Jaymee Harvey Willms Artist

Fairy tales, biblical stories, and folk narratives inform both my female identity and the conceptual underpinning of my sculpture. I insert personal biases, memories, hopes, and fears into my work in order to satirize and expose cultural assumptions about gender, sexuality, and power. To this end, I make my sculptural work from quotidian objects that reference the visual language of my late-twentieth century Midwestern childhood. Dollhouse furniture. A bedpost. China cabinet. I manipulate these found objects in order to question their original purpose and the narratives they remind me of and to confront my own ambivalence toward power and commodified desire. The implicit suggestion of a happy ending in everyday American experience is suggested in retirement ads, children’s toys and clothing, television shows and movies. Disney regularly comes out with new princesses and remakes the old, drawing in old and new audiences alike and recreates believable versions of “Once Upon A Time” that