Exhibition uses technology to celebrate women’s art

When Helen Klebesadel read Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” in a women’s studies class some 20 years ago, Klebesadel’s artistic life changed forever.

“The story is about how women and the different kinds of work, including creative work, that women do is valued,” says Klebesadel, who just completed a three-year term as associate chair of the Women’s Studies Program. She also is the director of the UW System Women’s Consortium. “In particular, the story is centered around quilts, which I consider an undervalued women-centered art, and the way that members of a particular African-American family use quilts to embody what they value most.”

Klebesadel herself is not a quilter. Rather, she is a watercolorist of national and international repute whose work sells for thousands of dollars.

“My paintings emphasize the undulating three-dimensional folds of cloth that make the quilts something more than a flat surface. Some of the works emphasize the stitches that mark the surface of the quilt,” she says.

Seven of Klebesadel’s images, rendered as high-end giclee (digital) prints, will be on display in the new exhibition space in the Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC), 108c Ingraham Hall.

“I became interested in making limited edition giclee prints of my large paintings in order to make them more affordable and a size that would fit more modest spaces,” she says. The original paintings are between 3 by 4 feet and 4 by 5 feet. The prints are about 16 by 20 inches.

Meanwhile, Klebesadel has a mission for the exhibition, which will be on view until Friday, Oct. 1.

“I hope that those who visit the exhibition will think of women as artists, quilts as art and art as a form of women’s studies scholarship,” she says. “Too often only those visual objects we find in museums or galleries and that have as their main use aesthetic contemplation are what we value as art.

“Quilts are made for aesthetic contemplation, but they also keep us warm.

“Each stitch can be a blessing.”

For information about the WSRC gallery space, contact Laura Pollick, (608) 263-2053.