Anna Isaak

Subterranean Aspirations, 2007
Lost and Found at the Cabot Mill, 2009

This work purports to tell the story – through found and fabricated objects - of a young adult woman from the Midwest who moves from a Kansas farm to Maine in 1942 to seek an industrial wartime job and finds work and identity as a welder on the Liberty Ships at the yards of South Portland. After the war's end, she stays in Maine and with her newfound skills and confidence she attempts to build a racing car in order to return to the Midwest as person of equality, and with a new identity as a dirt track racing car owner and driver. The installation proposes that post-war American cultural realities and notions of gender roles would not permit her to realize this dream.

This work has shown at Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in Portland, Maine, and the Coleman-Burke Gallery in Brunswick, Maine, respectively.