Let’s pivot from focusing on white rabbits this Easter
to instead celebrate *other* emerging forest dwellers…
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| 12 in. x 12 in. mixed-media analog collage of magazine photos & “nature” book illustrations for subject/background with glossy black spray-painted edges on a square stretched canvas finished using Mod Podge sealant, with additional black acrylic paint and felt-tipped marker for shading details and sparkle “asphalt grey” washi tape sides |
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And now a correlating missive: It truly is tragic and absurd how once
precious, treasured assets can be consumed en mass by “advanced”
cultures and then, so quickly depreciated with age, nearly forgotten or
dismissed by following generations. “Them’s the breaks,” I suppose, for
females once-hot in the spotlight of media adulation, tossed into
metaphorical garbage dumps alongside broken burner phones. At any rate,
featured subject Rita Hayworth was an incontestable G.O.A.T. of the
Golden Age screen sirens who had her fair share of troubles off-screen.
Among so many predatory, powerful Hollywood studio weasels, pushed into
performing at a nubile age by her father (who made sexual advances on
her), she was cursed with early-onset Alzheimer’s masked behind severe
& public alcoholism, then near-blanket dismissal as her beauty and
competency were increasingly ravaged by these twin diseases.
Although
remembered firstly as a sexual “temptress” by many, this wildly gifted
WWII-era dancer-actress conveyed a warm maternal presence (at least for
me, as I only ever knew one of my grandmothers and embraced her musical
romances and temptress-vixen noirs as a child, imagining her as somehow
kin). And also like me, her hair was distinctly red but not naturally,
having been pushed upon her early in her career in attempts to mask her
Latin bloodline. Forever our Gilda.
