a brief introduction

In 1997, I was able to get into a printmaking course in the fall semester of my first year of college. This fortunate freshman opportunity started me on a long and winding path of pursuing printmaking as a career. In 2002, I began working with a project called Plunger Press, producing politically-themed printed product and books. Six years after that first class, the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY and the Jerome Foundation in Minneapolis, MN funded a Plunger printed book project entitled “The Handbook of Practical Geographies”. In 2006, I graduated from Cornell University with an MFA in printmaking, and in 2007 I spent a year in New Mexico at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, working on series of lithographs and printed assemblages called Domestic Patterns. I currently live and work in Baltimore, MD.

plunger press • politics and product

At Plunger Press, we produce printed product that highlights the relationship between the consumption of politics and the politics of consumption in American society. Typically we achieve this goal by inserting the printed heads of politicians into places they aren't often seen, such as plastic bags and cooking pots. Some past Plunger projects include the Famous Folks Flashcards, the Handbook of Practical Geographies, the Morally Upright Educational Poster Set, and the American Travel Safety Instruction Manual. Recently, Plunger completed production on a dual project, the Home Preservation Series and the Heads of State Product Store. These new series of printed images and packaged printed product point out the relationship between the consumption of goods and the consumption of ideology by turning the heads of political figures into commodities.

In the Home Preservation Series, Plunger considers the role that home economists from the mid-1900s played in defining an ethic of consumption that still affects American culture today...with a slight twist. These home economists use political heads to demonstrate the proper methods for various domestic tasks, from canning, to sewing, to washing, to cooking and eating. Research into this period in American history reveals a scandalous relationship within the American home between the politics of personal domesticity and national domestic political policy. In the substitution of the political head for a common consumable, Plunger documents the intertwining of everyday household consumption and everyday consumption of national political spectacle.

domestic patterns • personal and political

Flying in early 2008 between New Mexico and the east coast, I saw for the first time the patterned grid of perfect squares and irrigation circles that blanket the middle of the country. Living in Roswell during 2008, I experienced the extent that humans go to, from elaborate irrigation systems to hail cannons to swamp coolers, to make modern life and agriculture possible in a desert. Domestic Patterns began as a response to the patterns of life I experienced in the Southwest.

Domestic Patterns is a series of printed and assembled images that illustrates the similarity between patterns of human habitation and the patterns that decorate our habitations. The project traces the repetition of a cycle of migration, violence, and settlement that patterns American history and leaves a visible record on our surroundings. As we move, conquer, and resettle, we alter the land and our dwellings to adapt to new climates, but we also alter the climate to maintain a comfortable version of land and personal space. By bringing the exterior inside and the interior outside, the images in Domestic Landscapes blur the boundary between personal and national domestic territory, and interchange the view from 30,000 ft. with the view from across the kitchen table.