The good life. Except that it didn’t make any sense. And we’d go to Lord and Taylor for our new spring coats.

I finished this quilt about a week ago. It’s been an archaeological dig into childhood memories for me. There in the memory are two characters. The doll-like little girl. The elegant fashion lady. I have placed them side-by-side in a setting of symbols and contrasts.

The doll-like little girl is a variation on the young girl whose journey is at the heart of my recent work. I rendered her in a way that’s representational, but not real. She’s flat, much like a punch-out paper doll. But – boy oh boy – does she feel real to me. I remember standing in front of the forsythia bush each year to pose for the Easter-outfit-photo for our family scrapbook. I had a little purse, Mary Jane shoes and white socks just like this. When I searched online for some reference pictures of girls in their new spring outfits, I discovered row after row of family pictures just like ours. The brothers and sisters stand formally in their new clothes. Parents wanted to record the ideal image of their children.

The fashion lady image was also ubiquitous when I was a girl. Paper doll sets of grown up women had them shaped like an hourglass. Dress patterns and magazine clothing ads depicted women in this ideal shape. Women forced themselves into constrictive girdles and oddly shaped bras to conform to this ideal. (I remember thinking that someday I would have to do that too.)

Against this setting of ideals, I’ve inserted symbols related to searching for the good life in financial terms. The repousse spoons are my grandmother’s flatware, inherited by my mother and then by me. For my Mom, having beautiful silverware and a complete set of good china to complement a neat house with a picket fence was considered the definition of the good things in life.

But, in our family, something was seriously “off.” As a little girl, I tried to sort it out and make sense of it. An annual pilgrimage to Lord and Taylor (the fanciest store I had ever heard of) did not match our financial realities as a family; such extravagance was way beyond what we could afford.  I felt unreal and disconnected by the experience. So, in this artwork, there are things that are “off.” There is beautiful green spring foliage, but prehistoric fish with big, mean teeth are lurking nearby. Among the repousse silver fly large insects

I have a strong tug-of-heart for children. They are doing the hard work of figuring out the world and their place in it. Children are so perceptive. They know what’s good and right. They know when things don’t make sense. As an artist I work to tap into these experiences and do my own hard work of understanding and expressing what I uncover.

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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