Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. (Tallulah Bankhead)

This quote, and the resulting collage, gestures toward the unattainable nature of performance and the magic of irreproducible presence. There are moments when even the actor cannot fully return to themselves as they once appeared. These freeze-frames capture a singular expression of personality, a moment suspended in time, unreachable even to the star herself.

Part of the series "Come Up and See Me Sometime"

This series sources images from the Golden Age of Hollywood as its starting point, reconfiguring them into composite figures that are titled with quotes from the famous female stars who inspired them.

I used Mae West as the central muse for the series because of her consummate wit, refreshing candor, and unapologetic glamour. By intermingling hairstyles, suits, heels, derbies, and gowns, I created unions of opposites, combining masculine and feminine codes, and the fairy dust of Hollywood’s golden aura with its constructed artifice.

The heyday of Paramount Studios radiated glamour and effortless style through seemingly blemish-less beings. The siren song of that era still exerts its charm through time, echoed in these reassembled stills. The collages create an alternate nostalgia and serve as an homage to the actresses who secured their place in a male-dominated industry through force of character, intelligence, and talent.

Select works were enlarged as wall decals within the exhibition space at Paramount Studios (2015) to emphasize the bigness of personality that defined that world, and how we are starstruck (or dazzled) by it.

-Bettina

Original artwork by Bettina Hubby