celebrate suffrage

Posted on September 15, 2016January 10, 2020 by admin

These posters and buttons honor the impact Central New York, especially communities along the Erie Canal, had on history of suffrage and voting rights in New York and the United Sates.. The posters were made in conjunction with the 2016 AIGA Get Out the Vote initiative and were a part of the exhibition I co-organized, as a board member of the Upstate New York chapter of AIGA, at the Wesleyan Chapel at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. The Wesleyan chapel was the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848. Accompanying the exhibition was a panel presentation I co-organized titled, Populating the Polls: Then and Now.

The buttons included in this project were designed to accompany this project and other voting projects I was working on at the time.

Celebrate Suffrage. Vote. — Poster designed for the 2016 AIGA Get Out the Vote project.

Honor those who suffered for suffrage. Vote. — Poster designed for the 2016 AIGA Get Out the Vote project.

after the yellow wallpaper

Posted on February 25, 2016January 7, 2020 by admin

The “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a seminal feminist text originally published in 1892. In the story, the narrator has been diagnosed with “nervous depression” and “slight hysterical tendencies,” or what might label “postpartum depression” today. Her husband, who is also her doctor, prescribes a summer of absolute rest in an old mansion where the narrator spends her days in an old nursery with barred windows and furniture that has been nailed down. She smuggled a journal that she hides in a mattress and writes in when she has the opportunity to provide her mind relief. The wallpaper in the room begins to occupy her mind in an otherwise barren room. Throughout the text the narrator extensively describes her experience of the wallpaper, “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight…. There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck with two bulbous eyes staring at you upside down…. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere… There are things in the paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will… And worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is plain as can be… I wonder if they all come out of the wallpaper like I did.” As the story progresses the narrator becomes increasingly fixated on peeling and removing the wallpaper from the room. This installation is an attempt to simulate the narrator’s manic experience with the wallpaper. Like the narrator, the viewer must become physical with with wallpaper. Rather than compulsive peeling, viewer must use the heat of their bodies to warm the wallpaper surface in order to reveal its secrets. ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode

Detail of After the Yellow Wallpaper. — Detail of **After the Yellow Wallpaper**.

After the Yellow Wallpaper installed during SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at Arts Westchester in 2016. — **After the Yellow Wallpaper** installed during SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at Arts Westchester in 2016.

Detail of After the Yellow Wallpaper installed during SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at Arts Westchester in 2016. — Detail of **After the Yellow Wallpaper** installed during SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at Arts Westchester in 2016.

After the Yellow Wallpaper opening of SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at Arts Westchester in 2016. — **After the Yellow Wallpaper** opening of SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity at Arts Westchester in 2016.

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do you know her?

Posted on June 30, 2014July 9, 2014 by admin

Do You Know Her? is an exploration of “female archetypes” that appear in women centered magazines from the 1930s to the present. The semiotics that surround advertisements marketed towards women include: home appliances, detergents, beauty products, personal hygiene products, feminine hygiene products, grocery items, children, household products, wedding rings, pots & pans, and lingerie. The advertisements, originating in printed magazines, layered onto the mannequin, and then onto the window, demonstrates the layered marketing techniques the media/companies use to promote ideas of “ideal womanhood.”

The mannequin acts as an instrument of extraction, to emphasize the body that is imaged again and again. Important to note that the mannequin and the advertisement, the bodies, image the “ideal woman” as “white.” It makes “ideal womanhood” inaccessible to women of color, thereby enforcing a cycle of idealization and struggle to obtain a womanhood that is impossible. “Ideal Womanhood,” then, continues to reinforce ideas of subordination, inadequacy and self doubt and perpetuates the power systems that promote this ideology.

Do You Know Her? Trading Cards. — **Do You Know Her?**
Trading Cards.

Do You Know Her? Installed at Company Gallery. — **Do You Know Her?**
Installed at Company Gallery.

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selling madonna

Posted on June 30, 2014July 25, 2014 by admin

Selling Madonna looks at the history of images of mother and child. Specifically the project looks at representations of mother and child in advertising published in parenting magazines in the year 2005 and looks at similar images from renaissance paintings. Together the set of images presents an iconography of motherhood that is over 500 years old and continues to saturate media images today.

As the viewer walks past the images they morph from images that distinctly read as advertisements to images that reference Christian Renaissance Art of the Madonna and child. The process of morphing creates grotesque images of motherhood that, for me, question reality and the truth of photos and paintings. How many mothers are actually represented by these classic images, or, more importantly, how many mothers or images of parenting are left out? Motherhood is not always romantic, as the classic images might suggest.

selling madonna#6 of 8. Animation reflects how lenticular lens works. — **selling madonna**#6 of 8. Animation reflects how lenticular lens works.

selling madonna#3 of 8. Animation reflects how lenticular lens works. — **selling madonna**#3 of 8. Animation reflects how lenticular lens works.

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stitched girl

Posted on December 23, 2013September 13, 2015 by admin

Low quality plastic shopping bags were layered and heat fused using an iron. During the heat fusing process the plastic shrinks and forms a wide variety of wrinkles on the surface. I developed this drawing in response to those wrinkles by choosing which wrinkles to emphasize and which to downplay as I embroidered. This piece was not pre-planned, as there were a number of “unknowns” that unfolded as the piece developed.

