closerlook Portfolio

Hello, Ms. Jaworek, Ms. Coakes, et al. at closerlook! Thank you for this opportunity to present some of my writing samples, and for taking the time to review my candidacy. I've included several clips from my 15 months at Groupon, as well as some professional art writing I've done to demonstrate my range across widely disparate subject matter and directives.

Live Groupon clips

Speculative Groupon work

Art writing across several platforms

Nonprofit Grant Writing

Writing for an Exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center

Over the last several years, I've done quite a bit of writing for visual artist Matthew Woodward, including grant and exhibition proposals, project outlines, and artist statements and essays. Most recently, I wrote all the materials that accompanied a solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center's Michigan Avenue Galleries, View from the Birth Day, which ran from April 7 to July 15 of this year, and was the result of a successful proposal I also wrote. A medium-length version of the statement appears in the photograph above, which was blown up and mounted on the gallery wall, and an abbreviated version appeared on the Cultural Center's events site. The full body of the essay appears below, for the sake of comparison.

********

Louis Sullivan believed that the psychic pressures of a particular age were embodied in its buildings. American architecture, Sullivan thought, suffered from generations of imitative European colonial forms that lacked the indigenous structures and symbols of an autonomous architectural school. Because of this, it became his directive to mark a juncture where American Architecture separated itself from European classicism, abolishing imitation, and beginning anew with an authentic North American style. This movement proved to be controversial among Beaux-Arts traditionalists but wildly influential nonetheless--so influential that it wasn’t long before an entire industry of facsimile sprang up, dedicated to the mass production and widespread mail-order distribution of inexpensive, prefabricated Sullivan-esque architectural embellishments.

This industry of replication eventually put Sullivan out of business completely.

My new body of work is a reaction to the Chicago Cultural Center’s 2010 exhibition Louis Sullivan’s Idea, inspired by these Sullivan-esque designs and the larger industry of mass-produced architectural embellishment that surrounds them. The work is crafted using the reductive drawing method, beginning not with blank paper or canvas but with a dark surface ground created using such materials as graphite, dirt, grease, and spackle. The light of an object is then applied to the surface by removing the ground using an eraser or sandpaper, working, erasing, and re-working the spaces that are created again and again. By using repurposed construction and industrial materials, the work is an act of rethinking the material aspects and contextual relevance of the Edifice. The pieces’ large scale restores to these mass-produced elements the status of monument native to the Edifice, but, in this context, they become a monument to the efficiently made, speedily distributed, and uniform--a uniformity which defies geography, geology, and philosophy, and which defines a nonclassical American-ness that is completely new and lies outside the classical Edifice.

In Victor Hugo’s 1831 epic The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Claude Frollo famously prophesied that “the book will kill the edifice,” that the machined page would supplant the monumental structure as the great record of human thought. Frank Lloyd Wright in his 1901 treatise The Art and Craft of the Machine acknowledged the power of the machined page, but, unlike Frollo, saw it as a beacon of hope, a weapon that could defeat a meaningless mass-produced repetition of classical ideals and deliver 20th-century architecture from “complete, broadcast degradation of every type and form sacred to the art of old,” a mechanically reproduced and therefore philosophically bereft neoclassicism. That the machine, with its promise of canonizing these new American ideals in print and in steel, would immediately co-opt and syndicate this new American Edifice, just as it had with the European, was not anticipated: Sullivan’s own designs, like the classical designs he and Wright had railed against, were quickly knocked off, mechanically reproduced, and widely disseminated via mail-order architectural distributors.

It appears, then, that Claude Frollo was right: both systems, mechanical reproduction and mail-order distribution, originate with the page. Within the infrastructure of a staggeringly far-flung, publicly funded postal system, replicated architectural embellishments disperse just like the pages of a book--a book that millions now read, a book no longer a singularity, meticulously hand-copied by generation after generation of monks sequestered in a remote abbey. A national postal system serves literacy the way a sacred singularity never could; similarly, a mail-order building contradicts the classical Edifice in every way. The structure is divorced from any mode of deliberation and place on the part of its creator. The deliberation and place become arbitrary, with the user--not the creator--arbitrating design in an act of democratic reclamation. So, just as Sullivan searched for a democratic architecture that rejected empty replication of classical European ideals, he was driven out of business by a democratic mode of consumption.

This raises the questions: Through Sullivan’s loyalty to the architectural singularity, was he relying on outdated classical modes even as he attempted to leave them behind? Was he reaching, but just not far enough? Was the very idea of the Edifice, embodiment of the great spiritual and philosophical pressures of its time, a classical institution in and of itself, now completely irrelevant to American-ness?

It’s possible that the emergence of a mail-order architecture was itself the elusive valve Sullivan sought to turn, behind which the real psychic pressure of a young, industrial America pressed for release: the need to mass-produce and disseminate an independent national identity as cheaply, efficiently, and uniformly as possible. This need lies at the very core of America’s melting-pot ideals--the need for something easy to copy that could help make us all exactly the same. This body of work focuses on this mechanically reproduced architecture and the questions it raises with the intent its producers never brought to its manufacture.  

Published Work for Groupon

Groupon's editorial department could easily outnumber a small nation's army, and many, many people's red pens go into shaping each deal's content before it goes live on the site (that is, if the city planning department doesn't pull it for one of a million reasons first). Here are a few live deals that I contributed significant unaltered portions to.

I wrote 100% of the merchant profile for Nelly Spillane's, the entire last paragraph of the writeup section.

I also wrote 100% of this merchant profile for Super Spa.

