Home is Where the Art Is

hen Katie Murken isn't preparing projects for her art classes, she spends her time on regular day-to-day tasks, just as we all do. She vacuums the carpets, sweeps the floors, washes the dishes, and mends her clothes with needle and thread. The difference between most people and Murken, though, is that her day-to-day tasks inspire her artwork, which explores various aspects of domesticity.

The experience of looking after a home has greatly influenced Murken's work. She lives just a few blocks from the University Park campus, in a small white house with dark blue shutters. In the summer, she tends to her garden in back of the house. Her parents own the home, but because they live in Pittsburgh, Murken is responsible for taking care of it. When I first climbed the steps of the wooden porch and gazed in through the screen door, I saw Murken, her back turned to me, standing over the sink washing the dishes. The sleeves of her green woolen sweater were rolled up to her elbows. Her cat, May, was winding affectionately around her ankles. A warm afternoon light filtered in through the window and glistened on the water as it ran over her hands and down the surface of the dish.

Katie murken "Home," for Katie Murken, is spelled in an alphabet of stools and mops, wash baskets, vacuum cleaners, and women. It's art, a nightmare, and a part of life.

The image reminded me of photographs I had seen in a book, Rant, that Murken had constructed. The front and back covers of the book have bright yellow rubber dishwashing gloves pulled over them. Inside, the book contains photographs of Murken washing dishes. Text appears under each of the photographs: "Tess made out a check for a quarter, and lo and behold, in a short time I got a notice that I was behind time and didn't have the quarter paid. And I was fined. And it says each month it was goin' up. So, I went up, to H&R Block, they're not open, you know, up there until after the first of the year." Murken recorded the words, which had been spoken by her 98-year-old great uncle, and later transcribed them from the audio tape. She combines the images with text in her book to depict male-female relationships in marriage and to create the feeling of monotony — the feeling of what it's like to be talked at while you're washing the dishes.

Murken combines word and image in many of her other works as well, including a book-like installation piece consisting of eight white paper molds of Tide laundry detergent bottles. We walked up two flights of stairs to her attic to look at the bottles. May and Millie, Murken's other cat (the one who plays fetch with green trash bag twisties), accompanied us. The bottles were set up on a large wooden table next to a laundry line in the corner of the room. They open vertically down the middle, like books, and each bottle hooks shut with a bra fastener. "There are women's slips inside the bottles," Murken told me. "The slips are old — I bought them at Goodwill. Since then, they've been washed, stained, bleached, sewn. There's evidence of work. I've also printed phrases from a home economics textbook onto the slips. I like this piece because it's approachable, touchable. People should be encouraged to reach in, pull a slip out, touch it, and hang it on the line," Murken remarked.

I pulled one of the blotchy and tattered silk slips from the Tide bottle mold and read the small black lettering, printed at a slant across the worn surface: "Can the repair work be done easily? Is there enough wear left in the garment to justify repairs?" I laughed, then turned the slip to read the other phrases.

Perhaps the funniest of her works is another book she constructed, titled H is for House. It was inspired by Erte, a 20th-century Russian-born deco-artist. Murken went to an exhibit of Erte's work while traveling in Rome, where she saw his silk screens of people who appear as letters of the alphabet. Murken's book uses Erte's idea of creating the letters of the alphabet using the human form, but Murken adds a humorous twist. H is for House contains photographs of Murken wearing a pink floral print dress, much like what a housewife of the 1950s might have worn. She poses with brooms, dustpans, mops, vacuum cleaners, dish racks, ironing boards, and a variety of other household items. Each photograph shows her forming a letter of the alphabet with the help of a different household item. "I got the idea for 'K' first," Murken noted. "I pictured the image in my mind before I even started the book. It was more difficult to come up with ways of making some of the other letters, though. If you look at 'G,' you can see that my face is all red. It was really hard to hold that pose."

"When I think about it today, I realize how much watching my mother and my grandmother as I was growing up influenced me. They dedicated themselves to what I call the domestic arts," Murken says. "I think that what's important about my work is that it's satirical; there's a kind of bite beneath the surface. The humor is there because the issues are heavy, and I know that being a 'housewife' is not glossy or cute like these images. Taking care of a house is just a part of life, and for me, taking care of my house can be really fun. But what I like about the work is that I can imply that it's fun, and that it's a nightmare, without coming out and saying it."

— Liliana M. Naydan

Katie Murken will receive a B.F.A. in art with honors in December 2002 from the College of Arts and Architecture and the Schreyer Honors College. Her art adviser is Tom McGovern, M.F.A., 210 Patterson Bldg., University Park, PA 16802, 814-865-0444; tfm1@psu.edu Writer Liliana M. Naydan graduated in May 2002 with a B.A. in English