Sociology professor Heidi Chirayath wondered what she was doing at an early meeting of a campus group formed to advance the arts at Bates.

All the others attending were faculty and staff involved in teaching and practicing the arts in myriad ways. After they introduced themselves, it was Chirayath’s turn.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m a sociologist with a background in dance and voice and musical theater and violin,’” she recalls. “I was one of those arts kids in college.” That interest led her to join the discussion about the future of the arts at Bates, but at that first meeting she had to wonder: “What can I do as a sociologist?”

Plenty, as it turned out.

As discussions proceeded from their 2007 beginnings to now, she ultimately spotted a two-birds, one-stone opportunity: Why couldn’t students in her methods class survey the student body about their interests in the arts — a process that would both elicit valuable data and provide valuable field research experience to her own students?

The greater context for Chirayath’s 2009 class project is the current institutional planning initiative that President Elaine Tuttle Hansen announced two years ago (“Bates Matters,” Fall 2007), describing the initiative this way: “We’re not proposing the kind of…planning that produces a fine document that sits on a shelf. We are interested in thinking creatively, in the spirit of mutual helpfulness.”

In spring 2009, Hansen’s collaborative effort hit its crescendo as campus teams issued preliminary recommendations in three areas: “Learning at Bates”; “The Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the Liberal Arts”; and “The Arts in the College and in the Community.”

Supporting the arts initiative, Chirayath’s students in Sociology 205, “Research Methods for Sociology,” designed surveys that they administered to 320 students this past winter and spring. They also conducted 31 interviews, observed audiences at 96 campus arts events, and examined arts coverage on 33 collegiate Web sites and in umpteen issues of The Bates Student.

They polled their peers at Bates for information often assumed but rarely measured: Who attends arts events on campus? How well does Bates publicize its events? What are the dreams of Bates’ arts community?

For students in the class, conceptualizing the project, then gathering and interpreting data from the field helped connect the dots between everyday life and phenomena described in journal articles. “It’s been really eye-opening to see all that goes into drawing those conclusions,” says sociology major Emma Posner ’11. “It definitely helped me understand what goes into a sociological study — and in a way that’s been really relevant for our lives at Bates.”

The project was eye-opening in more ways than one. Some students in the class were surprised to find that poetry readings or orchestral concerts even occur at Bates. And students who observed the audience at a classical piano concert by 94-year-old Bates artist-in-residence Frank Glazer were especially surprised, even discomfited, to find themselves amidst an elderly, well-dressed audience.

More comfortable for observers and observed were student a cappella concerts — the Bates cultural events most popular with students, according to Chirayath’s survey. Seventy-four percent of respondents claimed to attend them, a likely testament to the power of friendship. The College’s six a cappella groups consist only of students, and supporting the creative work of friends was the primary reason students cited for attending events (see “Go Figures,” page 9, for more survey findings).

Surprisingly to some, the survey found that athletes were neither more nor less likely than non-athletes to participate in campus arts events. Not an earthshaking revelation, but one that did throw a little light on the perception, at Bates and everywhere, that athletes and artists are like Mars and Venus — with the athletes from the Red Planet getting most of the glory.

“A lot of students reported on how being an athlete is kind of the mainstream cool thing to do,” says Posner, “whereas being an artist involves less of a sense of solidarity and fraternity.”

Still, Bates athletics does give the arts community something to aspire to. Consider a notion recorded by Chirayath’s class at a February listening session that drew a full house in Muskie Archives: that athletics “has successfully permeated the culture of Bates, through its strong student participation, role in admissions, and connections with alumni.”

Chirayath’s students presented their findings in April to the planning group charged with the Arts in the College initiative, which made its preliminary recommendations, including calls for substantial new investment in faculty, staffing, and facilities, to President Hansen in May. The body of work, Hansen says, symbolizes a 21st-century liberal arts college at its best, with “stronger relationships across old lines.”

The unusual prominence of the Arts in the College initiative was typified by a student-organized Art-In last spring. Strongly reminiscent of a 1960s arts festival — it was a happening, man! — the event used Memorial Commons as a venue to showcase Bates performances, arts organization presentations, and participatory artmaking. It was a vivid reminder of the wild energy that students bring to the arts at Bates. And that was something Chirayath had in mind, too.

“It’s easy for people to think, it’s the arts faculty that is pushing some kind of agenda,” Chirayath says. “And I thought, student voices here are really key.”

By Doug Hubley, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Kate Gilmore ’97 suffers for her art. More impressively, she suffers during her art, such as when she famously dipped her leg into a bucket of plaster and, after it hardened, used a hammer to whack it off.

In her 2004 video of that performance, My Love Is an Anchor, you hear Gilmore’s grunts and groans as she relentlessly beats at the plastic bucket. The same sort of guttural venting occurs in another of Gilmore’s early videos, Main Squeeze, in which she tries to crawl through a small, wood-framed tunnel. A New York Times reviewer called Gilmore’s videos “wacko,” yet despite a certain “batty, sadomasochistic streak…I like them a lot.”

He’s not the only one, as Gilmore is in the midst of a remarkably successful and busy artistic career.

Her work is about more than just suspense. It also comments on the traditional masculine-feminine divide in art history.

Her work has been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, and she’s exhibited at any number of important venues, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and PS1 Contemporary Art Center and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City.

Her work is also exhibited overseas, and in 2007 she won a prestigious Rome Prize for emerging artists, funding a year at the American Academy there (a reminder that there are some perks in the art world).

