The Title Wall at my Solo Show, Clocking in for Unpaid Labor

The Making of

My solo show, Clocking in for Unpaid Labor, is up now at Art Reach of Mid Michigan, in Mt. Pleasant, MI. Each day I’m writing a new blog post, or sharing an older one, to talk about the making of, or meaning behind an artwork or group of artworks.

Today’s pieces are the cyanotypes that make up the title wall, plus the piece that credits the unpaid labor that went into the show, and the speaker systems that were custom built for The Healing Quilts.

My friend Betsy Zacsek, who is an artist, curator, teaching artist and designer-of-shows-extraordinaire, laid out this show for me! I made only a couple of tiny changes to her plan. One of them was adding this title wall. This space in the gallery is a little awkward – between two large doorway openings from the gift shop, and I thought it would be a good place to put the title of the show, but I wanted to make it art.

I considered using my time card fabric and silkscreening the text on to it. But, instead, I kept it simple and made these by printing cyanotypes on paper, and then gluing them to canvas, using mostly canvases I already owned.  Also, using cyanotype more closely aligned the title pieces with the art in the rest of the show.  Many of the artworks in the show include either cyanotype or SolarFast.

Here are some behind the scenes photos I took along the way.  I painted most of these canvases a sort of manila color, to connect to the color of time cards.  The paint color shows through the cyanotypes just a bit.

This one, “Clocking in” was so long that I had to print it in two pieces, and then trimmed the “CL” too much. I later added another bit to fix that missing hunk that looked so weird.  Those skulls are printed from an actual lace that I bought!

In 2022, I had a solo show called Ghost Prints & Shadow Work, at The Compassion Factory in Brookfield, IL. I made this social media graphic, above, during the run of that show, it lists all the unpaid labor that went into the show; it includes tasks directly related to the art, layout of the show and installation, as well as tasks like cooking and cleaning. I wanted, as always, to make the invisible labor visible. And in a show where that was specifically about invisible labor, it felt wrong to not acknowledge the free labor that I benefitted from.  (The artwork behind this image says, forward and backward, “Shadow work is work that you do, that someone else used to get paid for.”)

This time around, I wanted to do that same thing, but make it real, make it an actual art print, and not just a social media graphic.

Here’s a close up:

Here’s what it says, under “Unpaid Labor that went into this show.”

All of the making of the art.

Hand stitching of the backs of the bindings and the quilt hanging sleeves.

Building and programming the motion sensor/speaker.

Creating the music and audioscapes for The Healing Quilts.

All of the handwork that went into making the vintage doilies, hankies, quilts, quilt blocks and more that I incorporate into the art. Thank you to those unknown women.

Thank you to my family for their programming, music and hand stitching!

I really could have made this longer, but this covers the essentials.  I later wished I’d chosen a different color, to make this a bit easier to read, but, deadlines loomed and I decided to go with it.

Hand Stitching and Computer Programming

One of the tasks that takes the longest is the hand sewing of quilt hanging sleeves. Here’s what that looks like.

The sleeve has to be hand sewn, invisibly, on the top edge, the bottom edge and the two sides. Why invisible stitches? It’s so that the placement of the stitches is such that the quilt will hang properly. You do a ladder stitch, picking up just the back part of the sleeve and just the back part of the quilt. It is not easy, though I did get better, and buying higher quality hand sewing needles also helped.

My daughter sewed one for me, my Mom sewed one for me, and also taught me how to do this stitch, and I did the remaining three. A friend came over to sit and sew with me, since I dislike hand sewing so much that I need a friend to chat with me and distract me from what I’m doing. I gave myself the longest one, the Thank Us with Money, which is about 60″ wide. I have a new preference for quilts that hang vertically…

One of the single largest tasks for this show was the building of the speakers with motion sensor, that plays the audioscapes inside The Healing Quilts.  My wonderful teen build this for me.  I don’t have a lot of photos, since I wasn’t the one doing this build, but I did get this one quick snap of the work in progress.

