Homeland Insecurity

By Ann Olsen
Candidate for Masters of Fine Arts in Visual Art
Lesley University College of Art and Design
Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 2015

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Abstract

I investigate contemporary suburban domesticity, consumerism and the culture

of fear. My work indicates what is concealed and revealed by the observable details of
the suburban Southern California neighborhood. I closely observe my neighborhood and
question and interpret what I discover. Do quiet suburban streets, gated communities
and home security systems indicate a safe and secure environment, or are they merely
products sold to fearful consumers? Is the danger that the suburbanite defends against
really an escape from the unpredictability and precariousness of domestic life? How is
my own insecurity concealed and revealed in this inquiry? I compose lists of questions
and statements that are meant to provoke a discussion about suburban behavior. I
embroider these statements and pair them with domestic objects in order to
metaphorically associate them with norms of suburban life. Photographs of the gated
communities and warning signs in my neighborhood are transformed into fabric. The
security sign fabric made into curtains turns fear into a decorative object, symbolically
making it a comfortable part of the home.

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Introduction

Many Americans dream of a home in the suburbs. It represents the fulfillment of

the American dream of success that includes family, security, safety, and a utopian
vision of domestic bliss. I grew up in such a home but it was unconventional by 1950s
standards since my parents both held jobs outside the home and shared domestic duties
such as cooking, cleaning and childcare. Their comfortable, if frugal, lifestyle contrasts
with the affluent suburban neighborhood I now live in near San Diego, California. This
affluence was facilitated by the changes that came about from the feminist, civil rights
and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the economic prosperity of the
1980s and 1990s. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 and its aftermath, followed by the 2008
global economic crisis have had a profound change on my life and my neighborhood.
Mine is one of the fortunate families that did not lose their home, but our security and
prosperity was severely eroded. In addition to economic insecurity I face personal
insecurity. As a 50-something female, I feel marginalized in a culture dominated by
youth and beauty. As a 50-something artist I fear that my ideas and work will be judged
irrelevant or unworthy. In a world dominated by new technology I worry that I will be
unable to master its systems.
A pervasive sense of insecurity is part of life in 21st century America. What if I
lose my job? What if I get sick and cant pay for my health care? What about domestic
and global terrorism? What about drought, fires, earthquakes and pollution? The 24hour news cycle makes us hyper aware of the threats from within and outside our

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culture. The bad news we hear and see on TV is paired with seductive advertising.
Everything we see and read about in visual and print media is imbedded with product
messages. Entertainment and popular culture are vehicles used to sell consumers an
idealized image and lifestyle. The insecurity of modern living is incongruent with lifestyle
marketing that emphasizes luxury goods that are out of reach for most middle-class
consumers. Does this kind of lifestyle marketing help consumers to forget our
uncertainties? Does our fear and uncertainty create a market for products based on a
culture of fear?
My work investigates my relationship to fear and conformity as well as my
relationship with suburbia. For example, my project 60 Thoughts on Discontent (fig.1)
examines my personal insecurity. July and August of 2014 was an intense period of
introspection about the content and value of the work I had completed during the last
two years. These short statements are a 60-day diary of inner dialogue about my
creative process and fear of failure. Beginning September 1st and ending November 1st,
each day I embroidered words or symbols that reflected my ambivalent feelings about
my work and my status as an artist in the world. The words I chose describe messy
feelings of self-criticism, such as nothing but earnest and too polite by far. Words
such as spinning blindfolded, lake of thin ice, and serious people will lie reveal my
frustration and anger. I stitched negative judgments: choose destruction and wont
catch fire and contradictions such as work backwards. I also stitched possible
solutions into the piece as a way of pushing me forward deeper into my work such as
engage the maze and deskill, reskill. Although 60 Thoughts on Discontent is shown

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here in a quilt-like format so that the entire piece could be photographed, I made it so
that it could be configured in many ways. It can be hung as one long frieze, or as smaller
groupings. It also could be made into a book or several books. I prefer it in a frieze so
that each square can be contemplated individually.

Fig.1. Ann Olsen, 60 Thoughts on Discontent, 2014.

While analyzing my personal fear and anxiety, I observed a trend concerning fear
while walking in my neighborhood. I walk almost every day, usually in the morning but
also afternoons and evenings. It is a family neighborhood with single family homes,
apartments and condominiums. I rarely see people on these hikes except for an
occasional dog walker, and parents dropping their kids off at the elementary school. It is

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an extremely quiet environment; only the sound of the occasional barking dog, leaf
blower or lawn mower disturbs the silence. On these solitary walks I started noticing a
proliferation of signs for companies that provide home security systems. I discovered 30
different signs during the fall of 2014 (fig.2).

