Delicious/Eat My Words

Acrylic paint, cut outs from Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue pages on gold candy wrappers and white lace-edged doilies from delights I'd eaten or imbibed

11 canvas boxes, each box is 4" x 4"

2008

For my 11th Christmas, in 1977, my grandmother gave gifts from Frederick's of Hollywood to me. She rolled her eyes with exaggerated fun as I opened the presents: a gold travel purse that included containers for cosmetics; sheer black stockings with rhinestones in the shape of a dollar sign at the ankle; black false eyelashes. Wow! She knew I adored Hollywood glamour. But this was a new version of it: gaudy. I loved it.

When I got to Hollywood in 1989, I didn't earn enough money to shop for fun stuff. But I lived near the Frederick's of Hollywood store, which was just a block away on Hollywood Boulevard, and went in once. It was everything the long ago presents promised! The store seemed like a dressing room for movie stars, sex workers, and sophisticates with a sense of humor.  I felt unsexy, though; my weight and my finances felt like closed bedroom doors. I didn't try on or buy anything.

Magically, I  somehow  received their catalogues in 2007. I decided to make art with the pages.  I painted box-shaped canvases in dessert colors to look like small cakes, and pasted pictures and words that I'd cut out from the catalogues onto bon bon wrappers and lace-edged doilies, and put them onto the painted boxes when the paint was wet.

How I miss my grandmother, Lukey Ward! How I wish I'd saved the gold purse!  But I've got the art I made. And the stockings and false eyelashes!