Nymphs and nipples

My facebook entry yesterday was "Creativity... you elusive nymph". I have been feeling vaguely creative these past several days; and yet, it seems to not translate into something artistic. Of course, the responsibilities of the semester are in full swing and my studio has not exactly been inviting (it has been a MESS after having to get everything together for my solo exhibit). Over the weekend I spent a good deal of time cleaning up my space and culling materials. With some of what I had left, I started "exploring" possible combinations of elements and images. Here's one of the pieces that came out of my efforts. I had identified and cut the four women element and it had been "hanging around" my studio for quite a while. The shells were from a beautiful book of shells I had picked-up at a used book store in Ithaca this summer. I thought these two elements looked pretty good together. After working on placement of these elements, I knew I wanted text for the background; and I wanted the text to be something from one of my vintage medical books which related to women. I found this interesting passage about how you go about "choosing" the gender of your child (see the lower portion of the text and you should be able to make out the semi-obscured information about what to do to "make" a female child). As a bonus, the placement of the text in the background allowed me to also make visible the words "nipples begins" (see between the two shells at the top). Not only are these words "titillating" (sorry, I couldn't resist), they also seem to be grammatically problematic. So I liked the entire layout for a couple of different reasons. Enjoy!