Mondays suck. Especially if you hate your job. But the day doesn’t have to be a total waste. You can now look forward to reading about ReadyMakers who have worked their way into f*&%ing awesome jobs—and maybe find a little inspiration to jumpstart your own career in the process—right here, every Monday.

Kate Bingaman-Burt is known for her drawings of everyday purchases, posted online at What Did You Buy Today? She's also adjusting to a new home-town---Portland, Oregon, where she teaches graphic design at PSU (check out the department blog she set up, and the student group she advises), and works on projects in her colorful, jam-packed home studio.

VITAL STATS

Name: Kate Bingaman-Burt
Occupation: Assistant Professor of Visual Communication/ Founder of Obsessive Consumption / Freelance Illustrator Location
: Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
Age: 32 First Job: When I was 13 I worked as an after-school janitor and part time pin peddler. After I finished cleaning the school's toilets, I went home and made pins by cutting images out of magazines and catalogs. I would mount them on foam core and color the edges with a gold pen. FANCY! I sold them at the local floral shops and to anyone who would listen to me. Growing up in a town of 600, my market was limited. I have said this a billion times, but I so wish the internet had existed in the late 80s early 90s. Then I could have sold these amazing accessories to at least TEN more people. Ha! 
Best Job: The three I currently have! Teaching at PSU, illustrating for good people and making my own personal work underneath the Obsessive Consumption umbrella.
Greatest Professional Challenge: BALANCE. Not being able to step away from my workspace. MYSELF. Realizing that sleep and a schedule and sometimes stepping away is conducive to producing more work, not less. LEARNING TO SAY NO. (I usually want to say yes).
Salary During 20s: Ranged from nothing to $25,000 (first design job) back to nothing (grad school) and then it touched $40,000 once I started teaching full time at a university when I was 27. I am starting my sixth year teaching full time. OMG.

Hi, Kate Bingaman-Burt. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
So many good turns of events! I will try to keep it short---this is the cliff note version.

When I was 16 I thought I was going to be a broadcast journalist, but instead I wound up with a double major in English and art. After undergrad I worked full time as an in-house packaging and product designer for a gift company in Omaha, Nebraska. Through designing my ass off and going to TONS of trade shows, I realized I was pretty fascinated with why people buy what they buy. Once I realized this, I then wanted to make self-authored work about people's STUFF. I decided to go to graduate school where I focused on design and personal consumerism for three years. While I was in graduate school I realized that I LOVED teaching as well. I was hired as an assistant professor of graphic design at Mississippi State University my last year of graduate school and spent four years teaching rad kids about typography and design. I also made piles of work under the name Obsessive Consumption. Oh, and my husband and I started a non-profit called The Public Design Center while we were there too.

You wear a lot of hats! How does your working life come together?
Oddly enough, it works out pretty well. I think the key is loving all aspects. If I were just teaching because it offered me health insurance and stability, I think I would resent it big time AND I would be a terrible teacher because my students would sense that I just didn't care…trust me---I have seen teachers like this---so terrible! My students fuel the work that I do when I am not teaching. Entering a classroom where 25 kids have been busting it on a project is so exciting! I love helping them say what they want to say and because of this I feel like it generates passion for my own personal and professional work. They like to see that I am making and it drives them to be better makers and I like to see that they are making because it drives me! We are like one big mobius strip over here.

Do you consider yourself an artist? Designer? Some other way? Not concerned with labels?
My Obsessive Consumption work is definitely self-authored design work, but my client work is definitely where I wear my Illustrator/Designer Hat. I am pretty content with being a maker of things, I think.

Did you have any role models who guided you towards the things you do today?
My grandma and my mom. They both do a million things at once and make it all look good and easy. My grandmother was an illustrator for her entire life AND she raised four kids. Her life was split between raising kids and then going down to her basement studio and staying up late finishing jobs. My mom and dad were both self-employed weavers and I grew up watching my mom and dad work together really well at not only making a family work, but a creative business too. I am lucky…almost my entire family is/was involved with the arts in some way. Making things was expected.

How long ago did you start the What Did You Buy Today project, and what inspired it? It seems like a deeply personal project, but it’s also one of the most visible things you do. Has it led to commercial work?
I started making work about personal consumption in early 2002. I had just finished being immersed in the Trade and Gift Show Merchandise Mart circuit from my last job and I had filled up notebooks of ideas from just observing buyers and sellers at these shows. I couldn't wait to turn some of these rough scratchings into reality. I first documented all of my purchases for 28 months and made products that were inspired by consumption. This is when Obsessive Consumption was born. After that I drew my credit card statements until they were paid off (2004-2009) and in 2006 I started drawing something that I purchased everyday and made monthly zines that were filled with drawings of my purchases. I am still doing this.

These illustrations and zines accidentally turned into an illustration portfolio and I started getting requests for jobs (Readymade being one of the requests!) This past year I have done work for a bunch of rad people and projects. I also actively participate in gallery shows and love going and invading a gallery space to install an Obsessive Consumption show. This is how I first got to know Faythe Levine. I was installing a show at her Paperboat Gallery in 2007 when she asked me to contribute the illustrations for her Handmade Nation Documentary and book. Now I have a book of my own work coming out from the same publisher next year. Even though I work by myself it doesn't feel like it…collaborations are a wonderful thing!

You and your husband ran a nonprofit together when you lived in Mississippi. Your website mentions that you may have some plans for Portland. Care to give us an update?
We loved running The Public Design Center, but doing a copy and paste in Portland just didn't feel right to us. Clifon is working right now as a web developer for Pinball Publishing (you all should do a story on them! seriously!) and we are hatching ideas, though nothing too concrete collectively at the moment since we are jamming on our own projects at the moment. TRUST that when they do happen, good things will come.

How does teaching fit in with everything else in your work picture?
I will refer back to the mobius strip. If I didn't have teaching, I wouldn't be able to do the things that I do outside of teaching. Aside from the inspiration part of it all, it is nice to have the stable financing of a job that I truly love. Because of this, it allows me to take on worthy projects with smaller budgets. It also allows me to work on my personal projects. I can pick and choose and for that I am VERY thankful.

 What is your typical day like?
In the summers it is non-stop client and Kate work. When fall hits I become a bit fractured. This quarter I teach all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and am in my office advising and prepping on Wednesdays. Monday night through Thursdays until six I am all about Portland State and school work. Friday until Monday afternoon, I am all about Kate projects and client work. Sometimes they bleed into each other, but I try to keep it separated.

What are the biggest pleasures of the job? What could you do without?
Teaching Pleasure: The students and seeing them realize that they can make amazing work when they work and think hard. As far as teaching goes I could certainly do without some of the meetings and committee work and the general political bureaucracy that comes along with working for a huge state run organization, but then I keep reminding myself that working for this huge state run organization is what allows me to work in the way that I work, which is working out pretty well so far.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to do something similar to what you do now?
If you want to teach, be sure that you really want to. Your students are smart and can tell if you are legit or not. Once they discover that you don't care, then they don't care and it is all downhill from there. If you do teach, be sure that you keep making and doing and sharing. They all feed into each other! [Photos by Kate Bingaman. See more studio shots here]

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