Pressure (2021) explores the gendered division of household labor, beauty standards and respectability through symbolism of the pressure cooker, a helmet mask alluding to idealized female beauty, and a photograph of a young woman at a formal event in mid-century Dallas, Texas. The scale and placement of the Mende helmet mask are suggestive of the weight of beauty expectations on someone who is preoccupied with performing labor. The arms and pressure cooker hovering at the top of this work speak to how often our personhood is separated from our value as laborers, in what author and social critic bell hooks terms an 'imperialist white supremacist heteropatriarchy.' The dual image of the woman references the tension between our interior and exterior lives in the performance of labor and beauty. I maintain hope for our ability to alchemize and transcend these roles and expectations.

Pressure was published in conjunction with the exhibition Emma Amos: Color Odyssey (October 10, 2021 - January 16, 2022) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This print was presented during the virtual program “Honoring the Legacy of Emma Amos” with Laurel Garber, Park Family Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at PMA. In the process of creating this work, I considered the parallels between Emma Amos’ practice and mine— the exploration in her work of socially prescribed roles, womanhood, lived experience and family. I thought about the way she moved seamlessly between printmaking, textile work, painting and other mediums. While creating this work in mid- to late-2021, still in the midst of homeschooling my son due to an ongoing pandemic and trying to balance the roles of wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister, artist, educator, community member, etc., I felt compelled to address the pressures of some of these roles and the weight of trying to “do it all.” In referencing Emma Amos’ techniques and visual language, I decided to incorporate textiles as well as her use of the oval frame motif. The oval frame reminds me of home and photographs of beloved family members, but can also be used to draw attention to something that we deem worthy of more pointed focus.