The pop-up exhibition was comprised of thirteen new pieces and six older works in the theme of fundamental concepts from the economics discipline. Early works focus on the beauty inherent in economics graphs while recent works juxtapose traditional economics with “feminine” treatments such as colors, ruffles, and home crafts.
The new pieces are divided into five mini-studies of two or three works each. A study is a collection of pieces where the artist explores a technique, material, subject, etc., sometimes in preparation for creating a single piece and sometimes becoming a series themselves.
This study presents three major macroeconomic fundamentals – growth, inflation, and unemployment – in a floral motif. Each concept influences your daily life choices, sometimes being top of mind and sometimes fading into the background.
Gross Domestic Product is a way to measure the size of the economy, as measured by a dollar value.
It is measured as the sum of its components: Consumption (what consumers spend), Investment (business investment and inventories and new homes), Government (spending by all levels of government), and Net Exports (EXports minus IMports, capturing the value of what is sold abroad minus what we buy from abroad). For short, Gross Domestic Product is often represented by GDP or by Y.
This study explores the beauty inherent in the shapes of the letters themselves.
The dynamics of economy-wide consumption and production changes are depicted in this study: 1) low inflation with positive growth 2) a contraction with significant inflation 3) tolerable inflation with positive growth.
Embellishments with ribbon and beads, along with the color palette, are meant to evoke the skilled craftswork that goes into a handmade quilt – though beautiful home crafts are not counted in the value of the economy.
These pieces reflect the abundance of economic data published daily, and the clandestine-esque embargos on premature release.
The horizontal piece shows the federal funds rate target, by month, from 1-1-00 through 9-1-22.
Annual Real GDP growth for 2000 through 2021 is depicted in the square piece.
Each work is unfinished, leaving room for the final 2022 data to be incorporated.
"Ransom" highlights the sentiment that many workers feel they are stuck in their jobs but can’t make a change due to necessities like health insurance. Additionally, much important human work is unpaid (e.g., caregiving, emotional labor, volunteering) and falls to women to do.
"Human" offers an expansive take on the concept of human capital. Imperfect lettering in courier new font style over fabric reminiscent of tractor feed paper contrasts with feminine and handicraft style emphasis of the word “human”.
An Edgeworth box is used to analyze potential trades between two people. The contract curve and indifference curves are visible.
The marginal gains from insurance depend on the horizontal difference between expected utility and the utility under certainty.
A single producer enjoys the price markup over the intersection of marginal revenue and marginal cost.
A sales tax raises the price for consumers, lowers the take-home price for sellers, and causes deadweight loss.
Tariffs raise the domestic price above the prevailing price in the world market. They benefit or harm different parties unequally and cause overall deadweight loss.
A firm earning short run profits as shown by the area between the price and production cost.