Food, Sex & Death

Food, Sex & Death is a series of work and performance project inspired by my research on the the history of the women who worked as sex workers in the location of The Papermaker's Garden at the turn of the 20th Century until the mid-80s.

In that space, I grow fibers to make art, and collect and rename seeds reflecting this untold history. The work weaves together the stories of four Chicago sex workers found in a historical database, Mary Blood, the founder of Columbia College Chicago and a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Hull House Wage Map study workers, who collected information on the brothels, and myself as a worker in the same location.

Menu from Food, Sex & Death in The Papermaker’s Garden, 2016
Front: Letterpress on handmade potato vine paper
Back: Inkjet on handmade potato vine paper
5 x 7 inches

Handmade paper (sunflower and corn stalk), ink
80 x 36 inches (each)

Food, Sex & Death performance in the Papermaker's Garden.

Food, Sex & Death event in the Papermaker's Garden.

Letterpress printing paper with fiber from Fresh Press, Illinois.

Sex Work Is Work: an intake log of all the paper grown for my artwork in the Papermaker’s Garden considering the history of the 65 brothels identified by Hull House wage map workers in that location. The offset edition included is a four-part narrative based on research conducted at the Hull House, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, The Chicago Homicide Database, and Columbia College Chicago archives.