Women Artists

Laurel Jay Carpenter, Red Crest, 2003

A woman appears at the top of the glorious, green crest.  The sky is perfect blue.  She is dressed in red.  The woman walks, each step revealing more of her dress, unfurling behind like a trailing artery. The dress is heavy; it leaves a rut in the thick grass.  The woman is tired and strained. Some think she needs help.  Others do not.  Some are worried she is suffering.  Two approach the dress, help lift its weight, and join the woman on her walk.  Many follow, to see the dress up close and perhaps help carry it a way.  With more fanfare than expected, the woman reaches her destination, and disappears into the adjacent woods.

Materials include: over 100 red dresses collected from individual donors, stitched into one impossibly long red dress and worn by the performer as she walked over the landscape

Site-specific performance; Horsebarn Hill, Storrs, CT; May 2003