Catalogs Of Desire

This series is rooted in my love affair with Montgomery Ward catalogs from mid-century America.  My interest is in the period post-WW2 when manufacturing boomed, the war was over and capitalism never looked so good.  And I was coming of age.

All catalogs are about desire.  They fly through our mail slot or announce themselves on our screens.  We are grabbed by the gut. I was drawn to working with catalog imagery partly because of the visceral memory the pages hold for me. 

The Montgomery Ward catalogs underlined the overwhelming conformity of the period.  The strict gender roles, cookie cutter dresses and look alike home decor.  It is this conformity that led me to work with the other sense of desire – the erotic, sensual life of the body and freedom of expression. 

This series is hand-cut collage which has its own sensuality, different from and a departure from my working digitally.  The pages of the catalogs are drenched in tones of sepia, yellowed and thin as tissue.  

This work is my “atlas” to honor “things” from a particular period in time that shaped me and the American culture.  I’ve drawn on the Chinese concept of “the 10,000 things,” the boundless multiplicity of form, an endless birth through the Mother of all creation.  This is my bow to the sacred Feminine.