Fall 2025 News

September 18, 2025September 18, 2025 | admin

Dear colleagues, friends and family,

I’m trying to keep this missive brief, in contrast to last year’s. The intervening 12 months have been pretty awful in multiple ways, yet I continue to engage with the world, pretending there will be a future that makes some kind of sense.

Bad news first. Mid-June marked a year since my hand surgery and it’s now clear: I’m not going to get any better. Part of me still wants to hope that in the future I might be able to work more than 3 hours a day without it triggering a complete physical breakdown, but I can’t count on that and need to start living within these new limitations. It’s a lot to process, especially because there will never be any recompense for what’s been lost.

The good news is that I still managed/am managing to do things:

Through the end of October, I’m an artist-in-residence at Stove Works in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I’m working to complete the strip club floorplan drawings I began in L.A. 2 years ago. I’m excited about where these are going (toward installation, using UV reactive inks, concept sketch above), and I’m looking for opportunities to exhibit these starting in 2026.
At the beginning of the year, I taught b&w darkroom-based photo for the first time in 25-years (!) at Saint Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus. It was a joy, despite throwing out my back by looking at students’ work prints. I’ve missed teaching.
I completed a set of drawings with my left hand conceptualized with the community collaborARTive, a community art project led by con christeson in which I’ve been participating since shortly after moving to Saint Louis.
I was juried into the Cleveland Institute of Art alumni show again! Juror Maria Seda-Reeder chose to include The GRIND. This was particularly meaningful for me, since my time at CIA was very much a skirmish in the “feminist sex wars“, and I still carry a lot of damage from that.

I’m also launching a Patreon specifically to support a new body of text-based work. I’ll be sending a more detailed email in October (two emails in one year!), but I’ve already posted information for the curious.

As always, I love to receive your replies and hear your thoughts.

Best wishes,

Monica

Fall 2024 News

October 8, 2024October 18, 2024 | admin

Dear friends, colleagues and family,
Though leaves are starting to change color, it’s still quite warm in Saint Louis. This will be my first full autumn in the city, and I’m looking forward to what should be an extended version of the season here compared to what I’d experience in Minneapolis.

This newsletter feels a bit like taking inventory of the last year. I always feel like I could be doing more, even in the midst of a major health crisis, apparently. But there has been a bit going on, and this letter is longer than average, so I’m introducing the innovation of hyperlinked headings, if you want to skip to a particular section: hand update, building update, artwork update, closing.

Artwork Update
At my residency last fall in Santa Monica at the 18th Street Arts Center, I completed a set of floorplans drawn from memory of the strip clubs I worked at as a teenager. I recorded an audio narration of my process of remembering for each one and plan to create additional layers by going back to revisit each drawing/recording. For an open studio, I took one floorplan and redrew it on the floor of my space with the audio playing through speakers. This was quite effective, and I’m hoping to exhibit a further stage of it in the next year. You can get a glimpse in this video.

While in California, I was also excited to have a complete set of Issues 1 through 3 of The GRIND acquired by Los Angeles Contemporary Archives Thanks to Kayla Tange for making this connection!

This summer, the wall-mounted version of “Conduit, Caretaker, Anchor, Catalyst” was included in the Cleveland Institute of Art alumni exhibition, “Are We There Yet?”, juried by Magdalena Moskalewicz. This thrilled me because they never seem to print my alumni notes when I send them in, so it was nice to receive some acknowledgement in that context.

Earlier this year I was interviewed by Instruments of Memory, a curatorial project that focuses on memory and history in the work of women artists. I always appreciate the chance to discuss my work and see it through someone else’s eyes. Many thanks to curator Claudia Pretelin for this opportunity and Sarah E. Webb for the thoughtful questions.

Building Update
Progress has been slow, and I’m acclimating myself to this being a lifelong project. Tuckpointing continues on the brick exterior. In spring, we had the mansard roof repaired as part of that process. Matt was able to salvage slate tile from a building across the street, so now we’ve restored the historic appearance to that part of the facade. As you can see in the photos, it’s quite handsome.

On the interior, we’re in the middle of getting functional bathrooms on the upper floors. This is major, exciting stuff as it’s one of the biggest hurdles to occupancy. I’ve been lucky to find gorgeous fixtures at Refab and Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore for cheap. ReStore also has hundreds of boxes of linoleum-look tile like I want for the kitchen. So glad to be saving money somewhere on this work.

Hand Update
The injury to my C8 nerve and right hand continues to dominate my life. Last fall, things seemed on schedule for healing, but by winter it was clear something was wrong. I was referred to a specialist, who diagnosed a compression of the ulnar nerve at Guyon’s canal in my right wrist. This is something called ‘double crush’, a sort of cascade effect where a situation that may never have developed to a tipping point otherwise is triggered by another injury. After a serious setback in March, I finally had surgery on my wrist on June 18 to release the compression. The hope was that positive effects would be rather immediate. They weren’t.

