SEWING AS A DESIGN PRACTICE: DATA Visualizations (2021-current)
This practice serves many goals related to my individual research trajectory as well as artistic and design practices. The final outcomes of this project are one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn, embroidered visualizations of data pertaining to topics related to motherhood, parenthood, and reproductive rights in the US. The data I analyze in the visualizations is sourced from various US government, policy, and research organizations, the experts in collecting the data I use in each piece. With this work, I am actively resisting the use of technology as a means to challenge the technical tools, consumerism, and patriarchal systems in graphic design production.
States with more than a 10% increase in patients who traveled from out of state for abortion care (2020-2023) (19 ¾ ʺ x 23 ¾ ʺ)
The Monthly Abortion Provision Study, managed by the Guttmacher Institute, compares data from 2023 to 2020 retrieved from the most recent Abortion Provider Care Census. This census gathers comprehensive data on US national and state-level abortion incidence and care. Recent findings in the study show that abortion bans and restrictions led to an increase in patients forced to travel across state lines for needed care, putting their health at risk and adding unnecessary hardship to an already traumatic experience. This polar area chart is visualizing the ten states with more than a 10% increase in travel across state lines for abortion care, from 2020 to 2023.
Workforce Decline During the Pandemic 2/20-1/21 (24 x 20 inches), statistics from a published Gallup Survey that compared the participation rates of women and men with and without children in the US Labor force during the first year of the pandemic (February 2020-January 2021) was used. This data revealed that the number of women with children who left the workforce was much greater than men with children that left the workforce, as well as men and women with no children. The resulting piece is done by hand sewing and consists of intricate patterns arranged in a bubble chart to visualize this difference by scale.
Restricted Reproductive Rights (17 1/2 x 23 ¼ inches) was made in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade in June 2022. Each state’s reproductive rights’ status (as of June 2022) is compared to the percentage of gender wage gap in each state. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Guttmacher Institute was used in the creation of this visualization that uses a modified form of the radar chart as the structure for the data.
Sex Education + Reproductive Rights (16 3/8” X 23” ) This hand-stitched data visualization is in response to the many restrictions put on reproductive freedoms across the US and how sex education factors in. Sex education is determined at the state-level and isn't always mandated, nor does it cover conversations about sexual consent. Data for this visualization was retrieved from SIECUS and Guttmacher Institute.
Annual Infant Care Costs compared to Full-time Minimum Wage Salary and the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) in the 10 most “unaffordable” states (13 X 11 inches), uses a form of a layered bar chart. The visualization shows the inequity of both childcare costs and the minimum wage in states where someone working full-time at minimum wage can hardly make enough to pay for one child below the age of 3 to be in daycare. This data is retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Economic Policy Institute.
Working Mothers with Children ages 0-3 (13 X 11 inches), looks at the number of women (with children under the age of 3) working across all occupations compared to those in low-wage (minimum wage) occupations, their marital status and who falls below the poverty line. This reveals that more than half of working mothers with young children in low-wage jobs don’t have spousal support and 33% of them fall below the poverty line. The data is retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Women’s Law Center.
Home Housework in the 1940s This machine sewn visualization communicates data from the United States 1940s census, specifically “persons not in the labor force who are primarily occupied with their own home housework” a question that was asked in the census for the first time. The visualization represents the entire population of persons 14 and older at that time, which was split evenly between males and females. Each half of the visual is dedicated to data representing males and/or females. Black printed squares represent those males in the labor force (79%) and red printed squares represent females in the labor force (26%). The plain squares represent those people that were not in the labor force. Red sewn threads indicate the percentage of females who were not in the labor force but identified as engaged in home housework (76%). And subtle, yet visual, a thin single black thread represents the males who were not in the labor force but identified as engaged in home housework (2%).