Jade Hoyer - "20 Ways of Saying No"

Hello, my name is Jade Hoyer, and I am an artist and educator based in Denver. For Word Play, My inspiration for the works I am exhibiting is labor and boundaries. As a woman and a professional, I find that we as women are socialized to be agreeable in the workplace, to put others before our own needs and to be accommodating to a fault. And I felt like this dynamic was exacerbated during COVID. Like many of us, my work moved to a remote format in the pandemic. And while I was, and I still am,  grateful to have a job, being remote felt like work all the time for me since home and work blurred together. So like many artists, I worked out my thoughts on this by making art.

 

This resulting series, “20 ways of saying no”, is in a nutshell, artwork about boundaries. I created 20 different prints that and all feature a floral background with text elements, sort of stereotypically female imagery. The text elements on each work form, let’s call it a range of “no’s”  It includes messages like “no, thank you,” and “hard pass” to my personal favorite, “Busy!”  My hope is that this series serves as a visual reminder for all of us, but especially those of us accustomed to accommodating others at the cost of ourselves, that “no” is a noble little word, a phrasing we can and should be okay with. 

Word Play
  1. Lares Feliciano - "Pa'lante"
  2. Lares Feliciano - "Querer Ser Libre es Empezar a Serlo"
  3. Jeff Page - "39 Facepalms"
  4. Trey Duvall - "Repeat That Again"
  5. Joe Norman - "Faith/Doubt"
  6. Masha Sha - "Homo Homini Lupus"
  7. Tom Mazzullo - "Type Improvisations" series
  8. Paula Gasparini-Santos - "As palavras são poderosas," "As palavras dão direção," and "Palavras criam sentido para a vida"
  9. Jade Hoyer - "20 Ways of Saying No"
  10. Cherish Marquez - "Slot of the Odds"