I wrote 100% of this deal for The Original Retro Brand Apparel--that includes the deal and merchant descriptions as well as all of the microcopy, which is written to be used across multiple platforms. 

I contributed the In a Nutshell section microcopy as well as the introductory "humor lede" to this Trevi Nails writeup.

I wrote the humor lede for this Hidden Valley Animal Adventure deal, too. 

I've also written speculative work for training purposes at Groupon.

And, in addition to all that, I've written email subject lines and microcopy headers for literally thousands of deals, all within snug character limits and all adhering to strict styling guidelines.

Speculative Work

Although it doesn't appear published on the site, the work I have written for various training purposes at Groupon may offer a unique view of my skills--these pieces are untouched by the usual army of proofreaders, line editors, site administrators, and humor editors that usually have a hand in shaping every final product. My expertise as a Groupon copy editor ensures each one is 100% aligned with house guidelines and standards for accuracy, grammar and formatting guidelines, and legality. Having sole creative control over them means I've been able to keep the mandated signature "Groupon humor," which many readers find so disconcerting, to a tasteful minimum, while adhering to the company's style directives and proprietary terminology to paint a engaging experiential portrait using active language and vivid imagery. 

Merchant Profile: Watermarc

Merchant Profile: Brown's Brewing Company

Complete Writeup: Sea Kayak Georgia

Merchant Profile: Brown's Brewing Company

In 1993, the 150-year-old warehouse that now houses Brown’s Brewing Company stood gutted and empty on a scarce-visited street. But Garry and Kelly Brown had big plans for the structure—they envisioned not only the region’s first brewery restaurant but also a community hub that would become an integral part of the local economy and ecology. Today, Brown’s beers boast several World Beer Cup medalists among their ranks, including the Whiskey Porter aged in oak bourbon barrels and the Oatmeal Stout, which brought home the prestigious gold medal in 2004.

Both the brews and the menu of burgers, pastas, and seafood incorporate locally sourced ingredients whenever possible. Brown’s takes their commitment to sustainability even further by composting their kitchen scraps, recycling, and growing the bulk of their own hops in nearby Hoosick Falls, where they often host their annual Hopfest hop-picking celebration. Other community gatherings find a home in Brown’s private-event spaces, with the Trojan Room playing host to smaller get-togethers, and the two-story split-level Revolution Hall, designed in the spirit of a European beer hall, accommodating corporate conferences, wedding receptions, and celebratory Grendel roasts.

Complete Writeup: Sea Kayak Georgia

Title: $25 for a Half-Day Coastal-Marsh Kayak Tour from Sea Kayak Georgia (Up to $55 Value)

Micro for email digest (140-character hard maximum):  6,000 acres of dunes, beaches, and subtropical forests accessible only by boat beckon kayakers across Georgia's shimmering coastal estuaries

The ancient Phoenicians invented boats so they could expand their lucrative jetpack trade into distant lands. Explore terra incognito with today’s Groupon: for $25, you get a half-day kayak tour from Sea Kayak Georgia in Tybee Island (up to a $55 value).

Helmed by long-time paddlers Marsha Henson and Ronnie Kemp, Sea Kayak Georgia’s staff equips seafaring adventure-seekers with kayak and paddleboard rentals and guides them on excursions through Georgia’s pristine coastal-marsh islandscape. The half-day trip begins with an orientation, where chaperones brief advanced and beginning kayakers alike on the basics of kayak navigation and how to ask the way to the library in colloquial egret before transporting them to the launch site. Groups then set out across the calm, shimmering waters of Georgia’s coastal estuaries toward Little Tybee Island, a protected, uninhabited preserve reachable only by boat. There, hiking legs take over for paddling arms, exploring Little Tybee’s more than 6,000 acres of dunes, beaches, and subtropical forests home to myriad long-legged waterfowl, including the endangered wood stork, as well as bald eagles, tree frogs, and alligators. Upon their return to Sea Kayak Georgia, explorers can take advantage of the facility’s showers to rinse salt from their feet and any naturally occurring saltwater taffy from their hair.

Sea Kayak Georgia advises adventurers to wear clothes and shoes they don’t mind getting wet, and to bring along sunscreen, drinking water, and snacks. Half-day tours convene at 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. daily March–October, and at 10:30 a.m. November–February. Reservations re required, and can be made via telegram, telephone, or singing telegram sung over the telephone.

Merchant Profile: Watermarc

Watermarc’s executive chef and owner Marc Cohen boasts quite the culinary trophy shelf, having been accumulating accolades since his days as a member of Johnson & Wales University’s gold-medal-winning Chine des Rotisseurs Culinary Olympic team. Since then, he has dazzled both East and West Coast diners with his distinctive “modern American cuisine where seafood rules.” At Watermarc, Cohen seamlessly blends the cutting edge with the classic, featuring innovative items such as the seafood sausage appetizer with cannellini beans and fluffy mustard alongside such classic fare as the filet three ways, which showcases traditional oscar, wellington, and diane preparations in a trio more powerful than the Three Tenors covering “We Will Rock You.”

With an open-air dining room, outdoor patio, and second-story terrace opening onto Peppertree Lane, Watermarc offers a mix of environments where diners can relax with one of the eatery’s original cocktails or upwards of 100 wines. The Hot Lips martini burns with Smirnoff Passion vodka and sliced jalapeño tempered by frosty mango puree and grenadine; in the classic Hemingway, sophisticated Bacardi light rum and maraschino liqueur look on coolly as grapefruit and lime juices grapple with one another amid the rocky terrain of an icy tumbler. Watermarc opens its doors and, weather permitting, front windows for lunch, dinner, and late-night noshing, as well as for private parties on the terrace.