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The Student Spotlight Shines on Jane Fudge Isn't it great to run into friends who can shed light on any given topic? No matter what is discussed, you walk away newly educated with new phrases, new historical facts and new critical connections. Jane Fudge is one of these delightful people. I have never had or overheard a conversation with Jane that wasn't fascinating in some way. Many of you MH students know what I mean about Jane because you've had the pleasure of having her in your classes. You have heard her cleverly articulate complex contextual thoughts time and again. You wonder how she knows so much. Jane knows so much because she has been vociferously educating herself all her life. At first, she studied painting and drawing and became a serious, exhibiting artist. Later, she put her experience as an artist to good use as the curator and director for the gallery at the Colorado Institute of Art. Then, in the early 1980's she decided to utilize her considerable talents as a writer to become Denver's first real art critic. She intelligently reviewed art for several publications including Colorado Arts, for which she still has a regular column. Her well informed art critiques and keen curatorial skills did not go unnoticed by the Denver Art Museum. By 1985, Jane was hired temporarily as an assistant curator in one department. That position ended and she was hired by another. In 1988, after a nationwide job search, she took the position as Managing Editor for the California Museum of Photography at the University of California at Riverside. Fifteen months later, Jane returned to Colorado and the Denver Art Museum, becoming an Assistant Curator in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department. She's still there today. In addition to being the assistant curator, she is also the curator for an important collection of 1,260 19th- Century Landscape Photographs. Important photographers in the collection include Carlton Watkins, Frank Jay Haynes and William Henry Jackson. Jane intends to use this portfolio as a basis for her MH thesis which will draw from the disciplines of American Art (photography), American Literature and American History. Jane has impressed students and faculty alike since has been a MH candidate last Fall. In addition to her art historical expertise, Jane is "very interested, in addition to nineteenth century photography, in aspects of popular culture, filmmaking in particular". Jane's independent study with Dr. Sharon Coggin which resulted in an extensive film critique of the Ulu Grosbard film,True Confessions won her the $1,000 MH tuition award this pasts Fall. This semester, she's conducting a similar analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot. Jane says, "I feel Family Plot was really overlooked by a lot of the important critics. Even people who seriously study film feel it was a minor effort. I think it was genteel and humorous, and also, a reprise of his symbology that runs throughout his career. Many of the constellations of characters in this comedy appear in other forms, in his other films – some very serious films, some very frightening films. I also think the Shakespeare-Hitchcock connection is very obvious in Family Plot." Jane's intellectual-historical paper on the neighborhood, in which she used to live, Chaffee Park Heights, has been accepted for publication into the UCD Historical Studies Journal. |
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