Libby Clarke

I create work that bridges the haptic and the virtual in order to change the world, one person at a time.

In order to clarify this statement, I’d like to give you some context: I became a printmaker in college and it electrified me with the inks, the substrates, and the collaboration with the materials. Then there was the phenomenon of print as a social force: the legitimacy of the printed word and the power of the poster. I dove into all the processes I could, experimented with voice and began to find my way. The work I produced was diaristic and figurative but I could feel a centrifugal pull outwards, beyond my own needs.

A woodcut figure study I did after my house washed away in a flood. I had to rebuild my portfolio to get into grad schools quickly.

I pursued an MFA in Printmaking, only to find the department at my school in painful flux: the department head chose to shed a lot of equipment in order to make room for a proposed radio station and additional computers. It was a hard lesson: we as printmakers are the keepers of seemingly outdated technologies and sometimes struggle to prove our relevance. After a year and a half of struggling with my department head’s decisions, I moved over to the 2D Design department to complete my degree. There I found people reverent to the processes of the past while being fully engaged in the future. There was no disdain for the older technologies but a vivid love of the entire continuum; I learned we are only able to truly innovate when we are well-versed in where we have been.

It proved to be a wildly fortuitous move: Printmaking gave me the tools to become an impassioned artist and Design gave me the methodology to become an engaged creative citizen. I dove into the theory and discourse of graphic design: I learned content production, typography, and branded composition as a print designer. I went on to examine persuasion, propaganda, and perception in an effort to master tenets of design thinking. I taught myself to build and publish web sites in a user-centered production cycle. Most importantly, I learned that creating client work is not selling out but being of service, lending a new dimension of compassion to all my creative output. I necessarily became a hybrid, part artist, part designer. My work went from representational explorations of body politics to packaged aspirational devices: paper products to save the world, as I called them.

In the development of Here & Now, I put together testing kits and sent them to galleries in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York City to be tested. Participants entered their data via a website, and I used the data to form the final structure of the piece.

Springing from the fields of package design and conceptual art, Monstress Activities addresses modern worries and hopes in a humorous, thought-provoking way. This box set of 5 different products combine into one distinctly joyful and fun proposal for a different perspective on life.

The Ardor Arbiter is a simple device wherein the user gives out citations of sincerity to others, using the enclosed stickers and magic marker. This helps the user develop his/her ability to detect sincerity and thus become better at eventually judging his/her own.

The Terribly Helpful Sign is a simple device to help the user develop awareness of and display a statement about his/her emotional state.

Here & Now wass made up of stickers, website,and phone app. The stickers serve as prompts to snap to the Here & Now to develop present-mindedness. The user took a picture of the sticker in use and thus records his/her Here & Now for others to see on the website (http://monstresshereandnow.com/).

The Perspectiflex is a simple hand-held device that helps the user develop some flexibility of thought. When the user becomes aggravated with someone, he uses the device to get a possible reason for the annoying person’s behavior, helping the user to open his mind and lessen the feelings of displeasure.

The Emotional Openness Signal Kit is designed so that the user may easily improvise his/her own means of communicating the onset of a moment of unguardedness. The signs, once separated, can be used by day (4 color version) or by night (phosphorescent version). Pins are provided to pin the signals to clothing if need be.

Graphic Design has become a major inspiration and energy source for my artwork: it is embedded into the warp and weft of our culture, encompassing psychology, technology, commercialism, and empathy. It has given me the latitude to push my work into media I’d not considered before: video, sound, and performance. My work currently comes with two distinct components: an evocative printed take-away and an interaction system in the form of a website, application, or installation. These act in concert to address issues of metacognition, encouraging the user to navigate common woes with humor. This is how I hope to gently change the world from the inside out.

I am currently developing an installation/performance piece called User Testing wherein the viewer becomes my collaborator, giving her answers to a series of queries that will help shape the next generation of products from my Monstress Productions line. The data she gives will be rendered via algorithm into an original composition which will be printed on the spot and given to her as compensation for her participation. As such, I am moving towards using data as a material, extending the idea of the multiple into yet another dimension while uniting my love of printmaking and interaction design into a force for good.