Comfort Shift, 2012

Comfort Shift is a series of works on paper that document networks of visual and verbal data. These poetic diagrams, which are layered combinations of screenprint, graphite, pen, and colored pencil, reflect the complex and muddled overlaps between knowledge, meaning, and yearning. As social beings, we seek clarity and connection. Emulating these sites of connectivity, these drawings incorporate structured lists of text that behave as maps and other displays of quantitative information. Words and phrases snap into and out of place, forming itineraries without a clear destination, or posing riddles that have no answer. Figures placed beside and within these networks of text are entry points for the viewer, and speak to the way we acquire social roles and gender norms just as we acquire the necessary yet constraining building blocks of language.

The Comfort Shift drawings, along with a series of collaborative artist books, were installed in the Washington State University Museum of Art as part of the 2012 MFA Thesis Exhibition.