On Paper Bag Weavings and Midwestern Garage Print Series:

Both of these series use modest, direct means to pursue ideas about regional identity and local character. As a politically engaged person, I look for the qualities of the ‘local’, as a way to reflect on the political implications of the ‘national’. For this work, my focus was the Midwest; and my research done through road-travel and within my own community. Using print-based and craft-based practices allowed my ideas and materials to be directly linked. My materials were in the local groceries stores of Kansas City; Ames, Iowa; Fenton, Michigan. My object-vocabulary came from Detroit-area estate sales, thrift stores in Des Moines and hardware stores in Lincoln, Nebraska. My inspirations for pattern and composition were the views from the highways: the modernist designs of Nebraska’s I80 rest areas, the patterns of Iowa’s new windmills against its long-planted fields. My work used objects and materials directly – woven grocery bags, inked flyswatters and milk crates – as a way to discover the meanings in modest things and the possibilities for reconsidering them. In this, I looked for ways to recognize our immediate surroundings and their implications.  

This work took my research into the terrain of American households, local communities and regional identity through the franchise, the small business narrative, success and failure. This could be seen as a grand narrative, but rather than grand, I am interested in the modest, the small-potatoes, the low stakes. The Midwest captured me as a vehicle for this set of interests.