MEXICO IS A SKIRT
MEXICO ES UNA FALDA

new paintings
by
MARY WINGS

exhibition hangs through January 31st :

PARK BENCH CAFE
3214 Folsom at Precita Park
San Francisco

Those appearing wearing
skirts shall be rewarded.

Blasphemy Art also will be shown.

SILENT SENTINALS OF DESIRE

Queretaro, Mexico

Last March I turned a corner in the Mexican city of Queretaro, and was ambushed by the shine and glitter of unobtainable dreams and desires: a rainbow of dresses in a store window. The dresses seem to reduce everyone and everything to a reflection of the mundaneness of daily life. My knobby knees in ill fitting Bermuda shorts, hurrying to catch a bus, the dresses whispered promises to come.

I started noticing the details of such dresses, and skirts in particular. Having not worn a skirt in thirty years, I was delighted to experience the ventiliating qualities as well as the infinite variety of styles, gored, godet, pixie, broomstick, circle, and the more pedestrian A-line and pleated skirt, with which I had grown up.

I started painting these dresses, and the detailing was so extreme, with wings, layers, huge bouquets of flowers growing out of the hips, wrapped in plastic, and festooned with sashes reminiscent of the Spanish Viceroyalty of three hundred years ago. These dresses in Mexico existed in a time warp, more reminiscent of the French court of 1700 (the Spanish court slavishly copied french fashion) than of modern Spain.

These dresses have a particular desitny. Many, of course are purchased for quinceanera parties, or as bridesmaid dresses for weddings, but their destinies lie ulitmately in a plastic bag. Alone they are just a memory that takes up space, deep in a closet as the wearer now tends to the chores of children, cooking and cleaning. Perhaps the unspoken message of these frocks interest me the most. They are like butterflies that will only live for one night. Are the frocks there to trick us into believing our dreams? Or are our dreams always with us, like a warm comforting cloak, the memory of wearing the dress taking precedence in our experience over the present?

These dresses are worth painting, I thought, with their exhuberance and promise. As I painted, the dresses became a family of women, one shoved forward in the window, the others pushed back further waiting their turn....

As usual, returning from Mexico, the palette of San francisco was greyed down in color, from the brown hills to the fog-ridden valleys. However, the Easter Services at Dolores Park gave me pause. The costumes of participants opened my eyes, once again,, to how special our city is. Drag queens, faeries and novitiates caught my visual imagination in a similar, but different, way. These celebrants are also included in this show, because San Francisco is also a skirt.

I dedicate SKIRTS to: JOAN TETER , companera, people connector, rediscovered friend after forty years, and my personal skirt mentor.

A flip of the petticoat to: my housemate GINGER SQUIRE HELLMANN who helped with the historical presentation, has given up the kitchen for my use as a studio, and for the loan of The Car, KITTEN CALFEE, who saved me from more than a few technology meltdowns. and SCRAP who made presentation of SKIRTS possible at an affordable rate with their repurposed materials.

MARY WINGS