Ann Callen - With Everything That’s Going on…

Ann's recent work is about contemporary society's expectations of people in their gender roles,but her particular focus is on women and the struggles they endure in a world that still lacks equity and equality. Her work responds to the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, expectations of gender roles; dealing with domesticity, body image, workplace power struggles, and violence against women. Ann explores these social constructs and constrictions through the concept of 'boxes and labels'. To counteract this limiting aspect, she focuses on surface treatment and distorts a standardized box label with words that echo words of conditioning received starting at a young age. Showing how the standardization and commercialization of the common box must be overridden to find one's voice. By reacting to those oppressive verbal labels and the confinements of being put into a box in a figurative sense, she engages the audience to experience the words meant to have power or control. Satirizing the original standard text in ways that challenge and rewrite the labels she creates in her work forces the audience into an intimate space to deal with or fit into these 'social norms'. She primarily uses screen and relief printing to express herself but also draws, collages, and plays with photography and ceramics.

Ann has 25 years of experience as a graphic designer and eleven years as a director of a creative shop. She is a recent empty-nester with three adult children. She loves her plants, pets, visiting art galleries and museums, and attending live music. She received her B.F.A .in Graphic Design (1999) and M.F.A. in Studio Art (2022) both from West Texas A&M University.