Metallic gold paint on glass
This large-scale typographic installation was created for Storied Owl Books as a way to greet the neighborhood during the long Covid shutdown. Letters on one side of the building say HI, while the other side says READ in metallic gold letters that could be seen flashing in the sun from a block away. I’d like to think the pharaohs would have approved.
(Collaboration with Stephanie Watson)
Brush pens, colored pencils, watercolor paper, ribbons, branches
This project is an outdoor pop-up in the form of an awards table. Chalk signage on the sidewalk directs passers-by to our awards table to claim the mysterious medal they have won. A medal for what? That’s what we are there to find out.
Once award-winners arrive, we engage them in a conversation about their accomplishments, large or small. Invariably, the interaction starts out superficial and silly, but quickly segues into surprising depth as participants unpack their culturally conditioned feelings of unworthiness and begin to celebrate themselves. Custom paper medals are created during the course of conversation and are presented for participants to take home at the end.
Water-soluble eyeliner, Webster’s English Dictionary
This word-based pop-up temporary tattoo parlor was staged as part of The Loft Literary Center’s event, Countdown to Infinity. Visitors were invited to close their eyes and intuitively page through the dictionary until their finger rested on what they felt (in their mind’s eye) to be “their” word. The definition of the chosen word was then ceremoniously read aloud and transcribed as a freehand temporary tattoo onto the participant’s skin for the evening.
(Collaboration with Stephanie Watson)
Brush pen on paper, binoculars, Great Horned Owls
From the beginning, they have always felt like “our” owls. For years, two Great Horned Owls have started their new family in the treetops next to Lake Nokomis, drawing crowds of hushed, adoring fans like neighborhood royalty. My collaborator Stephanie and I are fans too, but on this occasion, we were fans armed with sketchbooks.
This one-time pop-up featured free commemorative portraits of the owl(s) of your choice. Visitors were invited to point to the owl they would like us to draw, which we then captured in ink sketches and gave away as souvenirs.
No owls were disturbed during this project and were in fact so high up in the trees that they were incredibly difficult to draw. Owls have excellent eyesight however, so we can only assume that they knew exactly what we were up to.
Exterior latex paint on wooden bus bench
Originally installed in 1968, the once-white Rainbow Bench has always been something of a fixture in my south Minneapolis neighborhood. It bears the distinction of being the only bus bench in the area that is not plastered with advertising, which unfortunately has also made it a repeated target of graffiti. To solve this problem, I decided to surreptitiously paint the bench in rainbow colors, as a tribute to our LGBTQIA+ community, as well as the inclusivity efforts of Living Spirit Church, located on the same corner (45th Street & Bloomington Avenue).
This guerrilla art project led to much speculation and a friendly ongoing partnership with the church. As it happens, the church actually owns the bench, so in 2022 they invited me to give an artist talk. I confessed everything.
Cardboard box, holes, black gesso, pencil, sleeping bag, stick, arctic wind soundtrack
Starbox is a portable stargazing experience where the viewer is invited to cozy up inside a large cardboard box studded with holes which correlate to the constellations of the winter night sky in the northern hemisphere. Originally installed during winter finals at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, participants were encouraged to take a nap in the sky, with the sound of arctic winds blowing just outside.
Wine glasses, water, watercolor, paintbrushes, overhead projector, acetate, markers
The Aquaphone is a literal chromatic scale consisting of glasses of water tuned to the twelve notes of the chromatic musical scale, each represented by a different color. The audience is invited to make colorful drawings on blank staff paper, then “play” their compositions on The Aquaphone, using paintbrushes as mallets.
A version of this project was installed during the Artery 24 group exhibition at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, where drawings were made on acetate and projected onto the wall of a freight elevator.
Graphite on paper, existential dread
Some feelings go beyond words.
Translation started out as a pile-up of unmanageable emotions—grief on top of bipolar depression, on top of a long Minnesota winter made for a perfect storm one January. To process all of these unruly feelings, I decided to bypass written and spoken language and translate my experience into something tangible and visual.
Working intuitively, I imagined my pencil as a lightning rod, channeling each difficult emotion into a scribbled line. The process was both physical and conceptual. One by one, the scribbles accumulated to form a collection of controlled chaos, which I then displayed in formal gallery style on my studio wall. I left it up until my mood lifted. By creating space for the darkness, I was able to start seeing light again.
This project was recently re-staged as a part of an interactive lecture that I gave during a mental health peer support specialist training through the Minnesota Department of Health.
Colored tissue paper, bubbles, daisies, candy, mandolin, guitar, paper bag, boombox
Elevator Music is a playful week-long series of performances and interactive installations that transforms the awkward stopover space of an elevator into a dynamic destination. Colored walls, bubbles, yellow daisies, live bluegrass, free candy, and staring contests are a few of the surprises that await unsuspecting riders.
Earth, stick
What does it mean to imprint on a place? How does place affect our identity? What is our relationship to the land? What does it mean to be wild? These are some of the questions at the heart of Imprint.
Imprint was created in the temporary, transitional space of an open dirt field that existed for a matter of days before being re-seeded as formal park space near Lake of the Isles. Using a found stick as a drawing tool, I etched a large-scale transcription of my thumbprint into the earth. This process was created as a way to forge a relationship with an area that was unfamiliar to me as a new resident—the equivalent of shaking hands with a place.
As I worked, more questions presented themselves: What does “natural” mean? How does human activity impact the environment around us? To what degree does altering the landscape impose our identity in a way that is outsized? How do we interact with the world around us without attempting to “tame” nature? How do we maintain a contiguous sense of identity as we move from place to place?
Imprint was bulldozed the within twenty-four hours of its completion.
The questions remain.
Moss on city sidewalk
When I lived in New York City I was working in an area that felt impossibly far away from the green spaces of Manhattan. This ephemeral, site-specific installation uses moss to create miniature parks in sidewalk cracks as a way to remedy that. This tiny version of what Germans call the “green lungs” of the city opened up breathing space in the midst of a concrete jungle.
Pencil, sketchbook, sloth
This interactive drawing series began as a ritual to survive seasonal depression and the long Minnesota winters. Every week starting in August, I go to the Como Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul to sit in the tropical wing with my sketchbook. My only objective is to show up and make one drawing of Chloe, the resident sloth.
In many languages, the word for sloth translates to “lazy animal”. The English word has a similar connotation. Why? What’s so terrible about being lazy? Is laziness even real? Why do so many languages inaccurately equate doing things slowly with moral failure? These are some of the musings at play in this ongoing drawing and conversation series celebrating slowness.
While I draw, I interact with curious passers-by, who often wonder aloud why someone would spend so much time studying such a “boring” animal. One unusually emboldened spectator even went so far as to jokingly accuse me of laziness myself for drawing “the easiest animal in the zoo”(!). It’s hard to be depressed when you’re having delightful, counter-cultural conversations in the company of an obliging sloth.