Spelling Practice

Spelling Practice

24x36 inches

1940s spelling homework, Robert & Meck’s Pupil Spelling book, patterned paper, metallic patterned Lokta paper, and chalk paint on Braille

$2,300

Spelling Practice is from a series called Moving Still Lifes.  Each element that I included tells part of a story about a young child learning how to spell.  So there is a spelling notebook from 1940 on the table, and the floor is composed of handwritten pages from the book.  There is a vase of cala lilies on the table, which are often used to represent purity and innocence.  

An old Victorian photograph of the family matriarch surveys the scene from above.   One wall of the room is papered with a pattern from the 1870s, and the other looks like it’s from the 1970s.  I like to have a ramshackle mix of time periods in my work so that the old is juxtaposed against the new.