Folklore Minor For Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education

The art studio, in the context of the home, is a relatively unexplored locus of inquiry in my two fields of interest: art education and folklore, specifically the study of vernacular architecture. Exploring the interface between the built environment of the home and an artist working inside it, reveals physical, psychological, and cognitive issues. Here, older women artists living in the Midwestern United States describe their home workspace and tell how it influences their artistic practices. Women—especially those whose main occupation is not “artist ” but mother, teacher, or worker of another sort—often struggle to claim time and space for their art. With a conceptual foundation based on feminist theory (with its focus on the promotion of women’s rights, interests, and issues, as well as its emphasis on gender politics and power relationships, providing an instinctive and useful frame for my study), I intend to explore the question of how “ordinary ” women with artistic skills have created, often improvised, studio space right in their homes to accommodate their work in fiber arts, bookmaking, and painting, among other media, all while balancing a plethora of other life responsibilities