Fig. 2. Ann Olsen, security sign digital photo montage, 2014.

Since January of 2015 I discovered 9 more and it seems that new duplicates appear
every week. The jarring imposition of signage onto manicured landscaping is not even
visually registered by suburbanites. This seems ironic in a neighborhood where the
Homeowners Association dictates the type and color of your roof and when to re-paint
your house numbers. While I photographed the security system signs and other warning
signs posted everywhere, no one ever questioned my activities. Although
Neighborhood Watch signs are ubiquitous, it does not appear that anyone is really
watching. Also, I feel safe in my neighborhood. I dont see the need to install a security
system in a neighborhood with one of the lowest crime rates in San Diego County.

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Though there may be many other good reasons to install a home security system, I am
more intrigued by the illusion of safety that these systems provide. The contrast
between perceived threats that are rare and real threats such a domestic violence,
alcoholism and cybercrime is the source for my project Homeland Insecurity (fig.3). I
took the photographs of the security signs and used them to design the fabric for the
curtain in Homeland Insecurity. This piece summarizes how suburban culture defends
against perceived threats from outside the home while ignoring threats generated
inside it. A security system assures a homeowner that all threats are outside the home. I
put a symbol of protection within the home to suggest that the threat lies inside it.

Fig. 3. Ann Olsen, Homeland Insecurity, 2014.

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My ambivalent relationship to suburban life is reflected in the 40 short

sentences that comprise Suburban Truisms (fig.4). Isolated in my suburban world I felt
blocked from being able produce any art that was meaningful or relevant. Directing my
frustration outward, I composed these statements as a critique of the superficiality of
consumer culture, and the alienation I feel as an artist trying to make meaningful work
in a world that only appreciates the shocking and sensational.

Fig. 4. Ann Olsen, Suburban Truisms, 2014.

While working on this writing I re-examined Jenny Holzers work with words. As I
did so, I started to realize that I could use my writings as my work. Holzer reveals her
struggle to use language and figure out how to present it as art when she says I just

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kept going. I didnt dare think of the reaction to them, but I hoped they would mean
something to someoneI had to work and write a lot (Holzer qtd. in Joselit 23). I rewrote and composed more statements positioning myself as the source of anxiety. I
made them read as I statements. For example, You cannot escape from domination
became I cannot escape from domination. The Truisms became my pivot point for this
body of work about suburban life. These statements explore my complicity with the
entitled suburban lifestyle. They are divided into four categories: Fear, Guilt, Identity,
and Belief. These categories comprise the source for both conscious and unconscious
choices that I have made throughout my life. The Suburban Truisms confront ideas of
status and image that are prevalent in popular culture and advertising such as:
More stuff equals more fear.
You will judge me no matter what.
According to pop-culture I am irrelevant.
It appears to me that image really is everything.
They also reflect anxiety that permeates modern life:
Coercion masquerades as harmony.
Money buys privilege.
I dont really understand anyone.
Innocence is a gift granted to the privileged.
Methods and Materials
My choice of materials originates with my evolving experiences of domestic life
as well as the kinds of crafts that were instrumental in my upbringing. In my home,

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sewing and embroidery were both useful domestic crafts as well as opportunities for
creative self-expression. I excelled at sewing and embroidery, as well as drawing and
painting, but the study of Fine Art was considered beyond my reach and not a suitably
practical activity. I overcame this limitation by returning to the study of art as an adult,
and experimenting with the expressive possibilities of many different mediums. For a
while I avoided using fabric and sewing because of its associations with craft. I dug
deeper into my art education, desiring to understand what gives great art its universal
and aesthetic appeal. I did not want to be limited by any one medium or theme. I used
many different materials and experimental processes; however I did not consider using
text until recently. Most of my pre-graduate school work includes 3-dimensional
sculpture and assemblage. Yet, I always found myself looking for ways to use fabric in
my work. As part of my practice I study artists who use textiles in contemporary ways to
express their ideas. Doh-ho Suh uses silk organza fabric to re-create his Korean home as
a life-sized installation. He addresses concerns about displacement and alienation he
experiences as an artist living in a foreign culture. (fig.5) Sewing, embroidery and textile
arts are traditionally gendered skills that male and female contemporary artists are using
to confront gender-based roles. Ghada Amer (fig. 6) uses embroidery to examine norms
of female sexuality. Mark Newport challenges ideas about sexual stereotyping with his
ambiguously gendered knitted costumes. (fig. 7)

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Fig. 5. Doh-Ho Suh, Seoul Home/L.A.Home/NewYorkHome/BaltimoreHome/

LondonHome/LAHome, 1999.