Now, with occupational therapy and physical therapy—thanks to a Rauschenberg Medical Emergency Grant—I’ve had some improvements in strength, mobility and pain levels. I finally feel recovered from the surgery itself and am doing slightly better than I did a year ago. I was recently told, as I expected, that my hand will never be the same, but my OT is optimistic for more improvement. Right now, I’m just enjoying renewed levels of energy and less debilitation.

Finally, as you might guess, I’ve not been able to work for pay for over a year and a half, now. Please consider purchasing some of my printed works to alleviate my financial pain. Birchwood Palace Industries carries both “Three Seasons”, my illustrated rumination on the Midwestern porch, and “Conduit, Caretaker, Anchor, Catalyst”, the folio diagramming relationships in participatory projects. I will also be posting works for sale on Instagram in the coming months.I’m sending you all a particularly heartfelt thanks for your attention this time around. As always, please drop me a line to let me know how and what you are doing. I’m always curious to hear from you.

Until next time!
Monica

Fall 2023 News

October 19, 2023October 19, 2023 | admin

Dear friends, colleagues and family,
It’s been almost a year since my last newsletter. To say that 2023 has been a mixed bag is using overly polite language.

Das Fundbuero — Civic Lessons closed on February 26th. The museum estimates 30,000 to 40,000 visitors to the show. If even 1% of these people interacted with the work, I’m thrilled, and they did if the wear on the record collection and missing books are any indication. Unfortunately, there was no published writing about the show. Minneapolis has very few arts writers, and critical discourse is virtually non-existent there. You can, however, see many images of the show on my website and develop your own analysis.

On February 1st, I suffered a serious injury during a medical procedure that has impaired use of my dominant hand. For months, all I could do was lay on the couch, and I had to have many basic tasks done for me. I thought about watching all the horror movies about artists and their hands (The Hands of Orlac (1924), Mad Love, The Hands of Orlac (1960), Hands of a Stranger, The Beast with Five Fingers and The Hand), but at the time my impairment was so severe and the future so uncertain, that I could not muster the appropriate level of irony for it. I’m happy to report that I can again write, cut my own food and draw in a rudimentary fashion, but I still don’t quite have the ironic distance for a hand-themed movie marathon. Full recovery, if it happens, will take until at least February 2024.

Despite this handicap, The GRIND Issue 3 was published in May. An editorial committee (formed through an open call) selected visual artwork and writing from dancers across the US as well as Canada and New Zealand. Designer Lucia Weilein provided a beautiful new twist on the old visual identity. And thanks to generous grant funding and reasonable printing costs, we were able to hold the price at $10 a copy—you can get yours at The Feminist Strip Club’s Etsy store.

On May 1st, my partner Matt Fritts and I closed on a three-story brick building built in 1895 in St. Louis, Missouri. We moved to the city June 1st. The intent is to live on the second and third floors and to rehabilitate the first floor to a storefront that I will use as my studio and community art space. The building needs significant work, more than was revealed in the initial inspection. Now I know why they say not to make life-changing decisions when you’re on the medications I am to control the pain in my hand. But Matt and I are both excited to live in a place where we feel like we can truly become part of the neighborhood and express our values through our living space.

Since September, I have been an artist in residence at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, California. I am at the beginning of new work inspired by my experiences with The Feminist Strip Club and the issues around sexuality, transactional and reciprocal relationships and femme identity that have come up with them. I’ve been fortunate to meet many amazing artists here who are also working with similar themes. I have about 5 more weeks before I return to St. Louis, where I plan to continue working in the warm glow of an electric heater on the unfinished second floor of our building.

Finally, I’ve started an Instagram account on which I’ve been posting work-in-progress and updates on the rehab work on our building. I chose the very creative handle of monicasheetsartist

I’m not going to bother hoping that 2024 is better—at least not out loud.
With best wishes,
Monica

Winter 2022 News

December 12, 2022 | admin

Dear friends, colleagues and family,

I know many people share my experience of feeling like the speed of everything ratcheted back up in 2022. This after so many declarations that we’d learned to take things more slowly over the past two years. Demands on our time and attention seem higher than ever and any hope of a more humane world seems ever more out of reach. Despite this, I’m feeling better than I have in years, which I can only attribute to the so-called U curve of happiness.

Installation view of Das Fundbuero -- Civics Lessons at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

I spent the majority of this year preparing for a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Das Fundbuero — Civics Lessons brings together the archive and documentation from Fundbuero projects in Germany with works I’ve made since returning to the US that reflect on participatory processes. The show is up until February 26. Please visit if you are in town—I’m happy to meet you there for discussion. I’ll send a short notice again when photos and dates for programming are available.

