Love Bites, 2008

Signs installed within the University of Arizona Poetry Center and on surrounding grounds. Signs mounted on lampposts at outdoor sites throughout the community. A wall of text drawings displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson. A participatory performance to engage an audience in a write-your-own activity and group reading. Thousands of buttons carried out into an evening of art openings by individuals wearing them and into the community over the course of a season. These installations and participatory events stimulated the public to become subjects and collaborators simultaneously. Produced during the 2008 election season, these campaign-style buttons and text-based artworks confound and expand preconceptions of appropriate civic dialogue. Part psychological experiment, part collaboration with strangers, and part compulsion to elicit intimacy, these artworks and participatory activities fostered human engagement with empathy and poignant humor.

Love Bites, Museum of Contemporary Art and University of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson, AZ. The project was funded in part by an Elly Kay Fund Award, Museum of Contemporary Art.