Artist's work could make you go 'eek!'

Feminist artist Judy Chicago's return to the IU campus was marked Friday afternoon with a screening of the documentary "No Compromise: Lessons in Feminist Art." Some of Chicago's art has been displayed in The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, and a lithograph of one of her most famous pieces, "Butterfly Vagina Erotica," will be added to the collection.\nKinsey curator Catherine Johnson believes this piece is a great addition to the Kinsey Institute.\n"We are very pleased with this donation. Judy Chicago is one of the most important artists of the 20th century and, now, on into the 21st century because of her notability in feminist art," Johnson said. "It's what our collection needed. We've had a shortage of women's work in the past. This is a step toward improving our collection."\nChronicling Chicago's semester at IU in the fall of 1999 as an instructor for an advanced art class, the documentary film captured Chicago's abilities as a mentor, friend and creative influence.\nClass participants spent 16 weeks in an art studio focusing on art history, gender studies and philosophy. The culmination of the students' growth and progress was demonstrated in an art exhibit hosted by the IU Art Museum.\nAfter seeing the video, sophomore Adam Steer said the Chicago's work opened up a new art genre for him.\n"I'm from New York, so we have a large amount of art galleries and exhibits. Before the video, I had never really thought about feminist art," Steer said. "Now that I've seen Chicago's perspective and the way she helped her students, I would like to see more of her works."\nFollowing the screening, documentary writer, director and editor Suzanne Schwibbs, Chicago, IUB professor Peg Brand from the gender studies department, and two of Chicago's students participated in a question and answer session, where topics ranged from Chicago's role models to possible shock value contained in her art to the students' experiences during and after Chicago's course.\nChicago began creating her feminist art in the 1960s, according to "Through the Flower," her Web site.\nOver the past 40 years, Chicago has worked with California State University in Fresno and the California Institute of the Arts to develop and teach others about feminist art. Some of Chicago's most well-known pieces, such as "The Dinner Table," "Birth Project" and "The Holocaust Project" have traveled to hundreds of exhibits around the country, with "The Dinner Table" being donated to the Brooklyn Museum of Art.\nIt will be on display in the Brooklyn, New York museum from Sept. 20 until Feb. 9, 2003, and later the museum will become the piece's final resting place in 2004.\nWith paintings such as "Butterfly Vagina Erotica," "The Dinner Table," "Birth Project" and "The Holocaust Project," Chicago's art spans multiple art genres, thus helping to capture the attention of numerous art fans. While part of Chicago's publicity has come from her paintings that at times are considered scandalous or salacious, others, such as "The Dinner Table" present a hard look at female role models.\nChicago believes there is nothing wrong or salacious about her art.\n"To us women," she said, "we have images that are natural to us, but make others go 'eek!' As artists, we have to display what we feel and, as women, we have to display our needs"