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.
