Grant Proposal Parallel Project to Judy Chicago's Home Project in Kentucky

FIPSE Comprehensive Program
U.S. Department of Education
Application Control Center, ROB-3
7th and D Streets, S.W., Room 3633
Washington, D.C. 20202-4725

May 19, 2000

Dear Grant Review Committee,

As Associate Professor of Art at Texas Tech University, one main aspect of my position is that I teach teachers to teach art in a BFA in Visual Studies degree program, leading to K-12 art teacher certification. In a course, Art 3365: Approaches to Criticism in the Visual Arts, I plan to involve about 15 undergraduate art students in a parallel project in connection with Integrating a “Fine Arts” Curriculum with Teaching Gender and Diversity. I teach my students to create virtual rooms for synchronistic global interactions—something I do each spring in an art criticism course. In this course, in the spring of 2002, I would like the undergraduate art students to discuss Judy Chicago’s house installation in Kentucky compared to Womanhouse created in 1972. Dialogue to prepare students to create a virtual house will focus on how home spaces are gendered and convey beliefs and values. My students will create a virtual house, each student creating a room in the house. We will use PhotoShop to create “rooms” and The Palace server software as the space to place the rooms, develop "hotspots," select "characters" to role-play, and most importantly to interact with others such as schools in Kentucky and elsewhere in the world. I have had teachers and students from across the U.S. and as far as Hong Kong join us in virtual rooms that my students have created each spring since 1995. The client software is free so anyone with an Internet connection to a computer can download The Palace client software at no cost. Since it is real-time interactions I arrange, via email, a time for others to join my students. I send the number that enables guests to enter our home-site. This virtual room project will be linked directly to the Diversity through the Arts Web site.
Spring 2001 semester, prior to Chicago’s Kentucky house project, I will teach WS5320: Feminist Research Methodologies. In this course I plan to work with graduate students to interview people and observe home spaces as a way to teach feminist research methodologies. Their findings will be used to help visualize or raise questions in the transformation of a house (i.e., the home installation art project with Judy Chicago).

Grant Proposal Parallel Project to Judy Chicago's Home Project in Kentucky
		Karen Keifer-Boyd
	Reflections		Many of the Women Studies graduate students from diverse fields and with a range of career goals will also participate in my fall 2001 course, Art 5366: Instructional Technology in the Visual Arts as well as other students enrolled in the course from Texas Tech’s Interdisciplinary Fine Arts doctoral progam of which this couse is a part. Also students in an interdisciplinary Visualization masters degree program directed by TTU’s College of Architecture faculty, Dr. Glen Hill participate in this course. These students in my art and technology graduate course will create a house using advanced 3-D rendering software, Maya and a Cray supercomputer projected in a virtual reality theatre at the Reese Center in Lubbock, Texas. We will create a virtual replica of the house in Kentucky and parallel the rooms with modifications that can be best achieved virtually and is culture- and site-specific. I would love to serve on the Advisory Board and would love to participate in one of the short term residencies. I prefer to go to the Kentucky house for 2-3 days, three times during the construction and exhibition of At Home. The project has incredible potential to make us all reflective about how spaces/places are not neutral and how home spaces shape our gendered perspectives. I will participate in the proposed national conference, Diversity through the Arts in 2003, as well as publish and present aspects of the project in other venues such as the National Art Education Association. Sincerely,Karen Keifer-Boyd, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Art School of Art, Texas Tech University, Box 42081 (806)742-3010 or email: K.Keifer-Boyd@ttu.edu
		with Jane Olmstead
		FIPSE Comprehensive Program U.S. Department of Education Application Control Center, ROB-3 7th and D Streets, S.W., Room 3633 Washington, D.C. 20202-4725 May 19, 2000 Dear Grant Review Committee, As Associate Professor of Art at Texas Tech University, one main aspect of my position is that I teach teachers to teach art in a BFA in Visual Studies degree program, leading to K-12 art teacher certification. In a course, Art 3365: Approaches to Criticism in the Visual Arts, I plan to involve about 15 undergraduate art students in a parallel project in connection with Integrating a “Fine Arts” Curriculum with Teaching Gender and Diversity. I teach my students to create virtual rooms for synchronistic global interactions—something I do each spring in an art criticism course. In this course, in the spring of 2002, I would like the undergraduate art students to discuss Judy Chicago’s house installation in Kentucky compared to Womanhouse created in 1972. Dialogue to prepare students to create a virtual house will focus on how home spaces are gendered and convey beliefs and values. My students will create a virtual house, each student creating a room in the house. We will use PhotoShop to create “rooms” and The Palace server software as the space to place the rooms, develop "hotspots," select "characters" to role-play, and most importantly to interact with others such as schools in Kentucky and elsewhere in the world. I have had teachers and students from across the U.S. and as far as Hong Kong join us in virtual rooms that my students have created each spring since 1995. The client software is free so anyone with an Internet connection to a computer can download The Palace client software at no cost. Since it is real-time interactions I arrange, via email, a time for others to join my students. I send the number that enables guests to enter our home-site. This virtual room project will be linked directly to the Diversity through the Arts Web site. Spring 2001 semester, prior to Chicago’s Kentucky house project, I will teach WS5320: Feminist Research Methodologies. In this course I plan to work with graduate students to interview people and observe home spaces as a way to teach feminist research methodologies. Their findings will be used to help visualize or raise questions in the transformation of a house (i.e., the home installation art project with Judy Chicago).