These paintings reconfigure the American flag using class III reflective material, which is required PPE for all work done on the streets, such as construction and public works.  I am a female artist who works full-time in a public service field typically dominated by conservative, working class males.  I was using mirrors in my work as a metaphorical material, exploring ideas of distortion and reflection.  When I started working in a position requiring these reflective uniforms and reporting to work before dawn, the mirror-like glow of this material in the dark of morning, along with the connection to the people who wear it, inspired me to begin sewing with it.  The act of cutting, hand-sewing, and painting the American flag, and then sewing again with a mirror-like representation of the working-class, is meant as both iconoclasm of the symbol for a nation in crisis and redemption, beautification, and insertion of feminist power into a symbol of contention. 

Many of the pieces utilize gunpowder, which I set on fire.  This technique was taken from Cai Guo Xiang, but the idea of actually doing it was inspired by two drawing students at the four-room schoolhouse that is Chemeketa Community College's Dallas campus.  The repetition of stripes, to me, alludes to prison bars.  I was thinking of Peter Haley's "Cells" here.  I wanted to make art that addresses the issue of the ever-expanding American prison-industrial complex, while keeping it abstract and interwoven with the other ideas.