Marilyn survives!

I put together the "Demise of Party Girl" installation yesterday with the "revisions" of sequence and changes in certain objects. I think it hangs together very well now. I will be adding wall text and advertising "prayer flags" tomorrow (sorry for so many "quotes," must be a thing with me tonight).

Today, a friend of mine came to help hang my residency show. She is incredible. I am so grateful she is helping me because there is NO way I could have put the abecedary poem together by myself. Absolutely none. It's a two-person job to put the books on the walls, just for starters, but then there's the way she was able to look at the wall and go, hey, this is how we're going to do it. And can make everything even and level with just a ruler and a level. It will look incredible when it's done (I will take some credit, I did have the entire thing laid out on graph paper so I could say how many inches between each piece). I'll have pictures tomorrow.

But...my friend also looked at "Party Girl" and I told her I was having second thoughts about Marilyn and she pointed out that where Marilyn is now is perfect.



This is where Marilyn was in my initial "draft" of the installation. My fiction class thought it weighted the piece too much as a commentary on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and I agreed. So I was all set to bid Marilyn a reluctant farewell. But when I did the revised layout, she ended up beneath the pink party dress, on top of the makeup case full of fuchsia powder covered makeup.



(these pictures are from the first draft, the one's I took today with my phone ended up melding together in some kind of montage. I don't know why. I'll have pics tomorrow from the installation as it will look the night of the show)

My friend said that Marilyn totally works there - the pink in the party dress is reflected in the thin pink border on the frame and in the pink makeup in the case and the case is blue like the frame. Everything works together and Marilyn is like "totally the quintessential party girl, you have to keep her."

So Marilyn survives!!!!!!

For all her efforts, my friend received a black coffin with a smaller black coffin inside. Seen below with other items going on the giveaway pile - yes, the typewriter is going, too.



She was completely thrilled with it (I gave her a choice of any items in the container, this is what she wanted, she IS one of the original Goth girls).

Here's another pic, just to round out the post, of more items going on the giveaway pile. I love this gear. I would never be able to do anything with it, but I know someone will.