Fig. 6. Ghada Amer, 8 Women in Black &White, 2004

Fig. 7. Mark Newport, Figure, 2013.

These artists, and many others, inspire me to think in new ways about how to use
textiles. Since fabric also evokes many traditional cultural associations such as tapestry,
quilting, and early American samplers, I use those associations as a vehicle for my ideas
about modern suburban attitudes.
Tactility is one of the most important qualities that I exploit with my use of fabric
and thread. The materials I select can be soft or hard, smooth or rough, opaque or

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translucent. In 60 Thoughts on Discontent (fig.1) I chose six different textured fabrics for
six specific reasons: Off-white cotton muslin was used because it evokes a homespun
quality. This fabric provokes associations with something preliminary and unfinished. It
is unrefined and rough compared to smoother and more finished fabrics. White cotton
gauze suggests a bandage-like quality, a stiffening under-layer, or a scrim that hides an
area of the stage in theatrical performances. Burlap has an earthy coarseness. It feels
un-refined, stiff and scratchy. Silk organza is smooth, sheer and soft. Its delicacy creates
a contrast with the roughness of the muslin, gauze, and burlap. Black muslin is a
smooth, plain-woven opaque cloth signifying for me sadness and withdrawal. Aida cloth
is stiff fabric used for traditional cross-stitch embroidery. It symbolizes the traditional
sampler with its trite, stitched aphorisms. Cross-stitch is a nostalgic craft process.
However, its regular, square shaped stitches resemble the pixelated surface of digital
media prompting a relationship between the past and the future.
I use torn edges in contrast with smooth and crisp ones in Locked Up (fig. 27). The
frayed edges of an old bed sheet signify raw nerves disguised by the facade of normalcy
exhibited in the visual uniformity of the California subdivision. I used torn fabric strips
to create a fabric font to write the words in this piece. This soft lettering
incorporates the words directly into the piece, tying the message and the materials
together. The rough edges of the fabric lettering reinforce the sense of frustration
expressed by the words. In this piece I demonstrate how we become locked up inside
our fortress homes, locked in by fear and insecurity, and locked out of opportunities by
age, race or class.

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I call attention to how the words are created as well as their meaning, as I do in
all the embroidered pieces: 60 Thoughts on Discontent, (fig. 1), Perils of Ownership
(fig.10), and 30 Thoughts on Suburban Life (fig. 14). My efforts indicate a meditative
emphasis on the meaning of the words I embroider. Lines of embroidered text cannot
be mass produced. Embroidered words create an idiosyncratic font that imitates the
way advertisers use font style, color, and visual associations to get our attention (fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Ann Olsen, detail, 60 Statements on Discontent, 2014.

As an obsessive reader, words are an important part of my expressive strategy. Words

alone and combined with images have the power to evoke ideas, and, to challenge,
question, and demand answers. They are read as text, read as design elements and read
as idea. They tell, signify, obstruct, obscure, and clarify meaning. A single word or
several words can evoke a complete internal vision such as in the work of

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Lesley Dill (fig. 9). In her visionary world language is read with all five senses. She
invites us to share her private journey into the experience of tactile, visual and auditory
language. She creates a sense of language that is simultaneously read and heard in ones
own mind and makes this personal experience public. In Dills world, poetry is
simultaneously read, felt, seen, and imagined.

Fig. 9. Voices in My Head, Lesley Dill, 1996.

Words and images are also the materials of advertising. Marketers bombard consumers
with word-based messages that are mass-produced. I use their words to contrast the
rhetoric of marketing with statements about cultural life in suburbia.
In Perils of Ownership (fig.10), I selected several of the truisms from my lists and
paired them with objects from my kitchen to reinforce the meaning of my words. The

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truisms question behavioral assumptions. I want the words to interact with these
common domestic tools to trigger associations between behavior and belief. I place the
words I throw away more than some people have, with the matches to indicate greed
and destructiveness. I cant escape from domination coupled with an egg beater
makes this kitchen tool into a symbol of punishment and control. Scissors are used to
cut up things and cut out things. Matched with I want what I want when I want it they
become a sinister representation of selfish overconsumption. The measuring cup
represents a calculated desire for excess reflected by the statement I cant give up the
need for more.

Fig. 10. Ann Olsen, Perils of Ownership. 2014.

