January 2024 | Chicago, IL
Interactive Installation // Graphic Design
This installation (and “centerpiece”) for the exhibition Unproductive Time is—all at once—a calendar, a diary, and time card.
The tearaway calendar reveals memories of the ways in which I “idled” in the fall of 2023, unable to produce new work for my solo show no matter how hard I tried. From dissociating in the candle aisle at Target to staring at my lava lamp, I allowed time to pass while feeling really bad about myself and my inability (and lack of desire) to make conceptual art.
As each day of the show went on, pages were torn off and thrown away, but viewers were invited to sift through the trash and read pages from previous days.
I also included two time card racks where viewers could clock in/out of the show. They were asked one question: how did you idle this month? I was curious about the ways in which we all define what “doing nothing” is. I got varying answers from screen time to long walks, but what I enjoyed most about the cards was that they created evidence of the people who came to my show and started a dialogue about burnout and creative minds.
April 2023 | Iowa City, IA
Illustration // Painting // Mural // Performance // Hand Lettering
(~5.5x8ft)
Chalkboard Gag (aka Kate Simpson) is a pseudo-self-porrait inspired by my favorite television show, The Simpsons, particularly the opening title sequence in which Bart Simpson is writing lines in detention. This mural appeared in my MFA show: Gratuitous Hospitality.
In thinking about labor as embodied practice and the internalization of capitalism, I considered phrases that could represent reasons we (as Americans living in late-stage capitalism) would need to “send ourselves to detention” or otherwise repent for.
“I will not let money define my value.” speaks to the way labor and wage-earning embeds itself into our identities, which requires self-awareness and unlearning in certain cases.
February 2022 + May 2022 | Iowa City, IA
Interactive Installation // Video
Body of Work explores the relationship between labor and the body, routine and identity. The piece is installed as a one-channel, looped video projection of my fragmented body, neck to upper thigh, as I put on and take off my apron, describing how labor is sketched on our bodies through familiar objects and gestures. The display of the performance also calls to attention the spectacle experience of working in the service and hospitality industry, presenting the body in public spaces to be viewed, read, and interpreted.
Also included in the installation is the physical apron in space among a collection of Guest Checks with questions that prompt viewers to reflect on their own relationships to labor, identity, and their bodies. Viewers were invited to react, respond, and record thoughts on the blank Guest Checks provided and to, quite literally, lay it all on the table for future viewers to consider.
In its original form, this piece was installed twice: February 14-19, 2022 as part of a group exhibition (Levitt Gallery, Iowa City) and May 9-14 2022 as part of my MA exhibition (Ana Mendieta Gallery, Iowa City). I gathered about thirty responses from audience members from the Levitt installation. I bound those responses together with paper accordions to be read as an archive as more responses were written during the Ana Mendieta exhibition.
Spring 2023 | Iowa City, IA
Digital Photography
Series captured and edited as part of Gratuitous Hospitality thesis exhibition, exploring labor as embodied practice and the feminized body.
April 2023 | Iowa City
Analog Collage (19.5in x 27.5in)
Daddy’s Little Wage Worker uses appropriated imagery to visually explore the representation of women and girls in service and hospitality roles through commercial costuming and roleplay. The collage also investigates capitalist practice and its manifestation in children’s toys and playtime.
May 2022 | Iowa City
Graphic Design // Typography // Installation
RECEIPT: Statistics and anecdotes that explicate some of the flaws regarding tipped wage labor.
CASH: The median annual income for a server in the United States: $26,000. That number accounts for an hourly wage and tips. To compare, the net worth of the richest restaurateur in the United States is $7.6 billion.
This is one of the signature pieces in Body of Work, my MA exhibition, shown in May 2022 in the Ana Mendieta Gallery and reprised in September 2022 in the K.K. Merker Gallery.
March 2023 | Iowa City, IA
Performance
Exchange Value was a time-based performance (at the UI Sculpture & Intermedia Open House) during which I stood, dressed from the waist down in jeans, sneakers, and a server apron and “undressed” from the waist up with $1 bills adhered to my torso with double-stick tape. I was blindfolded and holding a tray of snacks. There was a tip jar on a pedestal next to me with a prompt—typeset, printed, and adhered to the pedestal—that read:
EXCHANGE VALUE
You may...
