A-Mazing

Completed February 2017

A-Mazing is part map, part manifesto. Collaged figures and city blocks carry maze patterns while hand-stamped lines push back: I care right. I refuse to live down to your expectations. This isn’t the maze you’re in. Not a single “right way”—just the right to redraw the route.

Made for the A-Mazing Art Show at Mad Hat Tea Co., these pieces take the brief literally—and personally. I build collages from dyed washes, magazine cutouts, and crisp maze grids, then drop in typewriter text like street-level signage. The maze stands in for the rules women (especially single women) get handed: dead ends disguised as advice, corridors labeled “be nice,” “smile,” “settle.”

The figures wear the labyrinth as a second skin; buildings shoulder it like zoning. Some paths invite, some reroute, some refuse to fit the body they’re wrapped around. The stamped phrases are the counter-narrative:

• I care right as in correct, and as in this direction.
• I refuse to live down to your expectations the map is wrong; I’m not.
• This isn’t the maze you’re in projection isn’t a compass.

Seams stay visible on purpose—you can see the edits, the pivots, the places autonomy interrupts the algorithm. There’s no single solution. The win is noticing where you chose the path and where the path chose you—and then choosing again.