'At Home' is to raise awareness about the gendered dimensions of domestic space and to explore the transition from traditional to contemporary ways of understanding that space. Another important aspect is to consider how difference-race, class, ability and so on-impact our understanding of home," said Jane Olmsted, director of Western's Women's Studies Program. "It builds on a model of interdisciplinary, collaborative learning."

"At Home" is a collaboration of Western's Women's Studies Program, the Art Department and the Folk Studies/Anthropology Program.

Chicago's husband, Donald Woodman, will direct participants in creating a photo-ethnography of the exhibit and in exploring photographically the meaning of home
in Kentucky.

The historical precedent for "At Home" is "Womanhouse," the historic creation of the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif. The collaborative project led by Chicago and Miriam Shapiro involved the transformation of a Victorian house into an exhibit that explored women's experience with domestic space. "At Home" will be an original, independent project, not a replication of "Womanhouse."

Chicago said the project was an outgrowth of her visit to the campus four years ago.
"I had the opportunity to meet a number of students, faculty and administrators when I lectured at WKU in 1997," Chicago said. "I was struck by the strong sense of place they evidenced, expressed by students' eagerness to return to their family homes on weekends and the fact that many faculty and administrative staff members had returned to WKU after beginning their professional lives elsewhere."

During a class meeting, in which students were discussing "Womanhouse," one of them mentioned that society has changed so much that there would be no need for such an exploration of gender in the 1990s. When Dr. Elmer Gray, dean of the Graduate College, suggested that Chicago might want to return for an entire semester, Olmsted began exploring the idea of bringing the "Womanhouse" concept to Bowling Green.

"When I was invited by the University to recreate the historic installation 'Womanhouse,' I thought-rather than trying to graft the concepts of California students in the 70s onto students today-it would be interesting to reopen the subject of the home," Chicago said. "I am looking forward to discovering students' viewpoints and to helping them express those in art. It should be an exciting semester."

Woodman adds: "I am excited by the possibilities and am eager to see what these students will discover about themselves and the process of documentation. It should prove to be a very energizing semester."

WKU is also supporting parallel projects in the local schools, Olmsted said. Funded in part by a grant from the Target Foundation, parallel projects are artistic, interdisciplinary efforts of students and teachers. Teachers will engage students in conversations about diversity, gender and domestic spaces as students explore artistically what home means to them.

"Parallel projects can emerge from classes in the arts, journalism, social studies, and even business and science," she said. "They might include a performance or be exhibited, or both."

The "At Home" Web page -- located at http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Academic/Graduate/WStudy/athome.html--will include links to parallel projects and will include images and excerpts from students and teachers talking about their projects. The site also includes a list of events and a timeline for "At Home."

The grand opening, scheduled for Dec. 9, will include a reception at the Carroll Knicely Conference Center at the WKU South Campus on Nashville Road and a shuttle for visitors.

Here is a list of participants:
WKU students from Bowling Green include: Kevin Baker, senior; Joshua Edwards, senior; Farrah Ferriell, graduate student; Michael Harkins, freshman; Alice Noel, graduate student; Galen Olmsted, freshman; and Hannah Pepin, freshman.

Other WKU students include: Stefanie Bruser, a Union senior; Holly Edwards, a Greenville senior; Katie Grone, a Villa Hills senior; Diane Frederica Huff, a graduate student from Philpot; Trish Lindsey Jaggers, a Smiths Grove senior; James Lee, a Richmond junior; Lindsey Lee, a Burkesville senior; Dawn Majors, a Nashville senior; Martha McDonald, a Lexington senior; Justin Mutter, a Smiths Grove freshman; Catron Peterson, a Rineyville senior; Clay Smith, a Glasgow senior and Tyler Smith, a senior from Friendsville, Md.

Professional artists participating include Jan Bell, Freda Fairchild, Karen Genter, Mary Magenta, John Oakes and Lesley Patterson. All are or have been Kentuckians.

For more information, contact Jane Olmsted at (270) 745-6477. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.