Veronica Ceci held two jobs after earning her master’s degree in printmaking in 2014. The first was as a master printer at Austin’s Flatbed Press, a role that involves the skilled use of printing presses, tools, materials, and processes to help other artists realize their visions. It’s a high-status position in the art world. The second job, which Ceci took when she realized that printing wouldn’t be enough to pay the bills, was decidedly less exalted: housekeeper at a day spa, doing endless laundry and cleaning treatment rooms, bathrooms, and shared spaces after patrons enjoyed their pricey massages and facials.
Both jobs were physically demanding and required attention to detail, but one garnered dramatically more respect. “I was really struck by how much the two positions had in common, but at one I was treated like, ‘Oh, well, you’re an important person,’ and at the other, I was an invisible person,” Ceci says.
Ceci’s reflections on the value we place on cleaning—women’s work, both stereotypically and in her personal experience—inform “Keeping House,” her exhibition that was on display at the Daugherty Arts Center in Austin in September and October. It’s a tidy, single-room show of fewer than 20 pieces that manages to make an impression. Ceci’s work features sharp social critique, an appealing use of materials, and a canny appropriation of ideas from art history with barbed feminist attitude.
