JANE RUSSELL SERIES
This series is based on the persona of Jane Russell, one of the first “bad girl” movie stars whose sensual omnipotent persona was a harbinger of today’s cult of celebrity. Her image is appropriated from a vintage coloring/paper doll book made for little girls combined with icons from fashion, film, tattoo and skin magazines. An early Barbie, she works, plays, travels, sails, dresses and socializes — always alluring and always in control. But, while Jane’s gaze conveys confidence and is slightly illicit, in my work she simultaneously struggles and unravals losing body parts, morphing, fragmenting and disappearing. It is these very human states of uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and obsessiveness that interests me in exploring the disparate clash of public message and personal reality. My working process of cutting, tearing, layering, and sanding with drawing and color, parallels my fascination with simultaneous levels of meaning as I explore my own emotional identity, and reflect upon the many contradictions of being female.