This project was conceived and completed in collaboration with Crista Ann Ames (link)

The small green pencils featured in this project are a found material: surplus absentee pencils originally intended to be included in mail-in ballots but ultimately abandoned to a thrift store in the Red Lodge, MT area. As another election season draws closer and larger in our thoughts, we found that the pencils had taken on a potent metaphoric property. Presenting the single-use pencils to our audience as single opportunities to speak within the electoral process, we offered our audience a chance to consider how and when we use our political voices. The presidential election only? The presidential and Midterm elections? Every election, including all state and local elections? Not voting at all?

Installed alongside the project to whom it may concern , the inherent irony of a translucent secrecy envelope certainly addresses the way in which voting—or not voting—can be wrapped up in identity and virtue/values signaling despite its core premise of privacy. Though the installation of the envelopes allows for the content of each ‘Ballot’ to remain hidden, each envelope does reveal something. For the selection “I don’t vote,” we invited participants to keep the absentee pencil as their own—hopefully to express themselves in some other way. 

Accepted and hung anonymously, we treated these envelopes a sculptural medium whose collective body might inspire meaningful reflection—and action.

This piece was installed at “The General Public” Garmentory/Gallery in Missoula, MT, for the September First Friday Art-walk in 2019.