This work celebrates the time-honored tradition of quilt-making & the enduring spirit of those who lovingly created them. Each piece in this collection is a testament to the painstaking care and attention that went into the production of these Missouri Heritage Quilts.

For more about this exhibit visit: https://columbiaartleague.org/blog/mary-sandbothe

DEER RUN is a large-scale needlepoint installation inspired by the conflict between the local deer population of Columbia, MO and the elimination of natural space to favor human habitation. This installation has deer running through a busy downtown street, confronting the viewer with our ever-growing environmental and habitat issues.

Handmade Paper & Hand Bound Journals

Made Dearly & Queerly in Columbia, MO.

Sold at Poppy Made By Hand, 920 E Broadway #1, Columbia, MO 65201

This piece celebrates gender as performance by marrying the craft technique of latch hooking with the image of pop culture icon, Rupaul. To produce this piece, I generated a gridded pattern then, set off latch hooking each piece of yarn by hand, the variants of colors and intricate detailing in the grid pattern give the piece a hyper-realistic, almost painterly quality that truly amplifies the campiness of both the technique and subject matter.

Rurug, Latch Hooked Rug, 4'X 5.5' 2013.

Since the demise of Diva in 2015, many members, including myself, have felt overwhelmingly displaced. And yet, many of us remain extremely close, no mater how far we scatter--forming a Diva Haus collective unbound by physical limits. The aim of this archive is to preserve Diva relics and love notes that once adorned the Diva main living room.

From regular house dinners, weekly meetings, a zine library and a show space for traveling and local bands (many of whom were Diva members), the house was pivotal in serving as a radical feminist oasis in the often conservative Midwest. Of course, Diva Haus was no utopia; it was a dirty punk house sometimes punctured by dissent. there were indeed certain members who were asked to leave for not upholding safe Haus ethics. While we would joke that Diva Haus 'was the place where vacuum cleaners came to die," it was very seriously dealt with overt public ridicule, wherein members were called femi-nazis and dirty divas, among other demeaning slurs. That ridicule subsequently contributed to our feelings of isolation from the greater Columbia community. That being said, more than sixty people lived at Diva Haus over its lifespan and learned important lessons of empowerment and resistance to patriarchy through its "do-it-together" mentality.

In 2015, when the house was bought by developers who turned the feminist haven into an 'upscale' dwelling for university students. Diva became yet another radical community evicted from its space due to gentrification and monied interest.

 Diva Haus was an experiment with implementing feminist principles in real life. Within those walls we confronted misogyny, transphobia, ableism, racism, and more. Inherently a feminist project, this reconstruction carves out a space for those who struggle to create alternatives to mainstream society and give voice to a decade's worth of experiences that would otherwise be relegated to memories deemed inconsequential by dominant society. Diva Haus was a project of feminist praxis. Sharing it extends this praxis, hopefully inspiring others to make or maintain spaces for the transformation of wherever they call home and the resistance to those who would hinder them from feeling at home there.

Special thanks to Tobi Coffee

This project exposes queer assimilation and commodification tactics by merging appropriated advertising with cross stitch samplers. Images of heteronormative, cis, white archetypes of family depicted in ad campains blur and become entirely blended into a familial stitched backgrounds, revealing an uneasiness toward this typical portrayal of queer identities. Cross-stitch filters coupled with advertising language promote a ‘false sense of care’ meant to sell the viewer a particular brand or item. The aim is to acknowledge those outside or erased from these accepted and assimilated family portraits, while analyzing mainstream (mis)representations and exclusivity. This project was the bulk of my thesis exhibition for my MFA received in 2016.

Exhibition statement:

Newly wedded couples grin for the camera.

Drag queen super stars drink coffee for Starbucks®.

Wholesome families pose with their toy children.

This is what is takes to fit in.

You ℗ass* (#love wins)

All photos by Drew Nikonowics

Interactive Artist Book using Laser Printed Acetate and Light Box. Viewers can arrange ads to reveal overlapping patterns within.

