Opening reception: Friday, October 4, 6-8 pm

Fem-utility Closet offers you the time and space to fully feel, engage, and contemplate the world you’ve entered, potentially evoking a sense of wonder and delight. As you get closer to the objects and materials, you may begin to think about the everydayness of what is around you and the labor, most often unseen, that goes into our everyday existence.

Melissa Dorn is particularly interested in how mops, feminism, craft, and labor intertwine. Her obsession with industrial mops spurred a love of repeating textures, lines, and historically gendered craft processes. She started with the personal: painting self-portraits focusing on the “moppiness” of her hair.

Now, Dorn wants to create space for maintenance. She defines maintenance as caring for oneself and one’s community, a necessity, not a frill. In her exhibition Fem-utility Closet, she invites you to rest on the ottowomen and take in the humor and absurdity of your surroundings.