Embroidered girl dancing. Embroidery is non-traditional and heavily textured. — **Stitched Girl**

Detail of non-traditional embroidered surface. — **Stitched Girl**
Detail of legs.

Stitched Girl Detail of surface texture. — **Stitched Girl**
Detail of surface texture.

signal

Posted on December 20, 2012October 6, 2014 by admin

SIGNal is an investigation of the “Toilet” symbols from the 50 Symbol-Signs originally created in a collaboration between AIGA and the US Department of Transportation. Of the 50 symbols, the toilet symbols are the only ones (although you could make an argument about the nursery symbol as well) designed to represent the “who” of a space or service rather than the what.

Focusing on the “who” of the space is often exclusionary. For example, single-stall bathrooms are often labeled with either a man or woman symbol despite the fact that the bathroom is single occupancy in the first place. Some of these spaces use the “Family” bathroom symbol which reinforces heterosexuality and excludes same sex couples. Signage needs to be standardized for usability but we need to be careful not to make choices that reinforce stereotypes or imply that populations like transgender individuals and same sex couples do not exist in our society.

The fifteen signs in this set explore a a wide range of images, both practical and impractical (complex symbols are hard to “read” from a distance), that represent the “who” and the “what” of the space. The “who” signs include those that are culturally gendered and those that are based on biological sex. The “what” signs include representation of the facilities, as well as the biological processes that result in the need of a toilet in the first place.

15 bathroom sign options. — **SIGNal**
Full series installed in a 3 x 5 grid.

matrilineage

Posted on December 16, 2012July 25, 2014 by admin

Matrilineage began with a group interview of four generations of women in my family. I was particularly interested in discovering how different generations of women related to and thought about technology. Earlier generations focused both on innovations that afforded change in their lives and technologies of necessity, rather than recreation. Younger women take many of these earlier inventions for granted, as domestic labor has grown to be less physical and more mechanized. As such, many of their stories focus more on leisure.

Some of the stories that emerged during that conversation evolved into the foundation of Matrilineage. I hand made a QR code to represent each woman using materials and techniques that reflect the individual. Each QR code leads to a specific story archived on the project website. The stories are personal narratives about about a specific piece of technology and the impact that technology has had on the individual. The videos that accompany the audio narratives were created by Emil Lendof.

The final QR code in the series represents you. Scanning that particular QR code will lead you to a web form where you can contribute your own story to the archive.

Matrilinage: Grandma QR Code — **Matrilineage: Grandma**
Size: 1.5″ x 1.5″
Medium: Cross Stitch

Matrilineage: Gram QR Code — **Matrilineage: Gram**
Size: 5.5″ x 5.5″
Medium: Hand-Quilted Custom Designed Fabric

Matrilineage: Mom QR Code — **Matrilineage: Mom**
Size: 3.5″ x 3.5″
Medium: Hand-woven 1/8″ Ribbon

Matrilineage: Me QR Code — **Matrilineage: Me**
Size: 7″ x 36″
Medium: Hand-Embroidered Custom Silk

Matrilineage: Sis QR Code — **Matrilineage: Sis**
Size: 2″ x 2.5″
Medium: Woven Beads

Matrilineage: You QR Code — **Matrilineage: You**
Size: 4″ x 4″
Medium: Laser Cut Felt

comfortable spaces

Posted on December 30, 2005July 9, 2014 by admin

The project was facilitated through the Boundaries in Syracuse course taught by Lori Brown & Alison Mountz. The main focus of the research was on how the university LGBT community defines comfortable space.

There were two large outcomes of this project. First there was a close examination of heteronormative spaces on campus, particularly bathrooms. A number of students are not perceived as belonging to the gender dichotomy of male and female, therefore a directory of single stall bathrooms, along with specific details about safety and the current labeling of the bathrooms was compiled. That compilation is available as a webpage off of the SU LGBT Resource Center website and as a printed brochure.The project also included installation at Company Gallery that looks at comfortable and uncomfortable space through physical space, video, audio and maps.

A set of 6 “trading cards” that point out heteronormative space and the many locations and spatial situations heterosexuals take for granted. These cards are used as a way to initiate the conversation outside of the installation, or as a continuation of the installation.

comfortable spaces Brochure [front, center, back]. — **comfortable spaces**
Brochure [front, center, back].

comfortable spaces Trading Cards. — **comfortable spaces**
Trading Cards.

feminizing technology

Posted on December 25, 2004July 9, 2014 by admin

Feminizing Technology is an exploration of the antithetical pairing of technology (labeled masculine) and domesticity (labeled feminine). Sewing, embroidery and needlework are common signifiers in feminist art, as well as signifiers of my own matrilineage. My grandmother sews, knits, embroiders, etc. and has complimented her traditional skills with a digitalized sewing machine that can be programmed and used with a computer. Seeing her interest and dependence on technology and the juxtaposition of old and new has provoked me to discover many similarities quilted and stitched work have with digital, pixel based work. Each step of the way I discover how the traditions of the past continue to influence and interact with the formation of traditions of the present. Immersing myself in both the quilting and programming experiences, I hope to reveal an equilibrium of a “genderless” activity.

Feminizing Technology Installed for "Rude and Bold Women" — **Feminizing Technology**
Installed for “Rude and Bold Women”

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