Click on photo to see slide show                                                                                     Photo: Jody Dole

"THE MOTHER OF US ALL " Project /  Working with Robert Indiana

I worked as a studio assistant, 1975-77  (New York studio, on the Bowery & Spring) to artist Robert Indiana when he was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera to design the set & costumes for a Bicentennial project,

 "The Mother of Us All" (1976)

The Mother collaboration between Gertrude Stein and composer Virgil Thomson tells the story of  Susan B. Anthony's fight for Women's Suffrage as it mixes characters, fictional & non fictional from different time periods in American History.

We created the maquettes in papier colle (or cut paper) a medium well suited to express the  early American art form popular during the time in which the story unravels.  The costume designs were in turn translated by the set shop into cut out felt and sets painted in hard edge style emphasizing the graphic quality of the original work.

 I embraced this papier colle medium which I continue to develop  in my  work- plus being surrounded at the studio by Indiana's bold paintings of words and numbers  in which he infused his own  autobiographical messages  altered my vision on how to see my  own "signs." I returned to Coney Island to find them.