Home Work
Home Work is an ongoing multidisciplinary design project that presents the overwhelming nature of the invisible labor of trying to maintain both professional and personal obligations during a global pandemic. Since fall 2020, I've been creating design projects about my time teaching, working, and parenting from home. My worlds merged more than I would have liked them to during that time. I’ve created data visualizations that illustrate the overlap of my work time, time spent with my daughter, time spent making dinner and doing laundry, work meeting times, and my daughter’s virtual kindergarten time. I began knitting newspaper headlines that I bookmarked about the struggles of working mothers throughout the pandemic. Knitting is often associated with "women's work" and due to my own computer fatigue, I embraced the medium to begin creating large, wall-mounted pieces. I began creating typographic wearables like necklaces, scarves, and shawls that use terms that entered into our daily vernacular over the past year like VIP PARENT, WFHM (work from home mom), FACE-TO-FACE, LANGUISHING, and ZOOM. I designed posters and bumper stickers that simultaneously celebrate and remind working parents of their home, work, and life struggles. I was inspired by Joseph Beuys' Suit, fashion design brand Naomi Nomi, and Icelandic textile designer Yruari. My design choices were influenced by the typography in my neighborhood (which I got to know very well through multiple daily walks throughout the pandemic) and posts on Instagram from advertisers who, thanks to Instagram's powerful algorithms, identified me as a mother and thus promoted kitschy products to my demographic. With my wearables, I'm responding to the stereotype and "celebration" of tired, alcohol-dependent mothers through merchandise such as wine glasses or keychains in an attempt to make visible the trauma of trying to "do it all" while stuck at home.