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Martha Rosler is an artist and writer whose work about everyday life, public and
private environments, and womens concerns influenced my interest in making work
about my suburban world. Her 1975 Video Semiotics of the Kitchen (fig. 11) interrogates
female identity through the use of objects and their associated meanings. Roslers work
incorporates video, performance, text, and installation to deconstruct socio-political
assumptions about war, race, housing and homelessness. Alexander Alberro describes
her practice as one that moves from the smaller unit of meaning, monad or fragment to
connect to the tremendous prevailing edifices of myth, ritual, and social and economic
practices (750). Roslers words indicate her own struggle with making art with a political
message: For me a, child of the sixties, the question of how engaged, how agitational,
how built upon mass culture, how theory driven [my] art should be have been everpresent, the answers never settled, since the terms of engagement themselves are
constantly being renegotiated (351) .

Fig. 11. Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, film still, 1975

She states that there are always things to be told that are obscured by the prevailing
stories (Rosler in Becker 38). Rosler also asks: How does one address these banally
profound issues of everyday life, thereby revealing the public and political in the

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personal? It seems reasonable to me to use forms that suggest and refer to mass-cultural
forms without simply mimicking them (Rosler in Alberro 6). These statements reflect
the same kind of questions I grapple with in my effort to create work that examines
anxiety hidden behind the commonplace assumptions about suburban life. Roslers work
and its emphasis on social practice differ from mine but her use of commonplace objects,
the neighborhood environment, and community behavior is similar to my examination of
suburban California life.

Socio-Cultural Influences
My study of contemporary Southern California suburbia begins with an
understanding of the nature of domesticity and the home. In Unsettling Naturalisms
Linda McDowell writes about the vast challenge in creating a contemporary debate
about domesticity and the feminine. In her research she describes the weight of
naturalized assumptions about the home and domestic space that feminist scholars
have begun to document, deconstruct, and re-theorize across a wide range of arenas
(816). McDowell also quotes urban theorist Anthony King who describes how the home
is a built structure that not only supports relationships and provides shelter, but
expresses social divisions, permits hierarchies, and enables the expression of status and
authority (816). When I use fabric and embroidery in my work the naturalized
assumptions about traditional domesticity are evoked. I want to contrast them with
current notions of domesticity and show how the home reinforces structures of power
and status that are also part of consumer manipulation.

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Susan Fraiman discusses this in her 2011 essay Bad Girls of Good Housekeeping:
Dominique Brown and Martha Stewart. Fraiman analyzes the power and status
symbolized by the home both socially and in terms of product marketing by so called
shelter magazines. She observes how naturalized assumptions about home and
domestic space depicted in shelter publications, challenge as well as reiterate
traditional beliefs about women, marriage, families, and sexuality (261). Fraimans
study presents Dominique Browning, editor of House & Garden (19962007), and
Martha Stewart, founder of Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Living
Omnimedia, as women whose lifestyles represent the opposite of a traditional
homemaker. They are both divorced, independent career women, yet they are
respected as arbiters of domestic behavioral norms. In Fraimans essay she also
describes the tension in shelter magazines, reaching back to the nineteenth century
and continuing to this day, between practical, cost-saving adviceincluding suggestions
for clever do-it-yourself projectsand, on the contrary, depictions of exquisite objects
and upscale spaces, which cater shamelessly to fantasies of wealth, status, and leisure
(261). In my study of domesticity and consumerism, I look at how the products of
domesticity are advertised and sold to me as a consumer. Shelter magazines described
in Fraimans essay provide evidence for what Fraiman describes as house porn (267).
Glossy photo spreads of luxury homes in exclusive locations are presented as essential
to the definition of power, influence and success (fig. 12).

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Fig. 12. Shelter Magazine Assortment

Literary scholar Terry Castle discusses in her essay for The Atlantic, Home
Alone, that the term house-porn addict does get at the curious feelings of guilt,
titillation, and flooding bourgeois pleasurerelief delivered through hands and
eyeballsthat such publications provide(par. 5). Castle describes the idealized rooms
depicted in shelter magazines as compensation for past experiences of a dysfunctional
home life. Castle summarizes her analysis of consumer behavior as a reflection of
precarious social conditions:
Even the most embarrassing or guilt-inducing features of daily life, Freud
famously argued, have their psychopathology and can be plumbed for truths
about the human condition. One could as easily argue, it seems to me, that
house porn, like the billion-dollar business of home improvement itself, is
symptomaticof a peculiar disquiet now haunting ordinary American life (par.
6).

