Be A Good Girl
Be a good girl. Be a good girl. Be a good girl. I heard those words from my mother every day of my young (and not-so-young) life for as long as I can remember. Every time I left the house. Every time I left for school. Every time I went to a friend’s home. Every…single…date. It became a catch phrase for many things like good night, have a good day, take care, sometimes even I love you, but always: Be Good. It wasn’t until I was in my 50’s that I realized how much impact that one sentence had on my life. How it informed almost every decision I made. How I lead my life as a good Catholic girl. There are other phrases and little ditties that my mother also pounded into my head; some are included in my piece, but “Be a good girl” was by far the most frequent and impactful.
I chose a substrate shaped like a white striped bed pillow because, frankly, that’s what popped into my head when I was designing my project. I kept the idea because a white bed pillow holds so many references in our culture about cleanliness, purity, innocence, dreams, love, and sex - or the not having of sex as my mother preferred.
There was something cathartic and therapeutic about making all those words and phrases in clay – laying each letter down deliberately – pounding out the phrases over and over again, burning it into the tesserae, matching them up coming out of the kiln. Gluing over and over again. Getting it out of my head. Out of my head through my hands. From my hands into the world.
Fine Art Segment (Freestanding Mosaic)
36 x 21 x 6
$12,000.00
35
Materials List
Hand-made substrate, hand-made porcelain tiles, smalti, vitreous glass, glass lettering, ceramic lettering, stone, millefiori, beads, baby teeth
Artist Statement
Be a good girl. Be a good girl. Be a good girl. I heard those words from my mother every day of my young (and not-so-young) life for as long as I can remember. Every time I left the house. Every time I left for school. Every time I went to a friend’s home. Every…single…date. It became a catch phrase for many things like good night, have a good day, take care, sometimes even I love you, but always: Be Good. It wasn’t until I was in my 50’s that I realized how much impact that one sentence had on my life. How it informed almost every decision I made. How I lead my life as a good Catholic girl. There are other phrases and little ditties that my mother also pounded into my head; some are included in my piece, but “Be a good girl” was by far the most frequent and impactful.
I chose a substrate shaped like a white striped bed pillow because, frankly, that’s what popped into my head when I was designing my project. I kept the idea because a white bed pillow holds so many references in our culture about cleanliness, purity, innocence, dreams, love, and sex - or the not having of sex as my mother preferred.
There was something cathartic and therapeutic about making all those words and phrases in clay – laying each letter down deliberately – pounding out the phrases over and over again, burning it into the tesserae, matching them up coming out of the kiln. Gluing over and over again. Getting it out of my head. Out of my head through my hands. From my hands into the world.
