Since the origins of Hollywood and the motion picture industry in the early twentieth century, America has been fascinated with celebrities and the culture that surrounds them. In recent years society has become obsessed with these figures. Their photos and their lives find their way into headline news, magazines, tabloids, websites, blogs, and everyday conversations. Particular attention is focused on young female starlets and they often serve as standards of beauty, youth, fame, and wealth. My work and my research focuses on these cultural roles and the concept of a celebrity’s façade.
The façade of the celebrity is an image created through marketing, PR, television and film that we as active participants in consumer culture are bombarded with on a daily basis. The façade is an artificial glamorized identity that is unavoidably intertwined with an individual celebrity’s personal identity. I am questioning how the façade of a celebrity functions and what happens when it is glorified, deconstructed or manipulated. It is the formation and dissemination of this façade through numerous reproductions of an individual’s image that ultimately leads to their status in celebrity culture.
Contemporary craft culture such as scrapbooking is brought into my art to represent the everyday and the populace. By combining photographic images with elaborate embellishment and decoration I am underscoring this separation between the everyday person and the celebrity. The star’s façade is created and promoted through a collaboration between the publicist, media, and the American public. The resulting image is a prepackaged commodity that is glorified and emulated to sell a product to the masses. It is this relationship that is emphasized in my use of materials and subject matter.