Exhibits

Symbodigy, 2024

In 2004, a friend asked me to create a show for the gallery she was a memeber of. We knew each other from college, but she’d missed out on my surprise final final project for my screenprinting studio in the fall of ‘99. I finished my project Friday evening and found myself with screens and tubs of paint and no more fabric to print on, so I went in search of all the willing bodies I could find in Laezar Hall. It was one of the most fun nights of my life. My friend was still jealous that she’d missed it and wanted me to recreate that night on a more public scale.

I agreed to the show, but needed to find a new purpose, so I wandered out into a field of overgrown Christmas trees and thought about why we want to put images on ourselves in general and why we would want them to be temporary in particular. I came up with the idea of creating a catalog of unique symbols. Over the course of the evening, visitors would be invited to assign meaning to the symbols, change those meanings over the course of the evening, and/or have the images printed on their skin in the placement and color of their choosing.

I collaborated with photographers to capture the ephemeral work, videographers to record various dancers with the images and project them on the large wall of the gallery, and printers to apply the images the evening of the show. We had a blast!!

Shroud, 2012-13

Still inspired and haunted by Symbodigy, I pursued another gesamtkunstwerk exhibit in graduate school, back at the NCSU College of Design.

Gesamtkunstwerk is “total art work” and that concept was the basis for my research. In the fall of 2012, I created a dance piece for the Student Showcase. The picture above was taken by Ben Scott and used for the program posters. I was honored and mortified. In hindsight, I am simply delighted. Many thanks to everyone who made it possible.

After making every part of the costumes - laser cutting the bodices I had hand drawn and cleaned in Illustrator, creating an original pattern from the motif and then turning that into a jacquard pattern and weaving the fabric, construction of the garments and fitting to the dancers - I couldn’t help myself. I created an entire story, wrote a poem that I sand and my phenomenal husband, Mike Roy, put to music, enlisted seven actors/dancers to perform, and created an immersive experience at the Burning Coal Theater in Raleigh, NC. It was performed on November 1, 2013.

Gesamtkunstwerk is the ideal concept for all my life and work. It was the ideal framework for my graduate school endeavors. You can read my book (aka thesis doc) about it at the NCSU Design Library. They have the only copy in existence.

Typewriter Aalphabet at the NC Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, 2022

When my fist child was born, I embarked upon a project I thought might take ten months. It took ten years and then morphed into an entire botany curriculum.

I wanted one of those beautiful alphabet card sets to hang up in Aubin’s nursery, but the expense seems like too much and why miss the change for a fantastic art & design project?

The first design was a garden alphabet. I was planning my first big garden after moving back to NC from NYC and dirt, pests, and the bounty of the abundant earth were on my mind. I still have those original thumbnail drawings and fantasize every year about putting in a garden that could form the basis of that gesamtkunstwerk project. Did I go with my original inspiration? No. I decided to be more practical and create a flower based card set instead. Did I go with drawing flowers like any normal person? No. I added the constraint of having the actual flowers in my hand, touching them, slicing them open, and exposing their hidden secrets to the world.

It was a magical experience, hunting down the beauties and then disappearing into my office for hours to dissect and draw them.

To hung the final product, in all it’s typewriter glory, at the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, NC in 2022.