installation

Recollection: Storytelling Through Memementos

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Objects are powerful conversation starters. Personal objects store our stories, histories, and memories. Found objects reveal our experiences, dreams, assumptions, and values. Recollection: Storytelling Through Mementos is a project that explores how and why we collect and save objects. No matter our generation or age, we keep objects that hold meaning.

Storytelling workshops were conducted at six partner organizations. Participants were invited to bring a personally meaningful object with them and asked to share its history and meaning with a small group—often with acquaintances and community members that they see regularly, but may not know very well. Other participants were invited to join in a collaborative storytelling workshop where found objects were displayed on the table. Participants were asked to select an object and to start a story by identifying who owned the object and where. Participants then worked together, using the other objects on display to develop creative, and unexpected, stories. This exhibit was organized and under the creative direction of Michael Flanagan and Rebecca Mushtare. In addition, Seeley Cardone collaborated on the storytelling workshop design and helped to facilitate the sessions that provided the content included in the exhibition. Original Recollection branding by Stephanie Armour Dobrowolski. Photography and catalog by Julie Farquhar. Exhibition designed by Kelsi Bryden, Liliya Gapyuk, Kimberly Grunden, Nicole Lightfoot, Kayla Matthews, Rasheda McLean, Tyler Morgan, Ngan Nguyen, Miles Petersen, Hannah Sojka, and Carly Violante under the direction of Michael Flanagan and Rebecca Mushtare. Technical support from Steven Ginsburg.

Installation of exhibition at St. Luke Health Services in Oswego, NY.
Interior of catalog. Catalog designed by Julie Farquhar. Photo by Ngan Nguyen.
Collaborative stories piece designed by Liliya Gapyuk and Hannah. Sojka. Photo by Julie Farquhar.
Spin for a story designed by Kelsi Bryden and Miles Petersen.
One of ten posters meant to extend the extend the exhibit throughout the facility. Designed by Kimberly Grunden.

the polls are open

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The Polls Are Open is a simulation of voter suppression.

When approaching the voting booth, visitors will see a two physical buttons (a yes and a no button) and computer screen with a question and graphs. The question on the screen asks the viewer to vote on whether or not they should have the right to vote in local, regional and national elections.

If the viewer chooses to vote no, the vote is immediately recorded and reflected in the graphs on the screen. It is likely that most viewers will not want to vote this way, however, to see what will happen, some will.
If a viewer votes yes, they will be alerted, on screen, that for the vote to be recorded the participant will need to visit a particular URL and use the provided access code. At this moment the viewer has a choice (1) abandon voting or (2)log onto the website provided on their mobile device or, later, on their home computer. If the participant chooses the second option and logs onto the site, they will be asked for their email address (to verify they have not previously voted — a privacy statement will be on the site indicating that the email address will only be used for this purpose) and the access code provided. If the participant attempts to vote during the designated (but not posted) hours their vote will be recorded and they will be provided with a url to see progress on the vote. If the participant attempts to vote during non-voting hours the participant will be alerted that her vote cannot be recorded because of the time and will be asked to try again when the polls are open (the poll times will be provided in the alert). To vote yes will require participants to overcome the following hurdles: access to the internet (i.e., access to the poll site), limited polling hours, and a valid email address and access code (voter id).

In addition to the voting question, participants will see the following on the screen in the voting booth: (1) how many yes and no votes have been cast and recorded; (2) a comparison of how many yes vote attempts have been made in comparison to how many have been completed; and (3) how many votes have been cast in comparison to exhibition attendance (that is, if this information can be made available, which would require gallery staff to enter attendance for the day or week via a simple web form).

While installed during the 2017 Give Us The Vote exhibition at ArtsWestchester, 715 people interacted with the voting system and attempted to cast a vote. 31% of votes cast were “no” votes. 69% of participants attempted to cast a “yes” vote, but only 2.25% of those attempts were actually cast (because few individuals were able to overcome voter suppression techniques implemented).

Voting booth installed at ArtsWestchester.
Screenshot of the software that poses the question, “Should you have the right to vote in US elections” for participants to vote on.

after the yellow wallpaper

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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.
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.
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.
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plastic specimens

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Plastic shopping bags are designed objects and artifacts of commodification that are often discarded, ignored, and treated as objects of little or no cultural value. Each plastic specimen contains a composite of elements like color, typography, texts and images from discarded plastic bags for closer examination.

