the Story Lunch

The work for Lunch and the entire set of stories for 1001 Funny Things began approximately 10 years ago as research on the history and mythology of the skirt.

Writer Elizabeth Dancoes has done brief, original stories based on our research but in contemporary idiom.

Lunch is one of approximately 10 stories with images. The entire set of stories comes under the heading of 1001 Funny Things you can do with a Skirt.

The images and stories are based on the tradition of “Ana Suromai”. The origins of this ancient tradition are present in the myths of Baubo and Demeter. And the gesture itself “Ana Suromai”, literally to raise the skirt, extends forward into later Greek stories and into the stories of Pliny and Plutarch.

The gesture has resonance in more modern myths generated from the tales of the hidden things underneath a woman’s skirt. And even into this century with the ever-present image of Marilyn Monroe with her skirts billowing over a subway grate.

My work for this collaborative project includes drawings and embroideries as well as digital images that are made to resemble embroidery and traditional stitchery.

The project was originally presented in print form in postcard format with one of the images on the front and the entire story on the back. These were placed among marketing cards in racks around the city of Vancouver in the year 2000 with the full participation of the marketing company. They were free for the taking along with the other advertising cards and appeared anonymously.

The story in page form as it appears here was first exhibited in 2002 in a show called If Images Speak a Thousand Words.