Kate Bingaman-Burt was born in Wisconsin, in the late 70’s. Having been to art school she acquired her credit card which she used, slightly out of control, to purchase all sorts of objects (needed and not needed) for the next few years. Shortly after having finished her graduation, she find out she was due several thousand dollars to her bank (learn exactly how many at the Design Observer excellent podcast. A lot, seriously!). Recognizing she had gone out of control with consumerism, she started a blog where she would document her daily purchases, in the shape of a drawing. She initially started this as a way of keeping track to what she was buying and where was she spending so much money. Kate’s intention was also to ‘draw’ herself out of due. But the blog soon came to be a very popular discussion topic around the social media and soon people started to ask her how could they acquire one of her drawings. Oh, and we forgot to say that Kate wasn’t only drawing the objects she was buying, she was actually drawing her monthly credit card statements! She then decided to start selling them at the ‘minimum amount due’ charged in every letter from the bank. This was 2004. She finally finished paying off her credit card by early 2010, but by the end of this long and extense exercise in drawing and self-control, she had become addicted, let’s say, to this way of documenting her life, and couldn’t stop.
Since then she kept drawing, she worked with several brands, in all sorts of different projects and even published a book, ‘Obsessive Consumption: What did you buy Today?’.
Interesting how people can always come up with the most creative and original ways of sorting out the problems they come across. That’s definitely an art.