The way The Healing Quilts work is, someone walks inside, the motion sensor senses them, and the audioscape starts to play.  One quilt is called, “Things I Need to Hear You Say,” and one is called, “Things I Need to Say to You,” these are audio snippets submitted by the public responded to my request.

What you’re seeing in the photo below is a project box with an Arduino, that’s on the left.  An Arduino is basically like a miniature computer that you can use to do all kinds of things.  You can add additional components.  This construction involved soldering, testing, failures, modifications, lots of online ordering of parts, and one trip to Micro Center.  I’m so grateful that there’s an actual, physical store that has this kind of item.

To make this work, we needed a speaker, the micro controller, an MP3 player (a tiny one), a motion sensor, some other bits I’ve forgotten, and some computer programming.  My teen, Midi, did everything!  My brother provided programming and building consultations.  The programming covers telling the sound to start once the motion sensor senses someone, and to play all the way through and then stop.  It also sets the volume, so every time we wanted to asjust the volume, that had to be done in the programming.

When I originally came up with this artwork, I’d planned on buying an off the shelf sensor and speaker solution.  I mistakenly thought they cost $50.00 each.  Wow, was I wrong.  They start at $500.00, and that’s just for the absolute cheapest speaker, you still have to buy an amplifier.  While I might have been able to stretch an afford one such set up, I could not afford two.

Midi and my brother came to the rescue.  I absolutely could not have done this without them.  I don’t do computer programming or electronics.  I also don’t do audio editing.  Midi is a gifted videographer and audio engineer.  We worked together on the audio (as in, I participated by giving my requests, feedback, etc.), and Midi edited the audio submissions folks shared, and added music, that she created and recorded.  The music and the audio sound kind of like a really well done podcast.  My main request was that the audio “should not be annoying.”

If you get to see these artworks in person, and look up, you’ll see the project box suspended from the ceiling in a little bag I sewed up, and the speaker, which has a clear dome around it, to help direct sound downward.

More Hand Stitching

Additional hand stitching tasks include sewing various cyanotypes and SolarFast dye prints down to either a canvas or a larger textile. I do this with tiny stitches on the front, so that the stitches barely show.

I only had to do this for three pieces for this show, since most of the works on canvas have been shown previously, also in settings with a gallery wall system, meaning the works had to be mounted to canvas for hanging.

What’s the alternative to mounting the textiles on canvas?

Here’s a photo from one of the walls at that show from 2022, here we almost exclusively used T-pins to pin the pieces to the wall. I used a tiny non-electric drill to pre-drill tiny holes. That was an installation that took all day, but totally worth it.

I love letting the textiles be textiles, and pinning them directly to the wall.  The upside of stitching them to canvas is that the fabric wrapped around the canvas can add an extra layer of meaning.

Some of the textiles in the image above are also in this show!

Here’s a process shot of wrapping the canvas.  That’s an electric staple gun, one of the best inventions ever.  It really saves your wrists and is a lot of fun to use!

Oh, one last bit of behind the scenes work!

This is one of those not very fun, but mandatory tasks – making the art ready to hang. I use these D-rings and I love the kind of wire that’s coated in vinyl. It’s easier to work with and also easier to level the art when you hang it on a bar and hook system. For this show, I had to do this to seven canvases.

Not shown: cutting all the strips of wood that go into the quilt sleeves to make those hangable. I cut the wood to length, a little bit shorter than the quilt is wide, so it won’t show. Then I drilled holes in each end. Once at the gallery, I threaded strong monofilament through the holes and tied a blood knot to connect the two ends. The blood knot is perfect for connecting ends of monofilament (aka fishing line), and I plan to make a video this week to show you how to tie it. It’s a really cool knot.

There you go! That’s the story of the making of the title pieces and the Unpaid Labor acknowledgement for this show!