Take a dollar.
Then, keep the dollar or put it in the tip jar.
and/or
Take a snack.
and/or
Leave additional cash in the tip jar.
or
Do nothing...
The performance lasted from about 5:30-8:00pm. I did not engage with or speak to the audience.
This project was constructed with the performative nature of service and hospitality jobs in mind in addition to the parallels between the performance of bar/restaurant work and sex work, especially when manifested in the feminized body. This particular piece also has layers of meaning related to private nature of tipping wherein a server or bartender may not know whether they have been compensated until the customer leaves, thus the blindfold.
November 2022 | Iowa City
Film Photography // Installation // Curation
SlideShow is a collaborative exhibition borne out of the University of Iowa Graduate Photography Workshop in partnership with Public Space One, Iowa City’s nonprofit, artist-lead, community-driven contemporary art center.
The eleven of us captured our individual orbits, using one roll of Kodak Ektachrome slide film each. We compiled our photographs into a sequenced performance using three Kodak Ektagraphic AMT projectors.
We also chose one slide each to scan and print. These were viewed in the dark with flashlights, or as we called them: personal projectors.
October 2021 | Iowa City, IA
Graphic Design // Video // Installation
ONE GRL PIT was inspired by the feeling of disconnect provided by panic attacks, when the brain and body betray one another. Through embodied practice and movement, this performance searches for reconnection.
The piece was created by editing an hour of movement (moshing, dancing, headbanging, jumping) into ~13 minutes of video from three points of view. The body is presented against a white backdrop that is illuminated by a 100% R (RGB) LED light.
These three edited videos were projected onto posters, each containing two layers of text. The red text contains personal narratives describing 1) where my anxiety comes from 2) what my anxiety/panic attacks feel like 3) how I combat anxiety and panic. The black text contains generative dialogue, directed at the audience. Each channel is looped but contains unique pauses where the screens go red or black to create moments of rest and to highlight other parts of videos and the printed material.
The space is illuminated by the redness of the videos as well as blinking LEDs behind the projectors. It is also warmed by the projectors expelling heat. All of this is intended to make the audience feel their own presence and become more aware of being alive in their bodies.
November 2021 | Iowa City, IA
Photography // Video // Installation
This installation combines both archived and new photography as well as newly captured video. The projected video displays a building where the artist lived with her ex-partner for a handful of years (c. 2016 - 2019), wherein she experienced a deteriorating and unhealthy relationship. The sound of the video includes the noise of the train that went by their home every day, multiple times a day.
Hung in front of the video, with miniature white clothespins on white thread, are photographs of the interior and exterior of their home as well as the train tracks beside it. The interior photographs were taken when they lived there together. The video and exterior photographs were captured during the piece’s development, the artist revisiting the space as a stranger.
Viewers were invited to use provided light sources in the room (electric candles and a gas lamp) to illuminate the photographs in any way they desire, revealing things that were difficult to see in the dark and playing with the light sources captured in the photographs themselves.
This work is directly related to the reconstruction of memory and is thematically congruent with Boyfriend / Lover / Partner, which was on view in the second installation of this piece.
October 2018 | Iowa City
Sculpture Installation (wood and found object) // Graphic Design // Typography
Women live in a world where a college degree or a tight red dress can be as condemning as a black, pointed hat. This sculpture contributes to the conversation surrounding victim blaming in times of sexual harassment, assault, and gender politics. It is a comment on the ways in which a woman’s character may be questioned based on what she wears or how she expresses herself.
The information on the prints flanking this sculpture comes from a law that was passed in Great Britain in 1770, one of many pieces of legislation that place legal control over a woman’s body and personal expression. It reads as such:
“
By Order of His Majesty’s Government (Official Statute of Parliament, The Year of Our Lord 1770)
All women, of whatever age, rank, profession or degree, whether virgins, maids, or widows, that shall from and after this act impose upon, seduce or betray into matrimony, any of His majesty’s subjects by the use of scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.
“
April 2018 | Iowa City
Graphic Design // Intermedia // Installation (Site Specific)
April is sexual assault prevention and awareness month. This installation piece, located in the downtown area of a city notorious for its drinking culture, aims at raising awareness regarding the use of alcohol as a weapon against victims.
