The Bathroom

The Bathroom (2025, acrylic on wallboard) was a commission for the Trout Museum of Art’s final exhibition in its downtown Appleton building — A Creative Place: Art from Northeastern Wisconsin 1940 to Present. Erin LaBonte and I were invited to paint a museum bathroom, and spent sixteen hours in it. There was no brief beyond the room itself; the concept was entirely ours.

We made a dense, black-and-white, ink-style piece across the walls and the ceiling — a meditation on privacy, surveillance, and the body. A panopticon eye anchors the left wall. Two figures opposite cover their eyes and ears, the gesture of the three monkeys inverted. The wall label, which we wrote ourselves, named the Fourteenth Amendment by name.

The museum opened the work with a content warning — the only piece in the show to receive one — an age recommendation, and a sign directing visitors to alternate restrooms. Our statement framed the themes as a meditation on a constitutional right; the museum’s warning framed them as a hazard. Same words, opposite registers.

The full account — what was made, what was asked of us afterward, and what it revealed about how regional institutions handle work that asks something of their donors — is in the essay You Did Not Listen.