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 UNLV.

Lockwood’s read the fine print is a two-floor installation that examines how midcentury 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 (HOLC) 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.

By combining sculpture, installation, sound, and architectural materials, Lockwood transforms the gallery into an environment that visitors move through rather than simply observe. Using materials drawn from postwar suburban construction and visual culture, the installation creates a space that initially appears orderly and cohesive, guided by color, scale, and repetition. As viewers move through it, however, the work reveals how domestic space has historically shaped behavior, perception, and social hierarchy.

Informed by research on housing policy and Cold War–era domestic life, the exhibition references systems like HOLC grading maps, which classified neighborhoods and structured access to housing and resources. These systems are translated into physical form through color-coded zones, maps, and carefully controlled sightlines. A radio-style broadcast introduces ideas of homeownership, discipline, and authority, echoing the messaging that once defined the American Dream.

Lockwood also draws on early experiences with television, including reruns of I Love Lucy, where humor and familiarity helped naturalize postwar domestic ideology. This tension between mediated domestic narratives and the structural realities they obscure runs throughout the exhibition.

Across the space, repeated forms and materials make invisible systems more tangible. Objects accumulate, views are partially blocked, and movement is subtly guided, creating an experience where control is felt rather than directly stated. read the fine print invites viewers to reconsider the home not as a neutral or private refuge, but as a designed system that continues to shape how we live, move, and understand our place in the world.

A 1950s-themed closing reception* will be held on April 24 from 5–8 p.m. An artist talk will take place on April 22 from 5:30–8:30 p.m. in the Barrick Museum auditorium.

read the fine print will be on view at the Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery from April 13 through April 24, 2026.

*Costumes are encouraged for the reception, but not required.