MODERN ROSIE

Katherine the Craft Brewer

Katherine taught each of our sons during their 5th grade years in Forest Park. We had good parent teacher interactions over those 8 years. She was a tough as nails teacher working inside the school district for 10+ years, challenging leadership to better the schools for the teachers and children of the community.

Teaching has its challenges. Every teacher I’ve met professes how awesome the teaching part is, but how challenging the inner workings of the school district is. Forcing many teachers to want to leave. The retirement benefits are amazing, but the 30 year sisyphus struggle with internal politics makes the end of career benefits feel too far up the hill.  

In 2015, Katherine and her husband Chris opened Exit Strategy Brewery in an empty old electrical supply warehouse. The space was on a potential hot corner of a main thoroughfare in Forest Park. Big risk and potential. Chris, a corporate attorney, was the brewmaster, Katherine was operations. Both dreaming the namesake would provide a stable Exit from their former careers. 

Exit Strategy had incredible beers. An incredible vibe. The kitchen of the brewery created challenges, like any restaurant owner will tell you, but the food was always top notch. A community was being established. TV’s were minimal. This was not a sports bar, which the village had many. Exit Strategy became a hub for beer and conversation.

In 2018, I was soul searching for a personal project. Had been frequenting Exit Strategy, and saw a simple social post by Katherine championing her weekly exhausting cleaning efforts of the restaurant. In the post she was wearing overalls with rubber gloves. I thought, “she’s a Modern Rosie”. Immediately I messaged her with the idea. She was pumped. The project was born. We shot the portrait within a week. Her portrait ignited a spark to recruit our next subjects for the personal project.

Exit Strategy’s much anticipated 5 year anniversary celebration looked to be epic. Covid had other plans. The former school teacher and lawyer did all they could to finance and hold together all they’d built. But in 2023 the struggle to continue on became too much and Exit Strategy closed their doors. A few months later another brewery took the space. 

Katherine’s portrait, donning Rosie the Riveter-like attire, proudly carrying one of their kegs in front of a fermenter became a foundational image for the series. She embraced the persona of the 1940’s Rosie completely. Modernized with her badass tattoos, torn overalls, and All-Stars. Her statuesque “We Can Do It” spirit raging as the rare woman craft brewery owner lifting up her community through good beer and the conversations had while sharing their beer.

While Katherine’s vision for the space is no longer Exit Strategy, the corner has continued to be an economic driver and community hub for a different community. And her willingness and enthusiasm to be in this portrait has helped us create a movement to champion women, their voices, and an organization for Future Rosies to carry-on that We Can Do It spirit.  

Christa the Author

In year 4 of my wedding photography career I met Christa Desir dancing with her Haitian future husband, Julio, just outside of Detroit in August of 1998. The two were completely enamored with each other. 15 months later I was photographing their wedding in Chicago. Every wedding presented another opportunity for future wedding clients, for sure. And these two became not only wedding clients, but lifelong friends.

For as long as I’ve known Christa I’ve known her to be an avid reader, incredibly devoted mother and partner, and powerful feminist member of the community. She has written several Young Adult(YA) novels, and worked her way into her current role as the Editorial Director at Bloom Books. She’s also founded Tessera Creatives, an editorial consortium working to diversify the publishing landscape. 

Through the years, as our families grew we all became close. We’d join them for game nights, birthdays, and would attend functions for charities that each of us would champion. One of those charities which Christa had been on the board was Rape Victims Advocates, now Resilience. Resilience is an organization with goals to end rape culture and empower sexual assault survivors through advocacy, education, and healing. As a survivor of child sexual abuse herself, Christa brings a fierce amount of love and empathy as a volunteer providing crisis intervention for sexual assault victims in hospitals. 

After capturing my first portrait in May of 2018, I was thinking of women in my network who I believed to be a Modern Rosie. I reached out to Christa. No, I hadn’t - or still haven’t - read any of her YA novels (1. I struggle to be a strong reader, and 2. If I were, I definitely wouldn’t be into romance teen novels). However, I am a man whose family is forever navigating the challenges to survive the trauma of child sexual abuse. Christa’s courage to “Yang” the energy of her own “Yin” trauma, to help others through their own traumas, made her a powerful Modern Rosie candidate in my eyes. She agreed to participate.

For wardrobe I asked her to research Rosie the Riveter. She agreed to wear the red bandana as the tie to the original Rosie. I arrived to find Christa simply wearing jeans, a v-neck and sandals for her Modern Rosie portrait. I loved her take.

Christa’s portrait is set in her front room, surrounded by stacks of her favorite books, with her laptop appropriately settled. Her own published books are by her side on the shelves. She’s leafing through one of her favorite books, the most current edition of the rules of syntax, a book she regularly utilizes and absolutely loves. I believe her love for this book is inspired by her passion for the nuance of the words of the authors and people she counsels. Christa lives to champion the powerful voice of women. Aspiring for a healthier world for women. And for our society to evolve to better understand each woman’s difficult past for a better present, and future. 

Connie the Entrepreneur

I met Connie for the first time as a customer at The Brown Cow. My family and hers got to know each other better when they moved onto our block. Around the same time I moved my photography studio out of my house and into a space near her shop. Our families were often crossing paths for chamber events, parades, and festivals. She hired me to take portraits of her family. My family frequented her place for delicious ice cream and the chance to bump into friends and neighbors. 

This Modern Rosie power portrait from 2018 shows Connie looking to her future, holding a cone of two of her favorite flavors under her powerful brand. While Connie has moved on from owning and working on Brown Cow, her economic and community influence will forever be felt.