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In Gross Domestic Product, (fig.13) I juxtapose the relief that Castle describes,
with the reality of domestic violence and isolation. The beautifully decorated suburban
home may symbolize domestic tranquility, but anxiety exists just underneath its veneer.
I made several pieces in 2014 that use the apron as a representation of the conflict
between belief and reality. I put words and images on aprons to voice my opinion about
violence, drug abuse and sexism that hide behind images of domestic bliss. While the
apron offers a nostalgic connection to the American dream it is also an icon of status
and female oppression. This apron speaks the words Dont piss me off, a declaration
of the power and equal status achieved by many women today in contrast with
repression that still exists. Completed in 2015, Gross Domestic Product, evokes a
hostess apron worn as a fashion statement in the 1950s. While it automatically
triggers that association, I play against it by making the tension between domestic bliss
and domestic frustration visible. It functions as neither a fashion statement nor a
protective garment. The embroidered outline of the gun hidden in the pocket
indicates violence lurking just under the surface of many households. I intend the image
of the gun to symbolize the explosive nature of domestic violence, more frequently
expressed with words and fists than with gunshots. The apron ties are embroidered with
observesuburbanbanality repeated over and over. This suggests a stream of
consciousness inner recitation. Other words are hinted at, but not written, such as
normality, reality, servility, and urbanity. These words confront the supposed
banality of suburban life and question the normalcy of living with suppressed anger and
fear.

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Fig. 13. Ann Olsen, Gross Domestic Product, 2015.

The prevalence of security equipment is more evidence of a culture of fear1

where home owners perceive crime in a neighborhood where little to none exists.2 Does
having a home security system make my home safer or does it merely make me feel
safer? Does it mean that if my neighbor has one, I better have one too, in order to prove
my status and worth in the neighborhood? Just as advertisers exploit our desire for
status by selling us luxury goods, they also sell us the means to protect them with
products designed to feed our fears about external threats.
Marketing techniques used to sell suburban homes, as well as the luxury
products and furnishings advertised in shelter publications, take advantage of consumer
1

For a discussion of Terror Management Theory, see Arndt, Jamie, et al. The Urge to Splurge:
A Terror Management Account of Materialism and Consumer Behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology.
14.3 (2004): 198-212. Print.
2

See Glassner, Barry. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New
York: Basic Books, 1999. Print, and Halloway, Kali. Fear Sells and We are All Buying. alternet.org, March
17, 2015. Web. 17 March 2015, for a discussion of fear based marketing techniques.

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preoccupation with safety and security as well as status and success. The language used
in advertising for home sales refers to safety and exclusivity such as: 24-hour guard
gated, smart home security system, exclusive, prestigious, private, highly
desirable, grand, and elegant. I embroidered some of these statements and other
real estate jargon on fabric to create 30 Thoughts on Suburban Life. (fig. 14)

Fig. 14. Ann Olsen, 30 Thoughts on Suburban Life, 2015.

While Suburban Truisms is about lifestyle and attitude, and 60 Thoughts on

Discontent focuses on my personal dilemmas, 30 Thoughts on Suburban Life, calls
attention to notions of wealth, poverty, and home ownership. Embroidered in red, black
and white thread on tan linen squares this piece resembles a mini clothesline.
Clotheslines are rarely seen in upscale American communities, highlighting the contrast
between rich and poor and, success and disadvantage. The words I chose such as
culture industry, margin or mansion, private paradise, and fractured landscape
also connote these differences. Each small, six-inch square, presents one comment that

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together, creates a big picture of the disparate challenges of home ownership. Words
constantly bombard our consciousness. Most become visual and auditory chatter that
escape conscious notice. I take these bits of verbal detritus and bring them into focus.
The time I take to embroider them, singles them out for close attention. Each phrase is
meant to encourage a cascade of additional questions about their meaning. The pieces
can also be rearranged in random or specific configurations by color, subject, or word
count to propose other significations.
Using Text
The use of language is an important aspect of my work. I want to combine words
and images to make art about personal and social concerns. I see my work as a space in
which writing is severed from its role as mere verbal description and is experienced
instead as both a verbal and a visual phenomenon (Morley 17).
Alphabets are codes or systems for communication. Widespread literacy and the
deluge of text in our information age make language virtually transparent. We see and
read while scarcely noticing that we are doing so. While we are exposed to an infinite
amount of text based information, images are equally imbedded as coded elements in
our culture. Even when characters are written with beautiful forms, or using engaging
techniques, writing always carries the residue of what it signifiesit refers to layers of
meaning beyond the confines of the work of art. (Schiff 2) I believe text serves art
today in three complex ways: as a cipher, as a symbolic presence, and as a statement of
belief. In my work I want words, images and objects to become part of a total inter-

