Monuments to Everyman~
“I embarked on this project to replace the ‘heroes’ we have historically been offered, high up on marble columns, with more personalized, idiosyncratic monuments. Each column begins with containers emptied of my prescriptions, supplements, cremes, beverages, and mints—from the prosaic to the profound, they mark the passage of time and represent life itself. They are then topped with generic Everyman figures used in architectural models. (While Everywoman figures are also made, I gravitate to the men in a reflective act of self-portraiture). Finally, plaster fills the containers to overflowing, transforming the everyday into Art, subsuming the personal with the universal, and creating a new kind of Monument to Everyman.”
Monuments to Everyman, 2021
Installation View
Dimensions variable, as shown 24 x 36 x24”
Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.
They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.
They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.
Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.
On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.