HORSE
“how to” crochet a bike in 8 easy steps!
The bicycle is a physical object. A bicycle’s dimensions and materials enable and shape the experience of the rider. As people perform on bicycles, bicycles perform on people, extending muscular action and forcing people to make subtle adjustments that may barely rise to consciousness. This bike allows for rest and softness in it’s own complexity.
On view at Art180 in Richmond, April 2025
Fiona and Ella Play a Game of Chess
The recorded chess game was played and stamped out by hand to transcribe the game in real-time using a small rubber stamp chess set. The book, made with Fiona McMichael was a testament to our shared infatuation with the game during that time and contains both of our writings interspersed throughout the match. Our stories take you from New York to Amsterdam, where we played the game at a beginner level. Learning new techniques from friends and strangers, we gained the understanding that for us, chess may be more about the time we spend together than our gameplay. Fortunately, our beginner skills did not stop us from spending many hours stamping, wiping ink, perfecting our stamping pressure to show you our commentary and musings on the timeless game we all know and ….
Game play and writing by Fiona and Ella
Printed by Preshrunk Press October 2023
Stamps by Casey’s Rubber Stamps
expansive dreams
This publication shares my experiences existing among queer people in Richmond, VA. I shared this work dressed up and as the fictional cowgirl, “Sporty Ponni,” a character created by Ane Barstand Solvang that greatly influenced this work. After realizing that doing what was expected of her was never going to get her what she wanted, the character, Sporty Ponni ran away from the life society was presenting her with to live in the woods with her fictional horse. I transformed my bicycle into a horse with a large paper mache head and tail, and threw the publication from my bike, acting as my own paperboy. I took images of myself and my friends and collaged them into a story with a poetic narrative about the inherent queerness of cowboys in history and media.
expansive dreams transcript
Nostalgia and Dreams
Generate and Sow
Space Outside Institution
Maintenance Art
Social Practice
The Female Voice + Queerness
Workhorse
Search for New Spaces
Fanciful Lies, Performance, Pleasure
Emotional Landscape
Collective Dreams
Community
Antinormative Discourse
Innuendo, Gossip, Fleeting Moments
Ephemera
Power
Rigor, Grit, Survival Through Making
Heuristic
American Identity
Spiritual Beings
Gender Roles
Mass Consciousness
Retreat Into Nature
Where is my space
That has never been touched
Not infected by the poisons
Of hatred and rage
My own too.
Where only animals live
This order: nature, neutrality, balance
It’s never been told anything, ever.
Who would I have been
If I had never been told anything.
If I existed in nature, on instinct.
Maybe i’d be evil, but
Spectrums.
The Cowboy is inherently queer.
The Cowboy is an Icon.
A Man who embodies the freedom
And the manliness
We want to see in this country!!
How many little cowboys roam
The streets on halloween?
I think there’s a lot..
Do they like the fantasy of it
Or?
Westward Expansion
The great unknown
The Lone Ranger
Dressed in leather
Leaving home on an adventure
No kids
No wife
Maybe out there
In the dust
And the leather
And the horses and ropes
The lone ranger will find
The nuclear family
His country wants for him
Or maybe
He will encounter more cowboys
Because a wife
Would be the end
Of his adventure.
I challenge you to a duel.
Meet me at sundown.
What if
The space out there
With the cactus
And the rocks, maybe.
The places that people don’t usually come across by accident.
The places devoid of what we see as normal life
Is the space we need
A void
A pond
An ecosystem of our own
An escape
Just like the cowboy
Maybe this is
My space
That is away from everything
My place in nature
Without the sounds and sights of
The Grid
My most consistent thought,
Unfortunately,
The beginning
And end
To any story in our reality
And in the end of that, all it really is,
Is,
The absolute and total control placed on any non man in our society to uphold and perform a role to fit into a society that is systematically through cruelty and death madee the white cis man into god. They forged the least tactile object I can describe. An eyedrop? It happens, then it’s gone, but you can feel it and you know it’s there. Doing something.
It’s been built over hundreds of years,
And it’s here for us.
In my perfect void
I love all the minds around me
We exist to make ourselves
And each other
feel
It’s a substance not powered by money
But held together with my will,
The portals we create when those dreams
Spark making
And create queer joy
When I am able to bring minds I love together into a room
Emotions can become universal
We are a mass of similar ideas and
Care
I want to show you my love in my way
It’s my dream
My portal
Come in
It’s sundown
To escape the escape.
The cowboy inside the Cowboy.
I’m trying to figure out my abstract analogies.
Can you see?
Into my world?
CARE
All the pictures came from eden. I hope this was a window into my current thoughts and some sort of exploration of self and community. I also want to mention Sporty Ponni, an illustrated book by Ane Barstad Solvang what has become very important to for me recently when it comes to the work I want to create and how I am able to explore themes. Cowboys and related ephemera have become a rabbit hole but also a framework for my work. It’s also a new context to explore my own life, I think.
Queer joy is crafted in homes and in nature and the spaces that feel like both those things at once.
If you saw me on the horse bike, thank you. If you didn’t, thank you.
At this point, I have yet to perform, and can tell you now, I don’t have a plan or know what the performance even means. I dont know if I’m creating a space or breaking it. My plan is no plan. The reaction will be my catalyst for whatever happens next. My wild west needs to reclaim roads and include people. I want to get people on bikes. I want to nourish. I want my care to spread and challenge and evolve
I love ur love!
Goodnight.
various book binding processes
Assorted Preshrunk Press Zines
1. Grow Your Own Tomato, Informative zine with step-by-step instructions to crochet a tomato, fast and easy. Pattern designed by Eden Larkin for Ella’s Sunday Night Dinner, Published May 2024
2. Bike Frames From the Internet, Collection of odd bike frames found for sale on alibaba.com. Exploratory zine that was used as precedent for a bike frame typeface. Published March 2023.
3. 6 Ways to Use a Baseball Bat, How many ways can YOU use a baseball bat? Published October 2023
Anthropocene
Group Publication, personal spreads and container design, December 2022
HORSE February 2023, 2. FIONA & ELLA PLAY A GAME OF CHESS October 2023, with Fiona McMichael @pre__shrunk, 3. expansive dreams December 2022, 4. various bookbinding processes, 5. ella for preshrunk zines, 6. Anthropocene December 2021, 7. the 20 foot portfolio December 2022