OWENS-ILLINOIS COMPANY CAKES

Owens-Illinois Company Cakes reflects on 20th century U.S. company culture through the use of archival photographs from a glass bottle plant in Huntington, West Virginia. Owens- Illinois was a fixture in Huntington, employing thousands of workers, often many generations of the same family, for almost 70 years (1929-1993). Halftone printed figures and simplified 1980s office decor compose altered images of parties from the last ten years of the factory’s operation, before its closure in 1993 and the accompanying mass layoffs. Streamers and frosting patterns run alongside implicit questions about gender, employee agency within management control of labor, and the ways that voices interact and collaborate in the interpretation of archival material.

Made during a Denbo Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, June/July 2019.

Board book. Screenprint on Yatsuo paper and graphic board.
Edition of 8.
2019