Cakes and Ale

I don’t exactly remember when I started working on this book. It’s been a long time for sure. I would pick up pages from this book here and now, and paint over and cut some words. These photos were taken in the studio at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University when I was an artist in residence in 2013. I guess I'm not done with these. For now, they're stored in a box waiting for me to revisit them sometime.

The book pages are from Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), a novel by the British author W. Somerset Maugham.

My sister posing in front of the work. All images on this post were photographed by Miho Suzuki. 

The Demon Lover

                                                                        Dead air came out

                       as she went in

Sunday Afternoon

From "Dear John" series.

Songs My Father Sang Me

From "Dear John" series.

Look at All Those Roses

LOU

            Here were jealous of the rose house –

One of those conflicts between two silent mood

Return from a week-end

Lou’s smart little monkey face

                                                                            she was

Just opening her mouth to risk one further remark

“Oh my goodness” she said,

                                    she had a plan read

                                                            Why should a house

wait?

                                                                                                “Leave

your wife here,” she said. “Then she can have tea.”

                                                                   - her idea of love was

adhesiveness . . . . Knowing

                                    aring out with unhappy eyes.

            A girl of about thirteen lay, flat as a board

                        Flat horizons

Lying their

                                                                        She’s lying down because

                                                           Men will suffer a certain

look in animal’s eyes, but not in women’s eyes

                       he will lose his way.

                                                    When she is not working she rides

home.”

                                                                                                           

                                                       

                            

                                “I never eat tea, thank you,”

He put his hand on

                                                      You’re well out of that, my girl,

From "Dear John" series.