Solo Show at Art Reach of Mid Michigan: Video and all the Photos!

Here’s the blog post documenting the entire show, including a video walk through!

As you walk into the gallery, this is directly across from you, and the first thing that you see.

What if Aprons… Quilt

The What if Aprons… quilt is on this wall of quilts:

Bread & Roses Banner

Above the grand piano in the center of the room is this suspended, two sided piece:

Light Reactive Dye Prints on Vintage Linens

Across from the wall of quilts, we have three groupings of artwork, here they are, from left to right:

I haven’t talked about these pieces in any recent blog posts or social media posts. The green and white one says, “The idea that serious artists choose art over children in a misogynist lie meant to exclude women and make the irrelevant. – Anonymous.” That quote is from the ebook Artists Raising Kids from Artists U. I included that piece in an exhibition proposal for a solo show at Waubonsee Community College; I didn’t get the solo show, but the curator was so moved by that piece that it stopped her in her tracks and she designed a whole group show around it! That show was called Fruit, and featured all work by artist-mothers.

The round piece is collaged with time cards and archival tissue paper, printed with actual notes from my phone, of my “Accomplished Today” lists, which are an end-of-day list where you list all the things you did, but that maybe didn’t make it onto your to do list. One of my standard line items is “Dish, trash, laundry.” The idea is to make visible, to yourself, all the things you actually got done. It’s an antidote to the feeling of, “where did the day go?” and “why didn’t I manage to get more done?”

Books and Punch Clock

Although this vintage time clock is not art, I love including it in shows and this is the 4th time I have done so. It’s a helpful visual in explaining how time cards were used, for younger folks who never used them to clock in at work. As I did in my 2022 solo show, I’ve included a stack of books. I’ve listed the titles and authors for you in this blog post, Unpaid Labor Reading List.

On installation day, I accidentally included two copies of “The Price of Motherhood,” and had left out a couple of essential books, including Holding it Together, by Jess Calarco, who is quoted in the art, and Wages for Housework, by Louise Toupin. So I added those when I returned for the opening reception. I decided to leave both copies of The Price of Motherhood there, because it’s that important and relevant.

The Healing Quilts

As we continue to walk through the gallery, you’ll encounter The Healing Quilts, which are very large, cylindrical quilts that you walk into, and then an audio scape begins.  To encourage folks to enter, I’ve added both an “ENTER” sign on the outside of each quilt, and a “Please Stand Here” sign (temporary decal) on the floor, inside of each one.

The audio recordings was given to me by members of the public. I asked on artist’s platforms, my social media, and in membership groups. My teen, Midi, then created music and edited them all together into audioscapes. Midi also built the speaker system with motion sensor that is such a huge part of these artworks. The speaker is connected to an Arduino, a type of micro controller (think tiny computer, kinda), which has an MP3 player, I think a tiny amplifier, and all of that is connected to a motion sensor. This involved both soldering and computer programming. I love collaborating with my kids and am so grateful for their sharing their talents with me!

These have been very well received by gallery visitors! Which is wonderful. These are the “weirdest” things I’ve ever made, and while I thought people would love them, you never know. Not everyone is willing to go inside, and that’s fine. Many folks are hesitant to go in, because this is really unusual, where you’re actually encouraged to walk inside the art.

There are response boards, where people can write a comment, or a thing they need to say or hear. Here’s what they looked like just before the start of the opening reception.

But wait, there’s more!  These are to the left of the response wall.

There’s another piece to the right of the response wall, but I don’t seem to have photographed it!  Here’s a photo of it from another show. It’s the smaller one on the left.

Now, let me show you the art that’s on the three shortest walls of the gallery.

The Title and Credits Wall

Here’s a title wall that I made, all the blue prints are cyanotype on paper, mounted on canvas.

The coral colored one lists “Unpaid Labor that Went into this Show,” and then I detail some of the work, by me and by friends and family. Here’s a close up:

Who Was She

Here’s another image of it, taken during the day, just after installation.

The Bicycle Face Trilogy

That’s the show! Let’s see those quilts a bit larger though. These first three are all about the Wages for Housework Campaign, specifically, these were inspired by a newsletter from the U.K. group. I worked on these from about fall 2024, when I finished most of the quilt tops (the front) and some of the whole “quilt sandwich” including the top quilting. I finished the last quilt in the group and some bindings in January-February 2025. Then in the summer, finally hand stitched the hanging sleeves onto the back, with help from family members.

The Love & Money Quilts

This last quilt is not part of Wages for Housework, but it’s still on theme for my work, and this show.

And there’s video! We filmed a walk through immediately after installing the show, here it is!

_______________________________________________________

Learn More about Individual Art Works

And now, I’m going to share links to blog posts about each of these works of art. I’m putting them down here instead of in the text above, interrupting the writing. That can be a bit distracting, don’t you think?

Part of my job as an artist is to contribute to the Chicago Artists Files (formerly called the Chicago Artists Archives), which I do, and also to act as my own archivist. One of the ways I do this is on this blog, so here we go, I’ll make the posts about the works listed above super easy to find!

See the time card by Michelle Hiskey that inspired this piece, here.

The apron I’ve used in this piece was made in a home ec class (not by me), I have a post about my use of home ec aprons in art and this quilt as a work in progress, here.

Read about the Love & Money Quilt Series, from inspiration to completion, here.

I wrote about “The Making of a Very Manly Quilt,” including what went wrong, in this blog post.

Last summer, I wrote about Who Was She/She Was Who as a work in progress, and connected it to other artwork on a similar theme, some of which is in this show. Read it here.

The Bicycle Face Trilogy, I wrote about in 2023, when the pieces were included in a solo show at a library. I explain everythinghere.

These are also addressed in the link just above.

I wrote about these in February as I finished making the sewn, physical part of these pieces, The Healing Quilts. We added the audioscapes later, in the summer. That post is here.

Artists just love adding more work, too close to the deadline, don’t we? To make the best use of the space, while also adding a title, I created this series of cyanotypes for a title wall. In progress photos, and more, are here.

Just last week, I wrote about the making of the Bread & Roses Banner, including the failed first attempt and the related quilts and art I’ve made with the same motif. That’s here.

That’s almost everything!  There are a couple of pieces I haven’t written a post about yet, and as I write them, I’ll come back here and update this post.

This show also includes a stack of books! I did a post listing all the books with the titles and authors, here.