kjirsten severson is from the Black Hills of South Dakota and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Sie began hir official journey into philosophy in graduate school, first in Washington, DC and then in Pittsburgh, PA. Pittsburgh had an especially compelling impact on hir. Studying philosophy within the environment of a stunned and stunning city proved a potent opportunity to feel hir humanity rawly and with a sweet, sharp poignancy, so much so, sie felt completely altered, unpredictably, even to hirself.

Before leaving Pittsburgh for an extended road trip with no return date, sie was given a Smith&Corona typewriter as a gift. After three or four or six months on the road (sie can’t remember), hir van broke down in Portland, OR, land of the unemployed over-educated. After the Black Hills and Pittsburgh, sie felt like sie was home for the third time in hir life. Without the demands of a daily job and thanks to generous friends, kjirsten began typing on the typewriter in hir studio apartment overlooking NE 9th and Roselawn. First annoyed by the little “nothings” that seemed to be piling up, sie gradually began to see what they were doing. Awed and humbled, sie stopped resisting. The result is a 350 page manuscript sie hopes to publish under the title, an unnarrated memoir.

As the memoir was revealing itself, kjirsten was taken hold by a relentless desire to make the little “nothings” big – very, very big. Soon, with the help of quite a few local artists, sie concocted a system for re-producing the pages of the memoir twelve times their typing paper size, in other words, 8 ½’ x 11’. Hir ultimate desire is to create a “walking book” – an installation from the first chapter an unnarrated memoir, and if the stars align, to keep producing such installations until the last chapter has its chance to see daylight as well as the first, and all those in between.