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HerView: Sears is a live, 60 minute performance with original print material and public interaction at Crosstown Concourse, Memphis, TN, in 2023. Created while Artist-in-Residence at Crosstown Arts, Memphis, housed in the former Memphis Sears Department Store Building. 

 

HerView is an ongoing project focused on elevating women's presence in the public historical visual record with an emphasis on women's labor. Try the HerView: Sears AR experience (audio: on) by scanning this QR code: 

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For HerView: Sears, I researched women's employment at the former Sears Department Store. Pouring through vintage images and documents, I came across Sears references in the local "Creme de Memphe" blog and discovered an anecdote by the son of a former Sears employee who had pushed a cart with "a girl typing routing slips.” With Cross-Arts staff support, we located an original Sears cart and a late 1950s Sears brand typewriter in the building archives, which I use in the performance. The handouts I'm passing to community members are “routing slips”- imagined recreations I designed using a 1950s Sears logo and incorporating sexist quips influenced by '50s era advertising. Local Memphis artist Karl Ericson pushes the cart through the main public atrium of Crosstown Concourse, as I hand out 100 routing slips to an all-ages public.

 

Also while Artist-in-Residence, I created animations of historical images of Sears employees for augmented reality (webXR) audio/video popups framed within the building's structural columns, publicly accessible via phone/tablets. The HerView: Sears AR experience remains available via QR code at Crosstown Concourse.