Mid-century advertising promised happiness, beauty, and success—if you bought the right products and played the right role.

Period Pieces grew out of my fascination with the magazines, mail-order catalogs, and newspaper advertisements of the 1950s and '60s. What first amused me—the exaggerated claims, perfect smiles, and relentless pursuit of beauty—gradually revealed something more profound. These ads didn't simply sell products; they sold expectations. They shaped how women were encouraged to see themselves and how men were expected to see them.

By reimagining these vintage images through collage and printmaking, I explore the nostalgia, humor, and underlying irony of a culture that often equated a woman's worth with her appearance and a man's worth with his masculinity. Looking back, these advertisements feel both familiar and unsettling. They are artifacts of another era—but they also invite us to ask what today's advertising will say about us sixty years from now.