Hand Carved Woodcut and Screenprint on Paper
27.5" x 20"
Limited Edition of 9

This print is from a body of work, Populace Mechanics, which explores the conflation of domestic, military, and scientific activity in mid-century St. Louis. In the prints, I explore themes of infiltration, anonymity, and optimization.

In this piece, the clouds reference the testing of airborne radiological weapons on the uninformed U.S. populace.
The Fiestaware pitcher is a personal connection to this body of work: I inherited a mid-century Fiesta collection from my mom, who lived in St. Louis at the time covert radiological testing was being done in St. Louis. I later found out that the orange red fiesta ware, some of which I had, was actually radioactive, due to the uranium oxide in the glaze. This color was discontinued in the Fiestaware line, when uranium supplies were redirected to military projects like the atomic bomb.
Below, the women represent the unknowing individuals who worked on covert military projects. They didn’t know the full extant of their work because they were compartmentalized.