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medial3 experience (Morley 14). Perils of Ownership (fig. 10), and Gross Domestic
Product (fig. 13) make objects and language interact in order to tease out alternative
conclusions beyond ones first impression.
Artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger use elements of mass media
such as print advertising and electronic signs and insert them into communal spaces as a
way of diverting advertising toward social criticism. According to essays written about
these artists for the TATE, UK Artist Rooms collections, they each have appropriated
the message as their medium, placing provocative, often highly politicized statements in
public placesprojected onto buildings or displayed on electronic signboards to
investigate the phenomenon of mass communication and question the information we
receive. (Artist Rooms par. 7) Even though reading and understanding the message is
foremost in their work, the type of font, the context of the placement of the work and
the scale of the type in relation to the viewer, are all important signifiers of meaning. In
Untitled (I shop therefore I am), (fig. 15) Kruger uses conventions of graphic design to
confront the rampant consumerism that advertising condones.

According to Morley the term inter-media when used to describe the use of words in art
emphasizes the fact that writing is indeed visual language, that is, it is something which appeals to the
eye as well as to the mind (12).

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Fig. 15. Barbara Kruger, Untitled (I shop therefore I am). 1987.

She also links self-concept with the accumulation of products. She says that her goal
was to mix the ingratiation of wishful thinking that lies at the heart of the promise
of advertising with the criticality of knowing better (Morley 179). Krugers and
Holzers work give me insight into the way that the materials used, the site chosen,
and the placement of the work in the space, add power to language as a medium.
The locations Holzer chooses for her works have been both subtle (fig. 16) and
monumental (fig. 17). From posters pasted to New York City walls, to large scale
projections on public buildings, it is the complex interaction between her words and
their placement that piques our interest (Auping 36).

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Fig. 16 Jenny Holzer, Truisms, New York City,

1977-79

Fig 17. Jenny Holzer projection on Guggenheim

NYC, 2008

My interest in text-based work combined with textiles led me to research

artists who have successfully combined the two. Elaine Reichek exploits the
relationship between hand embroidery as a domestic craft and conceptual ideas
about words and their meaning. While, Holzer and Kruger use references to
advertising and signage in their text-based work to reflect on cultural assumptions,
Reichek uses embroidery to compare the aphorisms of traditional samplers with the
contemporary statements about behavior. Her Sampler (Kruger/Holzer), (fig. 18)
compares Holzers and Krugers words with traditional sampler aphorisms. Sampler
(World Wide Web), (fig. 19) uses words referring to contemporary technology (web,
pixel, code, processor, and matrix) interspersed with words referring to ancient
technology (weave, spin, shuttle, linen, knot, stitch).

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Fig. 18. Elaine Reichek, Sampler (Kruger/Holzer), 1998.

Fig. 19. Elaine Reichek, Sampler (World Wide Web), 1998.

Reicheks hand, machine, and digitally produced samplers offer a powerful critique

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of the concepts of originality, reproduction, and communication in contemporary

visual culture (Birnbaum 35).
I use embroidered words as an idiosyncratic, labor-intensive font to contrast
with the uniformity and hard edges of mass-produced print media. My embroidered
words contrast traditional domestic aphorisms with thorny social commentary.
Lisa Anne Auerbachs work uses words knitted into sweaters and banners to
address her political and social concerns. Sweaters display provocative comments about
abortion, war, consumerism and the environment. She knits her sweaters to fit herself
and intentionally wears them in public, making her work into a performance as well as
an object. Her piece Everything I Touch Turns to $old, (fig. 20) reinvents Barbara
Krugers critique of commodity culture.

Fig. 20. Lisa Anne Auerbach, Everything I Touch Turns to $old, 2006-2009

As a wearable object/product this piece confronts image driven spending. It mocks the
exorbitant prices of high fashion that makes them unavailable to the average consumer

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while feeding insecurity about image and wealth. Her words often have a humorous
quality that softens their messages as does pairing them with a cozy, object associated
with warmth and protection such as a sweater. As Auerbach says: "A serious message
can have more traction if there's a funny aspect to it" (Christman-Campbell 52).
Auerbach created a knitted wall hung banner for the 2014 Whitney Biennial (fig. 21) that
was drawn from words collected from her meetings with psychics throughout Southern
California.

