Kat Barnett
Visual Artist

College of Liberal Arts Newsletter, February 2025

 

Student Spotlight:

 

Don’t Discount My Life

 

Katrina Barnett, a senior Studio Arts major at Metropolitan State from Plymouth, Minnesota, worked with her daughter, Catrielle Barnett, on a grant project for the Association for Non-smokers Minnesota (ANSR). The grant is a multi-media project titled Don't Discount My Life. ANSR will use the artwork at in person events to help promote awareness of the harmful ways big tobacco companies target individuals with mailer coupons. 

The project encapsulates a coat, poster, and film. The garment is compiled with over a thousand big tobacco coupons, reimagining the ubiquitous promotional tactics employed by tobacco companies. The Don't Discount My Life coat was designed to create an ominous presence that morphs the wearer by concealing their face, and the tobacco coupons appear to overtake the person. 

Katrina took printmaking classes at Metro under Professor Amy Sands, and she applied the skills she learned in Amy's class to a poster for the grant project. The poster's use of transparency, mono printing, and a collage of tobacco-related flyers builds a complex backdrop, symbolizing the layers of manipulation behind the glossy image projected by tobacco companies. Each piece in the project works together to unravel the contrast between the polished advertising campaigns and the health risks associated with tobacco use. The film portion of the Don't Discount My Lifeproject is a narrative compilation showing tobacco companies' environmental and social impact. Katrina's son, Liam, filmed the segment.

Katrina and Catrielle used their collaborative artistic talents to craft an aesthetically engaging work and start a conversation about the tobacco industry's unethical practices and their effects on public health. Through this work, Katrina and Catrielle urge viewers to examine how tobacco is marketed critically and recognize the severe toll it takes on individuals and society.