All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready For My Close-up

2009
27" X 31.5"

I was born in Hollywood and never really left. Los Angeles is a company town and the movie industry has certainly influenced me and colored my perceptions of the world. Hollywood landmarks are second nature to me and childhood friends were children of actors and studio employees. I've spent my life giving out of town guests "Tinsel Town Tours".

That is why, I suppose, Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" has always been one of my favorite vintage films. Sunset Boulevard was made the year I was born and many of the locales mentioned are part of my childhood. I live today just a few blocks south of the legendary Sunset Blvd. quite near to where Norma Desmond's eerie 20s mansion must have stood.

The film is a Hollywood story of love, disappointment and betrayal - all the building blocks of great melodrama. It is a cinematic feast. The central figure Norma Desmond portrayed by Gloria Swanson was an aging actress - formerly a star in Cecil B. DeMille's silent films of the 1920s.

In this quilt I have portrayed Norma in her youthful heyday - through a slightly cubist Art Deco lens - a siren, a vamp, coquettish and at the same time truly enigmatic. The quilt was fused using primarily cotton batiks. Embellishments include couched yarns, fabric paints, beads and free motion threadwork.

$800.00

Juried into Pacific International Quilt Festival, Santa Clara, California, October 2009

Juried into "Silver Screen II" debuting at the Long Beach international Quilt Festival, July 2009

Awarded "Best Use of Embellishment" at the
Santa Monica Quilt Show "Explorations",
June, 2009