Dawline’s story

Dawline is a teaching artist. In addition to her own studio practice, she has taught art to TK-5 at an Oakland public school — that’s 460 kids ranging in age from 4 to 11 years old — taught at nonprofits, to adults with disabilities, private lessons, and held many volunteer positions besides. At one point she was juggling multiple paid gigs and still finding time to volunteer with a nonprofit that pairs kid authors with grown-up illustrators to publish their first books.

Volunteerism can be considered caretaking of the larger community and statistically falls disproportionately to women. In fact, 30.1% of women who work full-time also find the time to volunteer in comparison to just 23.8% of men. ¹

In Dawline’s sculpture, the heavy golf-leafed sacks represent her paid work hours, and the empty silver-leafed sacks represent her unpaid work hours, their contents uncollected on the ground. Spaces in the array represent waking hours when Dawline was doing anything other than working.

¹ Priceonomics, The Altruism Gender Gap (2017)