IN: Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen, July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history and culture. By the 1970s, Chicago had founded the first feminist art program in the United States. Chicago's work incorporates a variety of artistic skills, such as needlework, counterbalanced with labor-intensive skills such as welding and pyrotechnics. Chicago's most well known work is The Dinner Party, which is permanently installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

While at UCLA, she became politically active, designing posters for the UCLA NAACP chapter and eventually became its corresponding secretary. In June 1959, she met and became romantically linked with Jerry Gerowitz. She left school and moved in with him, for the first time having her own studio space. The couple hitch hiked to New York in 1959, just as Chicago's mother and brother moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her. The couple lived in Greenwich Village for a time, before returning in 1960 from Los Angeles to Chicago so she could finish her degree. Chicago married Gerowitz in 1961. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1962 and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Gerowitz died in a car crash in 1963, devastating Chicago and causing her to suffer from an identity crisis until later that decade. She received her Master of Fine Arts from UCLA in 1964.  While in grad school, Chicago's created a series that was abstract, yet easily recognized as male and female sexual organs. These early works were called Bigamy, and represented the death of her husband. One depicted an abstract penis, which was "stopped in flight" before it could unite with a vaginal form. Her professors, who were mainly men, were dismayed over these works. Despite the use of sexual organs in her work, Chicago refrained from using gender politics or identity as themes.  In 1965, Chicago displayed work in her first solo show, at the Rolf Nelson Gallery in Los Angeles; Chicago was one of only four female artists to take part in the show. In 1968, Chicago was asked why she did not participate in the "California Women in the Arts" exhibition at the Lytton Center, to which she answered, "I won't show in any group defined as Woman, Jewish, or California. Someday when we all grow up there will be no labels." Chicago began working in ice sculpture, which represented "a metaphor for the preciousness of life," another reference towards her husband's death.  In 1969, the Pasadena Art Museum exhibited a series of Chicago's spherical acrylic plastic dome sculptures and drawings in an "experimental" gallery. Art in America noted that Chicago's work was at the forefront of the conceptual art movement, and the Los Angeles Times described the work as showing no signs of "theoretical New York type art." Chicago would describe her early artwork as minimalist and as her trying to be "one of the boys". Chicago would also experiment with performance art, using fireworks and pyrotechnics to create "atmospheres", which involved flashes of colored smoke being manipulated outdoors. Through this work she attempted to "feminize" and "soften" the landscape.  During this time, Chicago also began exploring her own sexuality in her work. She created the Pasadena Lifesavers, which was a series of abstract paintings that placed acrylic paint on Plexiglas. The works blended colors to create an illusion that the shapes "turn, dissolve, open, close, vibrate, gesture, wiggle," representing her own discovery that "I was multi-orgasmic." Chicago credited Pasadena Lifesavers, as being the major turning point in her work in relation to women's sexuality and representation.

Where did she get her education?

OUT: She received her Master of Fine Arts from UCLA in 1964.


IN: Juan Alberto Gonzalez Vazquez (born October 20, 1969), nicknamed "Igor", is a former Major League Baseball right fielder. During his 16 years in the league, Gonzalez played for four teams, but is more remembered for his two stints with the Texas Rangers (1989-1999, 2002-2003). One of the premier run producers and most feared hitters of the 1990s, Gonzalez averaged 37 HR and 117 runs batted in per season from 1991 to 1999. He won the AL MVP award twice in that time span, 1996 and 1998.

Gonzalez grew up in a rough area of Puerto Rico, where he learned to hit bottlecaps and corks with a broomstick handle in the Alto de Cuba barrio. In the Puerto Rico youth league, Gonzalez batted cleanup behind future Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams, where both competed against Gonzalez's future teammate Ivan Rodriguez. When the Yankees scouted Williams, eventually signing him, they declined to pursue Gonzalez, who they perceived as not serious about baseball.  The Texas Rangers signed Gonzalez as an amateur free agent on May 30, 1986, at the age of 16. Gonzalez has always wanted to serve as a role model for the kids of Puerto Rico, as they are faced with the downfalls of drugs and prostitution frequently. Gonzalez avoided such temptations growing up. His father, a math teacher, and mother, a housewife, made sure Gonzalez and his two sisters behaved properly and stayed away from negative influences. Gonzalez moved his family out of the barrio early in his MLB career. He paid utility bills for down-on-their-luck friends and plans on working to construct recreation facilities and a baseball diamond in his home town. One of Juan's managers, Johnny Oates, believed that until you've walked where Juan Gonzalez has walked, you just won't understand. Speaking from experience, as Oates has walked the streets of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, during visits multiple times, he had this to say: "I don't think you can appreciate how far he's come until you've been there", Oates said. "We might be making choices between going to the movies or going to the skating rink. But look at the choices the kids there were faced with growing up - do you want to do drugs or get beaten up? I think it says so much about him that he was able to rise above the peer pressure in Vega Baja. He had enough intelligence to say, 'I don't want to do that.'"  In Puerto Rico he is known as "Igor", the nickname he has carried since he was a nine-year-old fascinated by the professional wrestler "Igor the Magnificent." "I watched wrestling all the time and I still like it", Gonzalez said. "One day when I was nine, I told another guy, 'I'm Igor.' And he said,'Okay, your name is Igor from now on.' And I've been Igor since then."

Where did he go to school?

OUT: