A bookish bombshell.

My collages often tell a story, but I don’t know what the story is until the piece is well underway. In this case, I started with a vintage dictionary page as a background, then began rummaging through my collection of ephemera and other odds and ends.

If the collage seems to need a particular item and I don’t have an image that works, I’ll draw or paint what I want. For this mid-century woman, I used colored pencil to draw some snazzy cat-eye glasses so that she could see her world more clearly — and read the dictionary page.

I made up a story about her as the piece came together, but I hope viewers are inspired to make up their own: who’s the woman, what did she see with her glasses, did she have a special relationship to any other of the ‘B’ words on the page?

A Bookish Bombshell was created for the Lincoln Art Center’s Book It show.