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For interviews, questions: Holzer will be available for one-on-one interviews with the media between 4 and 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2. Members of the media also may attend a dedication ceremony at 6 p.m. Friday at Gordy Hall. To make arrangements for either, contact Mary Alice Casey, University News Services, (740) 593-1890.
ATHENS, Ohio -- Ohio University's newly renovated Gordy Hall now has something in common with the Guggenheim Museum Bilboa in Spain, the National Library of Sweden and Japan's Toyota Municipal Museum of Art. All four locations -- and others around the world -- showcase the work of internationally renowned artist and Ohio University alumna Jenny Holzer.
Several pieces of Holzer's work have found a home in Gordy Hall. The most prominent is a light-emitting diode, or LED, display that has become a Holzer signature. Streaming across the face of the rectangular electronic sign on the ceiling near the building's Park Place entrance are some of Holzer's philosophies: It's man's fate to outsmart himself. Torture is barbaric. Revolution begins with changes in the individual. The statements appear in several languages, all of which are taught in Gordy Hall.
Other selections from the artist's "Truisms," a series of one-line commentaries she wrote in the 1970s, are carved into six dark green granite benches in Gordy's first-floor hallway. Holzer herself added a granite table and benches to the project for the building's new back patio without raising her $150,000 commission.
"We're very aware that Jenny was extremely generous with these pieces," says Pam Parker, chair of the university's Percent for Art Committee. "When she saw plans for the patio, she designed the table and benches to fit that space."
Administered by the Ohio Arts Council, the Percent for Art program requires that 1 percent of funding for public buildings that cost $4 million or more in state money be set aside for art. The Gordy project is the university's first completed Percent for Art endeavor, although others are in the works for Copeland Hall, the Vern Riffe Center on the Ironton campus and the Grover Center expansion.
"The fact that Jenny uses language as part of her art is very appropriate for Gordy Hall," Parker says. "The committee selected her as the artist because she is one of the top artists in the world today. It was a very nice coincidence that she is an Ohio University alumna." Holzer received a bachelor of fine arts degree at Ohio University in 1972 and an honorary doctor of arts degree in 1994.
Vice President for Administration Gary North says the Holzer pieces add an interesting dimension to Gordy Hall and the campus.
"We are delighted with the way the project has turned out," North says. "We believe students, faculty and staff will find it interesting and also appreciate some of the challenges it raises with the quotes she uses."
Holzer, who lives the small community of Hoosick Falls, N.Y., says she wanted this project to convey as many thoughts as possible.
"I threw out a number of things to consider," says Holzer, noting her goal with the LED display was "to put together as long and complicated a program as possible. There's a lot of text, a lot of fancy programming." A computer programmer and electronic engineer help Holzer create her LED displays. A Vermont monument maker carves her truisms into stone.
Holzer will be on campus Oct. 2 for a dedication of her work and a "coming home" of sorts. Holzer was born in Gallipolis and grew up in Lancaster, and her mother's family was from Amesville.
"It's been a very pleasant experience," she says of the Ohio University project. "My family was in the Athens area for hundreds of years."
The public may stop by Gordy Hall, located at the corner of Park Place and University Terrace, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays to view Holzer's artwork. The building, which houses the departments of Modern Languages and Linguistics, the Ohio Program of Intensive English and the Office of Education Abroad, reopened fall quarter after a two-year, $10.6 million expansion and renovation.