YOU WERE BIG IN CHICAGO

2010

You Were Big in Chicago explores familial intimacy mediated through Skype, engaging digital communication as a forum for longing.

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Large-format images, printed on blueprint paper, were installed and abandoned throughout public spaces in Chicago, displacing private moments into the urban landscape. Hand-stamped memory poems, produced on cotton paper, were reproduced as posters and installed on train station billboards, extending these intimate exchanges into systems of public circulation. Other images were printed on silk for gallery exhibition and are held in private collections.

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The work traces how intimacy is scaled, reproduced, and dispersed between networked communication and material presence, where personal relationships and interior affective landscapes are rendered visible and exposed.

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The work was developed as part of masters studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, funded by the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, artsNB, the New Brunswick Foundation for the Arts, and private patrons, Clare and Allison McCain. The work has been exhibited at SAIC, Connexion ARC,  the George Fry Gallery as part of the exhibition of Canadian Society for Educators in the Arts conference, and other venues. Several of the publicly installed pieces were taken shortly after install.