Rebel Yells: A Visual History of American Outrage (In Progress Project)
Rebel Yells is a quilted ‘choose your own adventure’ through the American photographic record of outrages - local to national - to tell the larger story of the country. Using unifying themes, each quilt is divided into the events, people, and landscapes that brought the US to where it is today, at our 250th anniversary. Constructed using traditional fine art techniques and drawing on vast internet archives, Rebel Yells aims to encourage public reflection on our shared history. As boundaries are being set based on location, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and political affiliation, can shared reminders from history prove unifying?
Each work is organized based on a theme and shaped into silhouettes inspired by pop culture and clip art. Wall- mounted QR codes accompany the exhibition text. The codes lead the audience to a dedicated webpage for each quilt, allowing them to dig deeper into individual images, access archive information, and cross-reference the associated historical theme with other images across the exhibition in the gallery, or at home.
For the exhibition opening in Spring 2027 at the Portland Public Library, there will be a companion exhibit of textile works designed to offer comfort and calm, created by members of the Union of Maine Visual Artists, a statewide artist-run nonprofit.
And because Pop Killed Culture projects typically seek to devise a tangible “memento mori,” the exhibition includes takeaway handkerchiefs stitched by the artist as a tactile connection to the work.