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Weaving
is one of Carol Ventura's passions. She did her doctoral dissertation
on backstrap weaving, an ancient art form whose practitioners
use their own bodies to adjust the tension of the threads on their
looms.
She is also fluent in Spanish. So the invitation to teach weaving
and the history of fiber in Guanajuato, three hours north of Mexico
City, for a semester in 2001 was "one of those made-to-be
situations," she says.
Ventura, who teaches art history at Tennessee Technological University,
had planned to teach pre-Columbian art history, printmaking, computer
graphics and/or glass sculpture on her Fulbright grant. But the
University of Guanajuato's School of Fine Arts had recently received
45 looms from a University in Ashland, Oregon, that had closed
its textile department so they needed someone to set up the looms
and teach weaving.
Ventura revised the syllabi, gathered material for a craft history
book she is writing, and photographed things "not found in
books"-like the park depicted by Diego Rivera in his famous
mural-to use in her classes back home. Such comparisons teach
volumes about "the choices artists make," she say.
She also threw herself into the cultural life of the city she
calls "the Florence of Mexico" -with so many plays,
concerts and exhibition openings "it was like living in an
arts festival"-and was struck by her students' sophistication
and appetite for learning. "I had been to the poor areas
a long time ago, and I didn't know this other side of Mexico,"
she admits. In fact, Ventura and her husband are talking about
spending part of each year there, after they retire.
Back home, she's already using those slides in her art history
classes, and has an article accepted by FiberArts magazine. She
finds staying in touch with her Mexican colleagues "easy,
with email," and has tried to repay the kindness of the artists
and craftspeople who opened their studios to her by designing
Web pages for them that are linked to her own page (http://plato.ess.tntech.edu/cventura/).
Her only regret: that she didn't know Fulbright awards were available
to graduate students until recently. "I paid my own way to
do my doctoral research in Guatemala," she says.
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