The Donna Beam Gallery presents the MFA Thesis Exhibition of Kayla Lockwood: read the fine print. Lockwood is a multidisciplinary artist whose work interrogates domesticity, memory, and emotional labor, challenging the myth of home as a stable cornerstone of the “American Dream.” She holds a BFA in Art & Technology from the University of Oregon and is currently pursuing her MFA in Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Lockwood’s read the fine print is a two-floor installation that examines how mid-century domestic ideology structured behavior, perception, and social hierarchy through spatial and material systems. Rather than recreating a home, the work focuses on the mechanisms that produced it, including color-coded zoning, planning models, and institutional messaging. Materials such as stucco, house paint, neon, leather, and cast aluminum function as carriers of authority, translating policy and doctrine into embodied experience.

Referencing the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation grading system and postwar suburban expansion, the installation reveals how access, mobility, and stability were unevenly distributed. Through controlled sightlines, spatial sequencing, and accumulation, read the fine print positions domesticity not as a neutral refuge but as a designed system that continues to shape behavior and expectation.

The exhibition runs April 13-24. A 1950s-themed closing reception (period clothing encouraged but not required) will be held on April 24 from 5 to 8 p.m. An artist talk will take place on April 22 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Barrick Museum auditorium. All free, with more info at Get Tickets.