Her Domain: a recipe card series (2006)
"Her Domain"
A recipe card project, is based on handwritten recipe cards. The cards, many of which are fifty or more years old, were my mother-in-law Rose's and I inherited dozens of them after she passed away in 2005. After selecting a particular recipe to reproduce, I scanned it and then wrote and drew on an acetate sheet placed over the scan. This new layer was then scanned and the resulting artwork is a digital colour print. The image of the discoloured, tattered and stained cards will be familiar to many as reflective of an earlier generation of women whose life's focus was nurturing a family in the roles of mother and homemaker. The cards are reflective of the skillful technology of cooking that so often is undervalued and taken for granted within family life. The cards' fragility indexes their repeated consultation and presence during the act of food preparation. They hold the information necessary to provide both sustenance and pleasure and were useful and intimate records, specific to the woman to whom they belong. My drawing and textual interventions reflect on the role of women in domestic life, giving voice to repressed and unspoken desires and emotions too confrontational, risqué and taboo to have ever been mentioned.