Menstruation Nation

Menstruatin' Rodeo (2024-Present)

The Menstrual Brooch Project (2019 - Present)

The Menstrual Cup Project (2017-2020)

My craftivist work confronts menstrual stigma through playful participation and interactive performance from a scientific, cultural, and gender neutral perspective.

In addition to fundraising for reproductive rights and distributing free menstrual supplies in my rural hometown, my primary works are the Menstrual Brooch Project and the Menstrual Cup Project.

The Menstrual Cup Project, 2017-2019, slipcast porcelain menstrual cups, glaze, underglaze, luster, alcohol, metal tray, exhibited at Social Objects, c3:Initiative, Portland, OR, and Femynynytees, AV, Montreal, QB, 2018.

The Menstrual Cup Project featured the artist (or participants) serving bright red, alcoholic "shots" in slipcast menstrual cups. Each cup features a fact about menstruation on its matte exterior, encouraging participants to dismantle menstrual stigma through education, connection, and conversation. In juxtaposing the celebratory and novel act of souvenir shot taking, the artist infuses playfulness and festivity into a potentially awkward conversation.

The Menstrual Brooch Project, 2019-present, porcelain, glaze, luster, pinbacks, modular corkboard tiles, charcoal, interpretive cards. Exhibited at Zanny Gallery, Lewistown, MT, 2022, Reproductive Justice is for Everyone!, University of South Florida Women’s and Gender Studies Dept., Tampa, FL, 2019-21., Ferment, Minneapolis City College, Minneapolis, MN, 2019.

The Menstrual Brooch Project invited participants to take and wear a brooch shaped like a common period product: a pad, tampon, or menstrual cup, and wear it while confronting menstrual stigma. As pins were slowly removed, a glaring black text was revealed on the cork boards beneath:

CRAZY DIRTY BITCH.

Each pin was accompanied by an interpretive card that read as follows:

The #menstrualbroochproject seeks to spark conversation about periods with ubiquitous and gender-neutral adornment. The words “crazy, dirty bitch” reveal just a few facets of stigma that menstruators and uterus-havers face.

Crazy: Menstruators are told they’re crazy, and wait 10 years (on average) to receive medical care for common issues. Health care providers often write off symptoms, pain, and disability as “normal.”
Dirty: Menstruators across the globe are denied resources for basic period hygiene, yet the public health concern remains taboo and shameful.

Bitch: Menstruators are assumed to be female, and thus subject to misogyny. Not all menstruators are women, and not all women menstruate. Brooches emphasize the gender neutrality of menstruating and enable non-menstruators to show solidarity with period-havers!

Menstruatin' Rodeo

Menstruatin' Rodeo is a performance and participatory artwork wherein Mary plays part camp counselor, part rodeo clown who is hell set on walkin' her cowpokes through the early years of menstruation. Inspired by Mary's lived experience as a young menstruator with endometriosis, non-menstruating participants compete in a variety of feats. Each team of participants is paired with an experienced menstruator because, just like with craft, we do not go it alone, but are guided by the experiences of our teachers. The result is a half-hour relay-race-of-sorts for up to 25 participants.