Emma Magidson, Tyler McManus, and hailey nathel formed the gadget_gurls artist collective out of the desire to diligently explore their compulsion to make, play, and collaborate. They hope to empower each other and their community to find a sense of realness, brilliance, and empathy in the depths of a hyper-curated world. They are driven by their mutual desire to find connections amongst the seemingly disparate. With efforts often playful and humorous, the gadget_gurls strive to elicit empathy by confronting the challenges and complexities that they face in modern daily life.
Emma Magidson is a Chicago based designer interested in the intersection of design and architecture. She works as a graphic designer at Studio Blue and as an exhibition designer at the Chicago Design Museum. Emma holds a BFA in communication design and a minor in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.
In her free time Emma loves not having any free time. She is often completely overcommitted because she has a lot of interests (re is working 3 jobs just 4 funzies). When she is not overcommitted, she is laying on her back on the floor for the entire day. She considers herself a dual procrastination / actualization expert. She is horribly irritable when over-exerting herself physically. In all seriousness, Emma is a skilled editor and curator, always knowing what MUST stay and what’s gotta go.
Whether it be working on small-scale books or large-scale museum spaces, Emma has a way of transforming the seemingly mundane into inclusive, experiential, and interactive spaces to be shared by all. Emma is always seeking new and creative opportunities/projects to get involved in. Please say hey/give a holler. Lol.
Tyler McManus is a designer and collaborative thinker living in St. Louis working as an urban farmer. She loves making things! (The exclamation point makes this sound kind of disingenuous but it’s true.) Tyler is a recent graduate of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed a B.F.A with a major in Communication Design in the spring of 2017.
Tyler is a true believer that little moments are special and always adds an incredible grace to the projects she works on. Her attention to detail allows her to foster growth of all creatures human, flora, or other. She has one roommate, one cat, and many a plant that she is currently raising all on her own. Tyler is literally ~foster the people~ whatever that means. Tyler likes experimenting with anything she finds in her nearby surroundings. Anything she can get her hands on is up for grabs--stay alert. Tyler is currently looking for a job in St. Louis, New York, or elsewhere. Please help her.
hailey nathel is a fine artist and recently certified yoga instructor living and working on Long Island, NY. She received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 with a concentration in Painting and a second major in Psychological and Brain Sciences. Art has become not only a part of her daily practice but also a personalized philosophy and belief system:
The mind-body is not separate just as artist and Art are not separate entities either. Because the human subject is tied to the Art object, rather than striving for perfection, a more fruitful approach to artmaking is one that utilizes imperfection to its advantage. hailey subverts what is thought of as error by working with the ‘glitch’ which acts as a transgressive image when viewed and celebrated as beauty rather than mistake. The glitch functions as a symbol of embracing imperfection by leveraging mishap as a catalyst for experimentation and re/invention. hailey also works with ‘profile on platform’ which serves as a curatorial space, one of agency, access, and opportunity, to encourage the sharing of word/image juxtapositions of our selfiest selves. In this way, she believes it is possible to hyper-curate a profile to such an extreme to the point of epitomizing the self as an empathy generator. From digital platform to analog substrate, hailey’s body of work demonstrates how a painting, photography, poetry, printmaking, and painting (dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge) practice can collapse into various combinations in an effort to combat conformity, support radical subjectivity, and work towards transgressive image(s), as a means of creating... a more just world.
Emma Magidson is a Chicago based designer interested in the intersection of design and architecture. She works as a graphic designer at Studio Blue and as an exhibition designer at the Chicago Design Museum. Emma holds a BFA in communication design and a minor in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.
In her free time Emma loves not having any free time. She is often completely overcommitted because she has a lot of interests (re is working 3 jobs just 4 funzies). When she is not overcommitted, she is laying on her back on the floor for the entire day. She considers herself a dual procrastination / actualization expert. She is horribly irritable when over-exerting herself physically. In all seriousness, Emma is a skilled editor and curator, always knowing what MUST stay and what’s gotta go.
Whether it be working on small-scale books or large-scale museum spaces, Emma has a way of transforming the seemingly mundane into inclusive, experiential, and interactive spaces to be shared by all. Emma is always seeking new and creative opportunities/projects to get involved in. Please say hey/give a holler. Lol.
Tyler McManus is a designer and collaborative thinker living in St. Louis working as an urban farmer. She loves making things! (The exclamation point makes this sound kind of disingenuous but it’s true.) Tyler is a recent graduate of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed a B.F.A with a major in Communication Design in the spring of 2017.
Tyler is a true believer that little moments are special and always adds an incredible grace to the projects she works on. Her attention to detail allows her to foster growth of all creatures human, flora, or other. She has one roommate, one cat, and many a plant that she is currently raising all on her own. Tyler is literally ~foster the people~ whatever that means. Tyler likes experimenting with anything she finds in her nearby surroundings. Anything she can get her hands on is up for grabs--stay alert. Tyler is currently looking for a job in St. Louis, New York, or elsewhere. Please help her.
hailey nathel is a fine artist and recently certified yoga instructor living and working on Long Island, NY. She received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 with a concentration in Painting and a second major in Psychological and Brain Sciences. Art has become not only a part of her daily practice but also a personalized philosophy and belief system:
The mind-body is not separate just as artist and Art are not separate entities either. Because the human subject is tied to the Art object, rather than striving for perfection, a more fruitful approach to artmaking is one that utilizes imperfection to its advantage. hailey subverts what is thought of as error by working with the ‘glitch’ which acts as a transgressive image when viewed and celebrated as beauty rather than mistake. The glitch functions as a symbol of embracing imperfection by leveraging mishap as a catalyst for experimentation and re/invention. hailey also works with ‘profile on platform’ which serves as a curatorial space, one of agency, access, and opportunity, to encourage the sharing of word/image juxtapositions of our selfiest selves. In this way, she believes it is possible to hyper-curate a profile to such an extreme to the point of epitomizing the self as an empathy generator. From digital platform to analog substrate, hailey’s body of work demonstrates how a painting, photography, poetry, printmaking, and painting (dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge) practice can collapse into various combinations in an effort to combat conformity, support radical subjectivity, and work towards transgressive image(s), as a means of creating... a more just world.
