LeMae: waxing beauty

I began this project by doing searches on the internet using the key words: beauty, beautiful, beautiful women / men / children, beauty pageants, and alternative beauty. Then I expanded my searches to phrases such as, fashion, makeup, movie stars, pinup girls, transgender, ethnic, etc. The images are ink-jet printed on vellum and painted with several layers of melted paraffin wax. Each 4×4 image is hung from a small Bulldog clip strung on stainless steel cable. There are 675 images in all.

Taken as a whole the installation address our culture’s standard concepts of beauty as well as speak to the use of technology in the art making process. The square format of each individual image is mean to reference the pixel, while the use of was is a reference to materials used in beauty products. The over-abundance of images references our society’s tendency to over-indulge and over-stimulate.

medium | wax on translucent paper (each 4×4), found imagery
date | 2000