Fig. 21. Lisa Anne Auerbach, Let the Dream Write Itself, 2014.

She suggests that the ways that language functions in the New Age self-help culture
and in activist movements are not entirely dissimilar: vague slogans are juxtaposed with
bits of wisdom, all ultimately striving for (if not always achieving) transformational
change (Lisa Anne Auerbach par. 2). My comments in Suburban Truisms: Fear (fig.22)

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resemble aphoristic statements of intent and belief that are meant to create discussion
about their validity. They call attention to what I observe in my own behavior as well as
what I observe in general culture. This attention will generate more questions about the
un-acknowledged domination of consumerism that is paired with the culture of fear.

Fig. 22. Ann Olsen, Suburban Truisms: Fear, 2014.

Process
My ideas for work produced during graduate school stem from my unease about
the uncertain political and social climate of the last few years. I live in privileged, middle
class prosperity compared to the violence, poverty and oppression of less affluent

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neighborhoods at home and abroad. It became important to me make art about my

political concerns as well as my personal ones. Prayer Flag Project: No Right Answers
(fig. 23) was the first piece I made to question assumptions about truth, fear, and
power, and to make a socio-political statement. I saw this project as a large scale

Fig. 23. Ann Olsen, Prayer Flag Project: No Right Answers, 2013.

installation, with possibly hundreds of questions placed in a public location such as a

park. I photographed a series of 5 groups of questions in a tree to evaluate the
effectiveness of my idea. The flags were made with sheer fabric overlaying fabric
printed photos and words. Some of the questions I posed included:
What is the truth?
Why should you believe it?
Who tells the truth?
How do you know?
Can you know?
Why do we choose pain and expect happiness?

Olsen 32

I began to understand the complexity of making art with a socio-political message

through the process of making this piece, as well as by analyzing the critiques I received
concerning it. I learned that I needed to use subtle questions that could generate other
questions and that power in political art comes from the use of irony as well as a skillful
manipulation of words, images and ideas.
As part of this process I studied work by artists who critique culture and politics
in their work. Doris Salcedo uses evocative combinations of objects, rather than
language, to indirectly confront political atrocities in her native Columbia. Her pieces
Atrabiliarios (fig. 24) and Plegaria Muda (fig. 25) taught me much about the use of
subtle references and visual metaphors, lessons that I continue to experiment with.

Fig. 24. Doris Salcedo, detail from Atrabiliarios, 1992-2004.

Olsen 33

Fig. 25. Doris Salcedo, Plegaria Muda, 2008-10

My work in 2014 included the first version of Gross Domestic Product. (fig. 26)
Unlike my final version, (fig. 13), it was made with drawn images and printed text. The
project failed to create the impact I desired. The methods I used to apply the text, the
words themselves and the imagery did not evoke the intended message. I abandoned
the apron project until 2015, when I connected it to the ideas of Suburban Truisms, and
the other work I had made about the culture of fear.

Olsen 34

Fig. 26. Ann Olsen, Gross Domestic Product 1, 2014

After writing Suburban Truisms, one of my daily walks showed me how I could
connect my thoughts about suburban identity directly with my environment. As I was
walking one of my usual neighborhood routes, I was told by a security guard that I could
not enter a gated neighborhood in my own un-gated, but adjacent neighborhood. This
experience and my sense of shock about this restriction of my movements forced me to
consider things about my world that I had always taken for granted. I never really
thought about the meaning of a gated community in a social-political context until I was
the subject of its exclusion. The idea of a gated community within my safe suburban
neighborhood seemed ludicrous on the one hand, and sinister on the other. Ludicrous
because I dont feel threatened by crime in my home that is situated less than half a
mile from the gates. Sinister because I wonder how I pose a threat to those inside the
gates. Or, even more worrisome is the thought that maybe I should be afraid. Is there

Olsen 35

some threat that I am not aware of in my neighborhood even though there is no

evidence that tells me to be afraid? This experience raised my consciousness concerning
the way exclusionary practices, symbolized by gates in general, are subtle reinforcement
for social divisions based on wealth, race and class. This small act of excluding me, as a
middle-class female, from a newer and apparently wealthier middle-class community,
pales in comparison to exclusionary attitudes that are codified in some American
neighborhoods.
Locked Up, (fig. 27) is a hand stitched fabric wall hanging that uses ideas and
imagery from Homeland Insecurity (fig. 3), images of gates and locks, and reflections on
white collar crime such as embezzlement, insider trading, home mortgage fraud, to
open a dialogue about crime that cannot be prevented with a home security system.
The piece asks questions about fear hidden inside. We lock up our accumulations of
stuff that we use to define ourselves. Personal insecurity locks me inside myself so I
must hide what I dont want you to know about me. I lock out others who judge me as
well as those that I judge as dangerous. These attitudes and behaviors are locked in by
behavioral norms that become unquestioned assumptions about contemporary life.