Appearing in conjunction with the exhibition is a new book. Conduit, Caretaker, Anchor, Catalyst: an incomplete taxonomy of relationships between artwork, artist, participant and audience is a set of 24 drawings that diagram relationships I experienced in Das Fundbuero from 2007-2014. Published by and available for purchase from Birchwood Palace Industries.

Earlier in the year, I was surprised to find the Tweed Museum at the Univ. of Minnesota Duluth was hosting an exhibition of experimental art from the late GDR. It was an amazing show curated by Sara Blaylock and Sarah James. You can read my review of Anti-Social Art: Experimental Practices in Late East Germany at ARTMargins online.

I always endeavor to make the end of the year a quiet, meditative time for reflection. If that’s your bag, too, here’s hoping you can carve out the space for it. If the holiday hustle and bustle are more your thing, I hope you find time to enjoy that.

Best Wishes for the New Year,
Monica

PS Issue 3 of The GRIND will be appearing in spring next year, so I’m trying to clear out inventory of Issue 2. Use the code BACK40 at The Feminist Strip Club’s Etsy shop for 40% off until January 31, 2023. Makes a great stocking stuffer!

Summer 2021 News

June 18, 2021 | admin

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Family,

I find writing a newsletter to be a strange exercise under normal circumstances, and it feels doubly bizarre these days. I worry that if I comment on recent events that it will seem as if I’m trying to be profound, and if I don’t that I am contributing to the cultural amnesia that is the US’s hallmark. The third option seems to be vague, anodyne-sounding hopes that people are “doing as well as possible during all this”, which feels like trivialization of ongoing crises.

I’ve been fortunate during the last 15 months. I’ve had personal and professional upheavals and anxiety, but my closest circle has been relatively lightly touched by tragedy from COVID-19. I don’t take this for granted, and I know this is not the case for many of you.

As a white person living in Minneapolis, it’s also difficult to find adequate words to address the epidemic of police violence here. In our metro area, there has been at least one extrajudicial killing of a Black man by law enforcement each year since I moved back here from Germany in 2014, each time triggering protests, community meetings and re-evaluations of police procedure. The brutality of George Floyd’s murder last year by Officer Derek Chauvin (warning: graphic imagery) has created a tipping point where the abolition of police—something that never would have seemed feasible in my youth, or even 5 years ago—is now part of mainstream discussion. I try to contribute to moving that discussion forward where and how I can, but perpetually come up short. Here’s one local organization that’s doing the hard work.

So I am left trying to engage with the world as best I can from my position, which is always changing in relationship to context. Often the best way still seems to be through art—to create room for the constant ambiguity and uncertainty that is, for me, endemic to being human. Part of my good luck has been to have the time during this last year to bring a few projects to completion, and I’m writing to share those with you.

First is an illustrated essay in booklet form. Entitled “Three Seasons”, it is a subjective look at porches and how they might help or hinder neighborhood relations. This work has its origins in my return to Minneapolis, when the unfriendly façades of the enclosed porches of the vernacular architecture seemed to be reflecting the social challenges of reintegrating into a fairly closed culture. Many thanks to Andy Sturdevant of Birchwood Palace Industries for helping bring this little guy into physical form.

Second is another print-based project, Issue 2 of The GRIND from The Feminist Strip Club. The FSC, a collaborative project begun during my residency in 2019 at the Weisman Art Museum, is a group of current and former erotic dancers who examine the present conditions of and utopian visions for stripping.

Like so many others, our activities and plans were turned upside down by the pandemic. Uncertain access to unemployment insurance, health concerns, job insecurity from strip clubs closing and re-opening and closing again were existential crises for members. But by the second half of 2020, members wanted to pick back up and share what they’d been through. Now, a year after it was originally planned, Issue 2 is available for purchase. Naturally the pandemic influenced the content of this issue, including expanding previously drafted articles about traveling for work and writing completely new ones about switching to online sources of income. But we also found some time and space for more visionary content like self-care tips for dancers and imagining future transfeminist technologies. And though we couldn’t have the big photoshoot we’d planned, we still found some ways to include dancer photos, art and images.

orange, pink, brown and off-white dots are arranged in a diamond pattern with curved, colored lines connecting them in various configurations I’ve also been working on a series of drawings that diagram various relationships between artist, participant, artwork and audience as I experienced them in the project Das Fundbuero. I’m hoping to complete it as a printed multiple (apparently this is my new medium) by the end of 2021.

I do sincerely hope each of you are well, and I’d love to hear from you, too. I still hold out hope that we can learn new, better ways of being from our experiences in the pandemic, so if you’re looking for someone to share your resistance against “going back to normal”, I’m here for that.

Best Wishes,
Monica