Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [154]
UP YOUR
MAN
IFESTO!
Or else she makes wall hangings out of toilet paper twisted like rope, braided and woven with reels of outdated girlie movies, the kind that used to be called “art films.” “Used porn,” she says cheerfully. “Why not recycle it, eh?”
Jody does store mannequins, sawn apart, the pieces glued back together in disturbing poses. She fixes them up with paint and collage and steel wool stuck on at appropriate places. One hangs from a meat hook, stuck through the solar plexus, another has trees and flowers painted all over her face like fine tattooing, with a delicacy I wouldn’t have suspected from Jody. Another has the heads of six or seven old dolls attached to her stomach. I recognize some of them: Sparkle Plenty, Betsy Wetsy, Barbara Ann Scott.
Zillah is blond and skimpy, like the frail flower girls of a few years back. She calls her pieces Lintscapes. They are made from the wads of feltlike fuzz that accumulate on drier filters and can be peeled off in sheets. I have admired these myself as I stuffed them into the wastebasket: their texture, their soft colors. Zillah has bought a number of towels in different shades and run them repeatedly through the dryer, to get shades of pink, of gray-green, of off-white, as well as the standard underneath-the-bed gray. These she has cut and shaped and glued carefully to a backing, to form multilayered compositions that resemble cloudscapes. I am entranced by them, and wish I had thought of this first. “It’s like making a soufflé,” Zillah says. “One breath of cold air and you’re dead in the water.”
Jody, who is more in charge than anyone, has gone through my paintings and chosen the ones for the show. She’s taken some of the still lifes, Wringer, Toaster, Deadly Nightshade, and Three Witches. Three Witches is the one of the three different sofas.
Apart from the still lifes, what I’m showing is mostly figurative, although there are a couple of constructions made from drinking straws and uncooked macaroni, and one called Silver Paper. I didn’t want to include these, but Jody liked them. “Domestic materials,” she said.
The Virgin Mary pieces are in the show, and all of the Mrs. Smeaths. I thought there were too many of her, but Jody wanted them. “It’s woman as anticheesecake,” she said. “Why should it always be young, beautiful women? It’s good to see the aging female body treated with compassion, for a change.” This, only in more high-flown language, is what she’s written in the catalogue.
The show is held in a small defunct supermarket, west on Bloor Street. It is to be converted to a hamburger heaven, shortly; but meanwhile it’s empty, and one of the women who knows a cousin of the wife of the developer who owns it has managed to persuade him to let us use it for two weeks. She told him that in the Renaissance the most famous dukes were known for their aesthetic taste and patronage of the arts, and this idea appealed to him. He doesn’t know it’s an all-woman show; just some artists, is what she told him. He says it’s okay with him as long as we don’t get the place dirty.
“What’s to get dirty?” says Carolyn, as we look around. She’s right, it’s dirty enough already. The produce counters and shelves have been torn up, there are patches ripped off the erstwhile linoleum tile flooring where the wide bare boards show through, lights dangle in wire cages; only some of them work. The checkout counters are still in place, though, and there are a few tattered signs drooping on the walls: SPECIAL 3/95¢. FRESH FROM CALIFORNIA. MEAT LIKE YOU LIKE IT.
“We can make this space work for us,” says Jody, striding around with her hands in her coverall pockets.
“How?” says Zillah.
“I didn’t take judo for nothing,” says Jody. “Let the momentum of the enemy carry