The new mural designed for the Women's Studies Program depicts important figures in women's history.

The blending of talents
Art students collaborate on mural

Thanks to the efforts of six art students and their teacher, the Women’s Studies Program in East Hall has gotten a strong visual identity. The faces of Frida Kahlo, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and others representing important influences in women’s history now greet students and visitors to the program.

The portraits, part of a mural seven and a half feet high and 15 feet long, grace what had been a “stark, off-white wall,” as Dr. Vikki Krane, program director, described it.

“We moved into our new offices in East Hall in fall 2003, but we had no identity other than a sign to say ‘this is the Women’s Studies Program,’” she said. “We decided that we needed something unique giving visibility to the program.”

She and the program’s steering committee contacted Gordon Ricketts, School of Art, who has overseen student-produced murals in Kohl Hall and elsewhere. He approached students in his Narrative in Sequential Drawing class, and six women volunteered to design and create the mural. “We gave them almost total artistic license,” Krane said, “and they chose women whose stories spoke to them.”

Working on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons in Ricketts’ downtown studio, the student artists researched and chose the subjects and set about to create the portraits using a collaborative working method.

Instead of each artist doing one portrait, they all worked on every part of the mural, Ricketts said. “That was the way to make the piece one,” Kimberly Adams, a senior majoring in painting, explained.

She said, “I saw it as an opportunity that I couldn’t afford to pass up,” even though, she added, previous experiences she had had with collaborative artworks had not been successful. “But this time was different; I think because we all had this theme in common.”

The team also included seniors Adrienne Buck, Sharon Mayo and Kelly Canfield; junior Heather Krol, and sophomore Kelly Seemann.

“I’m really pleased with the imagery and the skills of the artists,” Ricketts said. “The mural shows their individual talents while being cohesive. There developed a real richness in the group.”

“I visited the studio, and it was amazing to watch them in action,” Krane said. “It was like perpetual motion. Something would happen—a bit of color change—and you could see the effects rippling throughout.”

Seemann, a 2-D art major from Sylvania, said the collaborative process was helpful to her as an artist, as was the opportunity to work in Ricketts’ studio, part of a larger space shared by several artists. “It helped me see this is what I might be doing one day,” she said.

She and Adams both said they were impressed and inspired by the fact that Women’s Studies would approach the art community to work on a project. “It was great to connect to put something like this together,” Seemann said.

At the April 8 opening of the installation, both the women’s studies faculty and the artists were proud and pleased with the results of the project. The artists say they were touched by the recognition they received, and the faculty were grateful for the effort the students made on the program's behalf.

“It was a great reward to be at the opening and see how much they appreciated what we did. I was honored to be a part of it,” Adams said.

“They did this huge thing for us,” said Krane. “They truly gave us a gift, and one that will live long past their time here. It was very meaningful.”