"Ballad of the Tattooed Lady" gloves and works on paper 2011
This series of work is titled “Ballad of the Tattooed Lady” and was originally shown as a solo show in Chicago 2011 at Firecat Gallery. This is literally a body of work, where each pair of gloves becomes a metaphor for a feminine body and each is decorated with unique tattoo narrative. I enjoy how the gloves and tattoos contrast each other in their cultural connotations. Ladies gloves being a high form of privilege fashion while tattoos historically has been a rough, low class and masculine form of bodily expression. This tension calls into question the cultural constructs of masculine and feminine bodies and how images in the tattoo vocabulary enforce those forms.
“I hand paint tattoo designs inspired by these traditional images but informed by the personal. I twist the pin-up into a animal headed goddess where her dark desires, anger and lust are part of her attributes. She is no longer a sweet hot thing- but a witch or whore. I paint traditional sailors as fey, faggots and sexually ambiguous heroes. I leave in words such as "your name here" on banners that suggest a heart with a revolving door. I imagine that each pair of gloves is a lady- a lady that was not a traditional woman but in her time may have had to play a particular role to survive. I seek to paint the truth of feminine existence that lays beneath the fashion or constructs of society to balance and heal what often is hidden.”
