Ladylike (dirty laundry), laser cut wood, fabric, wallpaper, paper, thread, markers, crayons, collaborative drawings from my children, accumulated house dirt, accumulated coffee stains, wine stains, mirrored acrylic, grocery lists, anxiety lists, dimensions variable, 2019.

 

Ladylike (dirty laundry) utilizes scraps. As a working mother, I often work with scraps. Scrap time, scrap food, scrap materials, whatever I can scrap together. In this series, I looked around my studio and found myself surrounded scrap materials from the many tests and trials it took to make Ladylike (frieze) and Ladylike (altered signage). This part of the Ladylike series feels simultaneously the most truthful and the most uncomfortable to me. I manipulated each scrap by adding a material or a treatment showing the aspects of motherhood we try to sweep under the couch- revealing the mess, the anxiety, the guilt, the pressure, the monotony, the truth. And I really want to clean it all up. And also it's not messy enough.

© 2016 Emily Scott Beck