For my contribution to the Jerome Fellowship exhibition at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design I asked MCAD students to implicate their parents in the artwork. Approximately 60 students sent form-letters from me to their parents. These letters asked that parents send care-packages for their sons or daughters to the gallery. On opening night there was a stack of 37 boxes arranged next to a desk in the gallery. During the reception I collected polaroid pictures of students holding their boxes (and asked each of them to record a list of the package contents) in a binder that would remain on display for the duration of the exhibition. Creating an intervention that transformed the social dynamic of the opening night event, almost all of the students chose to open their packages in the gallery during the reception. Students were also asked to donate objects to be left in the gallery for display until the show closed.

"With a gallery full of 'care packages,' Keeffe utilizes a long standing collegiate tradition to both more closely associate her work to its surroundings and to contemplate the idea and practice of caring. Soliciting the 'loved ones' - in this college setting mostly parents - of the MCAD students to send 'care packages' to the gallery to be picked up at the opening reception. Keeffe sets up a set of relationships motivated by the simple act of sending good wishes in the form of objects and ideas. In her letter [of solicitation], Keeffe explains the idea of the 'care package' to those who may not be familiar with it and also offers some imaginative ideas for filling the package. In the gallery another set of relations is created as students sort through boxes looking for their names on the address labels, setting up the potential for both joy and pathos. Keeffe's work does more than extend into the social realm, it ultimately allows for a serious contemplation of love's role in our social relations."

-Diane Mullin
2002-2003 MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowship Exhibition (catalogue essay)