Olsen 36

Fig. 27. Ann Olsen, Locked Up, 2014

Conclusion

I set out in my thesis work to examine how I could address my concerns about
socio-cultural issues. I realized that in this inquiry my own experience provides a more
direct and powerful source for looking at ideas about contemporary culture. My sense
of suburban life is the source for Suburban Truisms. These words are a manifesto about
life in Southern California. They provide the impetus to look even more closely at my
own neighborhood, and make work to reveal the fear and insecurity hidden there. This
process also revealed my hidden fear and insecurity about making relevant art for a
contemporary audience.

Olsen 37

Going forward with this project I want to insert my words about suburban life
into the environment and evaluate their impact by observing the response of the
community. (figs.28-29)

Fig. 28. Ann Olsen, Tagged Gates 1, 2015.

Olsen 38

Fig. 29. Ann Olsen, Tagged Gates 2, 2015.

I continue to collect words from advertising, articles and stories that I take out of their
original context and print or stitch on fabric to evoke questions about their deeper
meaningwhat they hide as well as what they describe. My use of hand-stitching or
torn fabric as a font provides a counterpoint to digitally generated print media that I will
continue to utilize in future work. The history of gates and gated communities and how
they are experienced physically and metaphorically is another is another level of inquiry
in my research on the culture of fear, both past and present.
Fear and insecurity not only make us vulnerable to marketing ploys, but also
affect our cultural and political choices. Fear is real and as I say in one of my truisms I
live with an acceptable level of threat. Safety may be an illusion that we all cling to
when facing the uncertainties of modern life. The suburban neighborhood is filled with
symbols of fear: gates, locks, bars on windows, home security signs, and other warnings.

Olsen 39

My intention is to generate a dialogue about how fear-based advertising and consumer

culture control our behavior while hiding behind a veneer of normalcy.

Olsen 40

Works Cited

Alberro, Alexander. The Dialectics of Everyday Life: Martha Rosler and the Strategy of
the Decoy. Martha Rosler: Position in the Life World. Catherine de Zegher ed.
Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 1998. Print.

Arndt, Jamie, Sheldon Solomon, Tim Kasser and Kennon M. Sheldon. The Urge to
Splurge: A Terror Management Account of Materialism and Consumer Behavior.
Journal of Consumer Psychology. 14 .3 (2004): 198212. Print.

Artist Rooms: Theme: Text and Language. Tate UK. n.d. Web. 3 March 2014.

Auping, Michael. Jenny Holzer. New York: Universe Publishing, 1992. Print.

Birnbaum, Paula. Elaine Reichek: Pixels, Bytes, and Stitches. Art Journal, Vol. 67, No.
2 (Summer 2008): pp. 18-35. JSTOR . Web. 02 Dec. 2014.

Castle, Terry. Home Alone: The Dark Art of Shelter-lit Addiction. The Atlantic. 1 March
2006. Web. 27 March 2015.

Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly. Lisa Anne Auerbach: Making them Sweat. Ornament,

Vol. 36, No. 5 (2013): 48-53. Print.

Olsen 41

Glassner, Barry. The Culture Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New
York:Basic Books, 1999. Print.

Fraiman, Susan. Bad Girls of Good Housekeeping: Dominique Browning and Martha
Stewart. American Literary History 23. 2 (2011): 260282. Print.

Halloway, Kali. Fear Sell and We are All Buying. alternet.org, March 17, 2015. Web. 17
March 2015.

Joselit, David, Simon Joan and Saleci, Renata. Jenny Holzer. London: Phaidon Press
Limited, 1998. Print.

Lisa Anne Auerbach. Whitney Museum of American Art 2014 Biennial. Whitney.org,
March 7-May 2, 2014. Web. 4 April 2015.

McDowell, Linda. Unsettling Naturalisms. Signs, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Spring 2002), 815-82.
JSTOR. 2 March 2015.

Morely, Simon. Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Print.

Olsen 42

Rosler, Martha. Place Position Power and Politics. The Subversive Imagination: Artists,
Society and Social Responsibility. Carol Becker ed. New York: Routledge, 1994.
55-76. Print.

Olsen 43

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Olsen 44

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