Women of Worth, Opening Doors To Social Change Project
The joint sabbatical project, Women of Worth, Opening Doors To Social Change, took two years to plan and execute. Claudia Blanchard and Chris Reising, two colleagues at Siena Heights University, explored the development of women’s corporate social responsibility by researching historical businesswomen as compared to contemporary female business leaders. They examined three female executives, from three different time periods, working in three different arts-related, usually male-oriented industries. As feminists and educators, Chris and Claudia took the opportunity to bring women who have remained fairly anonymous into the public eye, giving them the recognition they deserve. Moreover, this exhibit demonstrates the noteworthy contributions of these women to industry and their consequential impact on society. Jennie Louise Blanchard Bethune, Julia Morgan, Jeanne Gang [Architecture], Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone, Helena Rubinstein, Andrea Jung [Cosmetics], Ellen Demorest, Ellen Donnelley Reed, and Eileen Fisher [Textiles] serve as role models to young women and men. Their vision, determination and ability to overcome adversity, and their sense of responsibility to their employees and the greater good are worthy examples to be emulated.
Enchanted Border Installation
This installation, Enchanted Border, is an historical reenactment of a Victorian parlor room set up for a séance, or “session with the dead.” In the latter half of the 19th century, families or small groups of friends could be found gathering to contact the spirit world in a home circle. More spectacularly, in a small sectioned-off corner of the parlor called the cabinet, a medium might be found producing physical manifestations, ectoplasmic emanations of the departed. Both are replicated in the installation. On display are various forms of spirit contact: apports, objects that the spirit leaves behind as gifts; slates containing images and messages in chalk; spirit cards with similar messages created in colored pencil; and spirit photographs. The planchette, an apparatus used to produce automatic writing, and the spirit trumpet both facilitated the medium’s communication.
On the parlor table rests a large altered book entitled In Voices—a Victorian ledger transformed into the biography of four female mediums from the late 1800s. Three of the women were actual historical figures who spent much of their public lives as professional mediums, each with her own distinctive and peculiar story. The fourth, Helen Hills, was the original owner of the ledger. I based her fictitious biography on my research into family home circles and other Victorian portrayals of women’s lives. The book contains collages constructed from the ephemera originally collected in Helen’s ledger. These assembled images hint at biographical details about each woman. Accompanying these images are hand-written spirit communications from each of the women. Visitors are asked to sit at the table to look through the book. Hovering around the parlor table are four spirit figures, three adult women and one child, representing the four sitters who participated in the séance.
Bijoux Installation
This installation contains an accordion fold book entitled Bijoux with tiny milagro breasts and doll underwear that is strung on clothesline with miniature clothespins. Above the book hangs a wardrobe of doll clothes that I created from vintage Revlon doll patterns. In the front of the installation is a vintage Revlon doll on her pedestal. This was the kind of pre-Barbie doll that I played with as a girl. |
Enduring Heart Installation Shrine
The Enduring Heart installation shrine is a wall arrangement of wax hearts, prayer devices, and crucifixes—my visual response to The Enduring Heart fairytale that I adapt and retell in a heart-shaped book. The book, based on the structure of a medieval prayer book, is displayed in a Victorian photo album and placed alongside the installation for the viewer to read. The fairytale love story describes the endurance of a young maiden after her father is forced by the devil to chop off her hands. Through this joint presentation, I generate collaborative meaning between the visual and written stories. Drawing upon my religious history, I incorporate images into the installation that respond to and reinforce the central themes of sacrifice, love, and healing. |
Dolly Dialogues Installation
This viewer-interactive installation was created to house the Dolly Dialogues book. The viewer sits at a little girl's vanity table and reads the book located in the drawer. The digital book (my first) contains communications between a ghost named Espérite and a Victorian Jumeau doll named Bébé Triste. They were actually emails sent between myself and my friend Deborah Clark. They appear in the book unedited and serve as the basis for the story. |
Snow White Installation
This viewer-interactive Snow White Installation contains seven small wall mirrors and one large one. On the wall stand is a vintage plaster Snow White statue and seven 1950's Christmas tree ornaments of the dwarves. Organized in an arch are seven dwarf-sized chairs in front of one large chair. The book Fairest
of Them All, A Memory of Snow White rests on its seat in a wrap made from a Victorian children's book with Snow White on its cover. The viewer is invited to sit in this chair to read the book, much in the manner that Snow White might have read to her seven little companions, The story is a reflection of childhood memories—me dressed as Snow White on Halloween and the time I saw the first release of the Disney Snow White movie. I parody this story with a Carnivale tale about a real Snow White person. |