"how many shoes did you say you had?"
"Sixty."
"Sixty! Sixty pairs or sixty shoes?"
"Sixty pair. All lined up in my closet."
"Yesterday you said fifty."
"Now I got sixty."
from the Hundred dresses by Eleanor Estes
The Hundred Dresses Project, idea came to me in my studio, on a 100 degree day this past August. I had recently moved to Richmond VA from my long time home in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Most of the paintings I did in NY were portraits of friends. As our once connected community of punks, artists, writers and band members was being run out of town by the plague of Hipsters. I painted, I painted to keep 'us' together. I painted as I watched it slip away. I painted till I too, was pushed out.
THDP is a way for me to find my footing in the new studio, new home and new way of life. I am also interested in connecting with others who have started or managed to complete a Hundred Dresses Project of their own.
About the book:
The book is about a girl who is misunderstood, poor and doesn't speak English well. The other kids tease her for saying she has 100 dresses, when she wears the same dress to school everyday. The dresses she refers to, turn out to be beautiful drawings she creates and hangs in her closet. In the end she gives the drawings to the kids who were mean to her, she says, 'Please tell the girls they can keep those hundred dresses because in my new home I have a hundred new ones all lined up in my closet."
So far I have just a few dresses in my closet. But my dresses are not drawings of dresses. They are paintings that may or may not contain a dress at all. They are all 24"x30" oil on canvas, they are numbered _ of 100. I will post them as I go along.
