Join us on Saturday, March 11, 2023, for a community conversation sparked by artist Alice Woodruff and formidable women. View a selection of the sculptures from the exhibition Warrior Women: From Invisible to Formidable One Hundred Strong. Following a brief lecture by artist Alice Woodruff, a panel will explore themes from the exhibition. The artist and panel will participate in a Q & A with the audience. Light reception. Event sponsored by the Russell Library and Jeannette Rankin Foundation.
-Exhibition of Select Sculptures in Room #277 (Opens at 1PM)
-Artist Lecture and Panel in Room #271 (Begins at 2PM)
PANELISTS:
ALICE WOODRUFF
Woodruff began her professional artistic career as a production potter. After 24 years she switched gears to become a nurse practitioner specializing in neurosurgery and spine rehabilitation. In the 90s she returned to her love of clay, with an emphasis on sculpture. Her work reflects personal challenges as well as the historical and current traumas, trials and successes experienced by women worldwide.
JOAN PRITTIE
A graduate of Bradley University and the University of Georgia School of Law, Joan Prittie has served as the Executive Director of Project Safe Domestic Violence Center in Athens since 1999. Joan also teaches at UGA’s Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership and the Masters in Public Administration program. She describes herself as a “recovering attorney.”
As a lawyer with the Prisoner Legal Counseling Project, Joan represented indigent inmates in the Georgia state prison system and helped develop the Battered Women’s Clemency Project. Working on behalf of 78 women in prison for killing their abusers, Joan secured one sentence commutation and a dozen paroles. Since 2010 Joan has served as editor of the Georgia Domestic Violence Bench Book—a compendium of state and federal law and information on domestic violence.
In 2021 Joan received the Gender Justice Award from the Georgia Commission on Family violence.
PATRICIA RICHARDS
Dr. Patricia Richards, Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies, has been at the University of Georgia since 2002. She currently serves as the director of UGA’S Institute for Women's Studies and as an affiliate faculty member with the Latin America and Caribbean Studies Institute and the Institute of Native American Studies. With a Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin, she specializes in the sociology of gender, indigenous politics in Latin America, social movements, and qualitative methodology.
Dr. Richards has received numerous awards for her teaching, writing and research, including the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship at the University of Georgia in 2018.
TRACY BROWN
Tracy Brown serves as the Shelter Coordinator for the Athens Area Homeless Shelter (AAHS). Founded in 1986 and formally incorporated in 1990, AAHS has grown from a 10-cot facility to serving over 3,500 homeless individuals and now offers childcare, job training, counseling, and rental assistance as well as emergency and transitional shelter.
The subject of one of Alice Woodruff’s Warrior Women sculptures, Tracy appears in the exhibit catalog beside her poem, “Opening,” and declares, “I am doing, by grace my healing work… I can finally feel my heart opening.”