Gilmore lives in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood — her husband is Andrew Cyr ’96, artistic director of the Metropolis Ensemble — and takes the train out to Long Island City in Queens, where she works in a graffiti-covered building that was once a factory. There, she keeps a studio full of tools and props from videos past, present, and future and spends her time organizing work that is increasingly elaborate.

While the final product is simply a DVD of her performance — she films with a high-end consumer Panasonic camera and edits with Final Cut Pro — arriving at that endpoint is hardly easy. The video artist is the producer, prop builder, editor, director, lighting designer, and performer.

“I can spend two weeks on lighting alone,” says Gilmore, explaining that countless decisions affect the way the video looks and feels. “I’m not just interested in documenting some event. The color’s really important. So are forms of the objects involved, the setting, and how I look and how my outfit looks.” Such visual sensibilities were honed partly at Bates, where Gilmore studied painting with Robert Feintuch and sculpture with Paul Heroux, an experience that informs how she goes about designing and constructing sets for her performances. In 2002, Gilmore received an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

Success only complicates things. As institutions commission work from Gilmore, her performances can become more expansive and expensive. But however complex the project, Gilmore remains the star, often seen in stereotypically feminine attire and makeup while carrying out what she describes as “Herculean” tasks. As a result, her videos have their own fascinating rhetorical logic — we watch because we want to find out what happens. But her work is also about more than just suspense: It also comments on the traditional masculine-feminine divide in art history.

In one video she uses a ramshackle collection of chairs to build a pyramid, which she climbs; the viewer sees the action from a camera mounted above the scene. As she ties the chairs together with twine and moves tentatively up the makeshift mound, occasionally extending one straining hand toward the camera, the viewer is both nervous and excited.

Gilmore does about five videos a year. Each one, she says, “takes over my life.”

The actual shooting, done without a live audience, has a similar momentousness, she adds. “It’s very scary” because “it’s a one-shot deal. If this is bad, this is my show.” Her latest work ran into a little unexpected trouble, she explains: “Someone outside started banging on the window with a key.” But it was nothing a little improvising and editing couldn’t sort out.

Gilmore is still recognized for her video with her leg in plaster. “I’m the bucket girl,” she laughs. “I’m dressed in this black cocktail outfit, and the whole video is me trying to get my foot out of this bucket of plaster.

“I was stuck in it for two and a half hours. It was horrible. I almost called the police — it was 11 o’clock at night, and I was alone in this studio building in a cocktail dress with my foot stuck in plaster.”

She figured the plaster would break if she just banged it against the wall a couple of times. “That was Fear Factor meets the art world.” She now films her videos with somebody around.

Because Gilmore is so unrelenting in her work, the viewer can’t help but feel that she’s responding to a dare of some sort, or that she’s trying to prove that she can follow through on her physically demanding ambitions. As such a natural performer, was she an actress or a dancer? She laughs, “Oh no. But I’ve always been a fighter.”

The seventh- and eighth-graders will show works that include drawing and painting, masks, ceramics, mosaics, printmaking, wire sculpture and pastels.

“When the students and families attend the opening, they have a sense of pride that the work is hanging in an art gallery,” says Kay Allison, who teaches art at the middle school. “It’s a way of recognizing students talented in the arts.”

“Exhibiting in a gallery setting gives the student a sense of worth,” she says. “The work is matted and hung, or placed under Plexiglas. It adds a polished look.”

The annual exhibit is one aspect of an ongoing relationship between the middle school and the college. Bates’ Adopt-a-School Program is administered by the college’s Center for Service-Learning, which engages students and faculty with community service in a variety of ways. Bates’ involvement has also supported the middle school’s library and provided breakfast for students graduating to Lewiston High School, among other projects.

Admission to the museum is free and open to the public. For more information about the exhibit, please call 207-786-6158.

Works in the exhibition range from watercolors to oil paintings, sculptures and oriental-style ink drawings.

In common with almost every Bates senior, art majors must complete a major project as a thesis. Unlike most others, however, their efforts are put on public display.

“What we see every year in the thesis exhibition is a great variety in artistic vision and expression,” said Anthony Shostak, the museum’s education coordinator. “It is the culmination of their studio program and serves as an introduction to the professional art world. Students must prepare their work for exhibition and assist with the installation of the show.”

This year’s participants in the Senior Thesis Exhibition, and their own descriptions of their works, are:

• Maury Dojny, Westport, Conn.: “Cartoonish paintings which defuse humiliating real-life events.”
• Brandy Gibbs, Bethlehem, Pa.: “Exploring pattern through paintings and prints.”
• Emily Girdwood, Andover, Mass.: “Narrative photo-montages.”
• Joseph Kim, Sprague, W. Va: “Traditional Chinese and Korean ink drawings.”
• Gretchen Klausmeyer, Belfast, Maine: “Large drawings, prints and paintings of plant and insect forms.”
• Jennifer Lucas, Melrose, Mass.: “Large-scale abstract paintings inspired by musical and emotional themes.”
• Alicia Moore, Redwood City, Calif.: “Sculpted ceramic and cast-resin deserts: Whimsical hybrids of the works of Wayne Thibaud and Jeff Koons.”
• Suzannah Parsons, South Salem, N.Y.: “Oil paintings and monotypes in an Abstract Expressionist mode.”
• Greg Stones, Clayville, R.I.: “Small watercolors.”
• Beth Whitten, Northport, Maine: “Piscatorial prints and paintings.”

The exhibition opens with a public reception April 5 beginning at 7 p.m.

The Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Further information on the exhibition is available at 207-786-6158.