As I was preparing my bio for an end-of-the-year publication, I came across my study proposal from my application for Applied Imagination and think that it’s eerily applicable to issues I’m examining now, a year later, on the course. It, along with the biography below, indicate the inevitability of my current project.
Study Proposal
Over the past century, people experienced a distinct siloing through so-called specialization: of professions, of disciplines, and of ideas. As the level of global complexity grows, for most people, the breadth of subjects we interact with shrinks. Having experienced the ever-narrowing propensity towards specialization in my academic and professional life, my impulse has been to actively work towards creating a broadened nexus for people to discover unexpected confluences. In my mind, creativity is the root of all such questioning, pushing against norms, and social change.
Fundamentally, creativity and imagination are what allow us to build new possibilities. Specifically, examining the world with a critical creative lens asks the questions that lead to positive change in the human experience. There are almost no aspects of life in which, at a socio-structural level, creativity does not serve as the primary engine of change.
Through my iterative project, Days, I think about, question, and work through limitations between the intersections of art, commerce, fashion, design, and craft: topics that I approach through feminist and queer lenses. I’m interested in intersectionalities and entanglements, and how they are tied to notions of access and agency. I’ve seen how traditional structures entrench dominant power and how directed creativity opens pathways to a wider demographic.
Within the conceptual framework I established for each iteration of Days, I engaged collaborators, artists, organizations, and the public; published weekly newsletters, wrote physical didactics and proposals; organized hundreds of projects and events; produced documentation and images; and constructed and implemented foundational infrastructure that enabled the project to thrive over eleven iterations and five locations.
I approach the intersection of creativity through my identity as a queer person. This position helps me see the value of working both within and without established structures. Working from this perspective, I aim to build inclusive spaces. A part of how my creativity manifests is through my deep appreciation of liminality as well as a propensity to question and deconstruct strict delineations or binaries.
The structure, support, and collaborative nature of Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries can further and deepen the type of investigations I have been pursuing. The hybrid nature of this course, with dual implications of practicality and creativity, is perfectly aligned with my desires for critical investigation wed to tangible engagement with existing structures. I look forward to peer interaction and collaboration with others who are interested in a creative reexamination of the world around us. Together, faculty and institutional guidance, additional coursework, critically engaged classmates, and advanced intellectual engagement at Central Saint Martins can make my work and ideas stronger. As with everything I do, this will in turn be shared and incorporated into future projects, collaborations, and installations to benefit our communities.
Biography
Growing up in rural Oregon in a former gas station next to the highway, my parents were hippies with a wood-burning stove who grew our food. They helped to start an alternative elementary school nestled in the forest next to the ocean. Being exposed to my parents’ creative, cross-disciplinary, and holistic thinking laid a foundation of big-picture theoretical imagining married to practical concerns. Small-town schools led to intellectually rigorous Smith College in Massachusetts with a liberal arts degree in Studio Art.
In my professional career, I took my art education and bridged the worlds of art and fashion. Living in NYC I worked with conceptual artists like Marina Abromovich, Joseph Kosuth, and Ann Hamilton at the Sean Kelly Gallery. Pivoting to the fashion industry included buying for Bird Brooklyn, running wholesale for Rachel Comey, and establishing Opening Ceremony at the Ace Hotel.
I’ve approached the intersection of these fields through my identity as a queer person. This position helps me see the value of working both within and without established structures. Working from this perspective, I always aim to create inclusive spaces. Aided by my intersectional queer and feminist perspective, I have a deep appreciation of liminality and a propensity to deconstruct strict delineations or binaries.
My more recent work was a conceptual commercial project named Days in Los Angeles. This immersive venture began in 2016 and continued over eleven distinct iterations across five different commercial locations until 2020, including a large-scale, year-long iteration at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles as well as a collaboration with The Annenberg Space for Photography. With each version of Days, I began with a conceptual frame and organized every aspect in service of that idea: physical environments and graphic language; dinners, readings, and performances; objects, clothes, crafts, and books from a range of genres.
Returning to school has been an eye-opening experience for me. As a voracious reader, writer, convener, ceramicist, Hiking Club founder, and creative business owner, I came to this MA eager to immerse in the creative environment of Central Saint Martins and deepen and sharpen my understanding and ideas around the confluence of Fine Art and commerce I’d been exploring through my business before the pandemic. Instead, I found a deeply siloed environment with little access to other students, departments, or spaces outside of individual courses.
My project for Applied Imagination has been working through this institutional siloization, specifically within CSM and UAL: the structural roots and implications, the need for care, community, and communication, as well as macro and micro initiatives that can create connections between departments, students, and staff. I’ve been engaging in numerous collaborations to create and hold spaces for exchange. Creativity is not borne in isolation. I as a student, want for myself and for everyone here, more and better avenues to interact with the incredible ecosystem of people and resources gathered under one roof, and yet walled off from each other. I’m seeking to create a broadened nexus for people to discover unexpected confluences.