Each piece in Patterns of Exclusion is based on a print ad is taken from media between 2012-15 featuring same sex cis male couples and families. Within theses ads, specific language is repeated to enforce the manipulative intentions of the marketer. The terms “diversity”, “family”, and “acceptance” are echoed throughout each ad to pacify the reader. The ads are taken and re-contextualized within a cross-stitch pattern generator. The generator renders the ads illegible as they are made up only of tiny units being forced onto an invisible grid. These units become more decorative than meaningful, just like the empty rhetoric used within the print ads.

Acetate sheets were used as a substrate for each cross-stitch template print. The acetate sheets mirror the transparent and swallow representation of the queer identities being depicted in each ad reiterating the trite language being used in the ads and type casted characters presented. Each identity is essentially a copy of the heternormative and gender conforming standards they emulate. The regularity of the grid forces the whole image to be divided evenly and to be systematically controlled, much like the gender binary system. Incorporated in both the series, the grid functions to categorize each image into containable units and refer to the warp and weft structures in handicraft media.

Cross- stitch patterns are based on a grid because cloth consists of a warp and weft, making a grid formation to which each stitch will attach. The same cis white gay couples portrayed with their families are now seen deconstructed through the grid and categorized in tiny boxes. The patterns of casting within the imagery are articulated through the cross-stitch template and visible when exposed on the light box. The light box reveals the formulaic (mis) representations of queer identities within each image. Generic figures appear in each template, over and over, highlighting this pattern of exclusion. The grid flattens each image leaving a generic outline of each figure, making individual features non-existent.

Within “Patterns of Exclusion (Gap)”, the absence of individual signifiers leaves the couple as the heternormative pairing they imitate. The “dominant/ male” figure appears positioned higher and gazing downward onto the “submissive/female” figure. The text that was once readable in the original ad becomes a rectangle of smaller squares pressed onto the figures making the image more of a decorative motif than a celebration of diversity the ads seek to carry.

Text within each ad pattern breaks down leaving a grouping of color blocks that erase the context of each ad. This deconstruction leaves only the repetitive presence of the ideal queer couple. In “Patterns of Exclusion (Amtrak)” the text acts as a decorative element to the composition. This piece resembles the layout of a traditional cross-stich sampler (compare with fig. 2.8) because of its large pictorial element as the focal point and bands of motifs and lettering beneath it, which furthers the handicraft reference apparent in the exhibition. The division of the image into the grid not only leaves the text of the image hard to decipher but again eliminate individual characteristics of each cast member.

In “Patterns of Exclusion (New York Financial)” (see fig. 3.2) the figures are distorted and amassed into large color blocks, with the exception of the eyes, which are as single X’s. This treatment of the eyes makes the figures “dummy-like” as if they are standing in for a normative archetype. Again, a reference to the sampler remains within this piece, especially with the four blue color blocks at the bottom of the image acting as a spot sampler section. Some samplers are known as spot samplers because they are made up of blocks of different techniques, while other are called banded samplers because the techniques are produced in a band or line instead of a block section.

The hierarchical positioning of the figures is also present to denote their designated gender roles. “Patterns of Exclusion (New York Financial 2)” features two figures in the repeated hierarchical arrangement surrounded by a yellow border. The border crops the figures showcasing the dominant figure’s hands holding the other figure’s body. What could be read as a happy couple converts into something more discomforting as the facial features of the figures (particularly the teeth of the figure on the right) emerge as darkened masses. “Patterns of Exclusion (Target)” is the only piece in the series in which the lettering of the original print ad isn’t completely obscured after being arranged into a cross-stitch template.

The phrase reads, “Be Yourself Together” implying an accepting sentiment toward the same sex male couple getting married within the image. However, the acceptance is only a marketing ploy to consolidate the individuals in a unit. This piece reiterates the ideal queer consumer image that excludes the myriad of queer identities that aren’t white cisgendered men. Interaction with the viewer is important to the series because it displays their role as an active participant with the imagery being exposed. The viewer participates in handling and exposing the image on the light box physically, but on a deeper level, they layer patterns to reveal the formulaic type casting of each coupling.

All photos by Drew Nikonowics

Unresolved is a collaboration between me and Nabil El Jaouhari of ink jet prints of collages on handmade paper (bleached abaca with calcium carbonate). 

Each is 20''X 30" and in an edition of 3.