As friends whose personal and artistic lives converged for many years, when circumstances caused us to take different paths, literally and figuratively, we sought ways to stay connected. The idea of an artistic collaboration seemed the best way to stay in touch artistically and to continue our long term personal relationship.
Choosing a project that integrated our strengths and appealed equally to each of us proved challenging. We almost gave up. Lots of talk and experiments later, we realized that we should do what we know best- ourselves and our experiences as women. We both had an active interest in masks and so we created masks of ourselves that traced an arc from adolescence to full maturity. We housed them in shopping bags as a symbol of the role of women as primary shoppers: of women buying food and supplies for the home; of women shopping as a favored activity i.e. the ”shop ‘til they drop” syndrome; and of women as primary consumers versus primary breadwinners.
Since each character needed a home environment, we included ephemera, memorabilia, and books. The use of boxes came about because we felt these masks portrayed the limitations of the roles that boxed us in. Frames were built because we felt that they were both aesthetically appropriate and a reflection of the ways we felt framed by the social mores of the mid twentieth century that we had bought into.
Thus eleven Bag Ladies were born. These assemblages provide a commentary on women’s experience before the women’s movement (as seen from our point of view), and that required –as collaborators-compromises, and suspension of our egos. What we thought would be two hands plus two hands, each contributing individual layers, became four hands intertwined- a true integration of ideas and art making. The result was a blending of individual aesthetics into
a single vision.