Plastic Specimens
Plastic Specimens
Plastic Specimens</strong. Detail. Plastic Specimens

do you know her?

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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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I am a cyborg and so are you

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Cyborgs are cybernetic organisms, participating in a cybernetic culture. In our current condition of global capitalism,we are participating beings in a larger networked system. We have a very intimate relationship with technology from the toilet, shower and running water in our bathrooms to computers, surveillance cameras and the worldwide web. Technology is integrated in our lives at many levels. Adopting theories of cyborgs or cyborg culture is a label of privilege that identifies histories of colonizers. The workbook, installation and performance all work together to reveal these ideas through dialogue and interactive activities.

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Cyborgeration
Cyborgeration
Cyborg Workbook Pages from the Workbook.
Cyborg Workbook
Pages from the Workbook.
Cyborg Surgery Crossword
Cyborg Surgery Crossword

circle drawings

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Circle Drawings is an exploration transparency, texture, light, layers and drawing with thread on plastic. Each drawing is a study in formal design qualities. I designed a piece of software that randomly generates compositions of three layers of circles. I use that software to generate a number of compositions and choose the most interesting to pursue. I then translate that rough composition into three layers of plastic where some circles are additive and some are subtractive.

I continually add to the Circle Drawings collection. The modular nature of the project allows for each installation to be in response to the specific site.

Circle Drawings
Circle Drawings
Circle Drawings Detail of a drawing.
Circle Drawings
Detail of a drawing.
Circle Drawings Detail of one Circle Drawing.
Circle Drawings
Detail of one Circle Drawing.
Circle Drawings. Detail.
Circle Drawings. Detail.

signal

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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.

storyQuilt

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StoryQuilt is an oral story visualization project. Participants sit at the StoryQuilter (the sewing machine) and tell it a story. Once the participant finishes her story, the StoryQuilter generates a personalized quilt (projected on a quilted screen) based on the participant’s story. The more the participant “gives” the StoryQuilter vocally, the more the StoryQuilter will put into the participant’s quilt.

Story quilts have often supported an oral history tradition within families. The quilts are regarded as narratives, as interpreted and imaged by the quilter. In this case the quilter is a piece of software, which only understands and interprets measurable components of the participant’s oral story. The software then uses that information to choose fabric colors, the level of detail of the quilt, the pattern to be used, and the scale to be used. If the participant tells the same overarching story in different ways, the resulting quilt will reflect these variations.

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storyQuilt Installed during Pixilerations.
storyQuilt
Installed during Pixilerations.
storyQuilt Quilt pattern generated during Made in New York 2012 at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY.

self-disclosed

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“Identity theft” is one of the most popular memes of the day. It is a sad phrase; one that strips our cultural understanding of identity down to a handful of information. Our individual identities are reduced to a couple of facts: name, date of birth, ethnicity, address, phone number, social security number, credit history and email address. This information is meant to locate us literally and statistically; it is not meant to “know us” personally.

The purpose of Self-Disclosed is to explore our relationship with this so-called “personal” information. Today this “personal” information is a medium of exchanged used to gain access to data, email, information, coupons, friends/chat online, etc. Because we don’t think of this information as currency, we don’t keep systematic records of where/who we have “paid.”

Self-Dislcosed Mounted print (2009) maps my identity over a period of two years. The map is constructed to demonstrate relationships various organizations have with my identity data and to create an object that provokes conversation.
Self-Dislcosed
Mounted print (2009) maps my identity over a period of two years. The map is constructed to demonstrate relationships various organizations have with my identity data and to create an object that provokes conversation.
self-disclosed Screenshot of data visualization software (2011).
self-disclosed
Screenshot of data visualization software (2011).
Self-disclosed Trading Cards and Wallet (2013). The Self-Disclosed tote, wallet and cards are portable maps of my own information exchanges that provide points of entry into the conversation about identity theft and information spending. These particular items provide the opportunity for in-person person-person interactions. Note: the key/legend is available on the back of each trading card.
Self-disclosed
Trading Cards and Wallet (2013). The Self-Disclosed tote, wallet and cards are portable maps of my own information exchanges that provide points of entry into the conversation about identity theft and information spending. These particular items provide the opportunity for in-person person-person interactions.
Note: the key/legend is available on the back of each trading card.
self-disclosed Tote (2012).
self-disclosed
Tote (2012).
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