Kate Starr Kellogg, Image courtesy of Arthur Bowie.

To honor the little-known contributions of Chicago’s early women agricultural and cultural workers, Melissa Potter and I are collaborating on a new publication entitled Invisible Labors, inspired by a research and native garden project in the Morgan Park and Beverly neighborhoods formerly known as The Ridge. This book will weave together historical archives, photographs, and original new artwork that creatively interprets the crucial role that women have played in working and stewarding land in our city. Designed in collaboration with Tamara Becerra Valdez.

Invisible Labors will be released in Fall, 2022.

In the summer of 2021 for the Terrain Biennial, Melissa and I collaborated to create Invisible Labors: Prairie Carbon Sequestering and Papermaking; a garden project exploring the underground carbon remediation activity of prairie plants and the process of hand papermaking with these plants during the fall/winter season.

Tamara came on board the Invisible Labors project in 2022. Her experience with paper and book-making, working with archival materials and an active multi-disciplinary practice that considers the intersections of art and ecology have been vital to the vision of this project.