NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Throughout the spring semester, 12 talented Vanderbilt University students and 13 local professional artists have been hard at work on an exciting exhibition.
EVOKE/INVOKE/PROVOKE: A Multimedia Project of Discovery premieres from 7 to 9 p.m. on Friday, April 21, and will run through Saturday, May 13, at the Cohen Building on the Peabody College campus at Vanderbilt.
“We hope that the show will demonstrate what the power of art can be,” said Judy Chicago, a world renowned artist, author and educator. Chicago and her celebrated photographer husband Donald Woodman have been facilitating a project class that provided a group of selected participants with the opportunity to experience the couple’s unique, empowering participatory pedagogy.
Chicago and Woodman were named Vanderbilt’s first Chancellor’s Artists-in-Residence by Chancellor Gordon Gee. They have spent the past few months enabling students and artists to find or expand their creative voices, resulting in a content-rich exhibition that grows out of each individual’s personal experiences and reflects their deepest beliefs.
Themes such as family; gender and sexuality; religion and spirituality; illness; and some of the effects of globalization are explored through a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, weaving, installation, performance, video and sound. Participating artists, who range in age from 18 to 60, are from diverse backgrounds. There will also be one “mystery” installation which visitors will have to discover for themselves.
Filmmakers from Vanderbilt’s Film Studies Program have documented the process leading to the exhibit and footage from the in-process film will be part of the exhibition. Vivien Green Fryd, Vanderbilt professor of art history, has been conducting a seminar in conjunction with the class, providing the participants with a rigorous grounding in contemporary art and theory as a way of expanding their ideas. Fryd will present a number of public lectures through the course of the exhibition.
The exhibit is free and open to the public. Hours are 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4 to 8 p.m. on Fridays and noon to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Artists’ tours, talks and lectures about the project will expand the exhibition.
Prior to their Vanderbilt residency, Chicago and Woodman have facilitated similar programs at Western Kentucky University in the At Home project (which was exhibited at Vanderbilt) and in Pomona, Calif., in a public-private partnership that involved 70 participants, six universities and a 12-site exhibition. Earlier, Chicago brought her unique pedagogical methods to Duke University and Indiana University, Bloomington. In the early 1970s, she pioneered a new approach to university art education, specifically geared to women, establishing the first Feminist Art Program at California State University, Fresno. She then brought her program to California Institute of the Arts, where she team taught with artist Miriam Schapiro. The Cal-Arts program produced the famous Womanhouse, the first female-centered art installation, which engendered a film seen around the world as well as ongoing scholarship. More recently, she has expanded her pedagogy to include men, which has proven quite successful, in part because of her partnership with Woodman.
Chicago’s career spans four decades. Her art has been seen in exhibitions all over the world and her 10 published books have been translated into numerous languages. Her best known work is The Dinner Party, a symbolic history of women in western civilization, which has been seen by over one million viewers. Created from 1974 to 1979 with the aid of hundreds of volunteers, the piece will be permanently housed in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. While in residence in Nashville, Chicago has been at work on a new and final book about The Dinner Party, which is often described as an icon of twentieth century art.
Woodman is an acclaimed commercial and fine art photographer who has exhibited internationally. His work has been published in Vanity Fair, Art in America, Newsweek and many other national magazines and his photographs are included in the Polaroid Collection, The Museum of New Mexico, New Orleans Museum of Art as well as other public and private collections.
For more information about Judy Chicago, visit http://www.judychicago.com; for information about Donald Woodman, visit http://www.donaldwoodman.com. For more information on the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Artist-in-Residence program, visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/chancellor/cartist.html.