Amy Ahlstrom says her ideas didn’t sit well with other students in art school. Originally a painter, Ahlstrom, who earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute in 1995, had turned to quilt making, silk-screening medical illustrations and images from comic books on the quilts. At her final critique, “Half the people there were like, ‘You just need to be a painter. You should just be painting on canvas,’ and the other people were like, ‘Well, this isn’t really like a quilt. You need to have more fabric on this,’ or ‘It needs to be stitched more.’” One student went so far as to call her an outsider artist. “I mean, you can’t walk in the door at the Art Institute and be an outsider artist!”
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Devorah Heitner, who combines Super-8 and video footage in her work, had a similar experience at SAIC. “People were really mad at me for mixing film and tape. I had the boys upstairs in the film department being all ‘You can’t use video, it’s ugly.’ And the girls downstairs being like, ‘Well, if you’re queer you can’t use film because it’s really male and oppressive and for the wealthy and not democratic.’ But I wanted to mix and match!”
The 23-year-old Heitner’s battle with depression formed the basis of her last film, Guidelines for Accepting Reality. Her current project, tentatively titled “Things Other Girls Know,” digs into the significance of her habit of starting relationships with girls and women who have lost their mothers. Heitner’s own mother recently died after a ten-year battle with cancer.
Through the Rotifers and more enduring organizations like Women in the Director’s Chair, Ahlstrom and Heitner found, to some degree, a sense of belonging. But they say they’re still looking for a place of their own. “So we thought we should have a party,” says Heitner.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Amy Ahlstrom, Deborah Heitner photo by Nathan Mandell.
