We felt that this issue could not possibly be complete without the work of Chicago artist Brooke Hummer, who pays homage to the glories of art history as well as the modern—and glam, and powerful!—phenom known as the unmarried cat lady. “Cat lady is a pejorative term that our society has used to transfer shame onto women who challenge traditional values,” she says.
“The Cat Women series is meant to playfully subvert this sexist stereotype.” Her initial inspiration came when shooting a funny holiday mother-daughter-style promo of her (non-child-having) artist’s rep Andrea holding her cat Bunny; they ended up doing the promo in the style of a 19th century American folk-art painting. Soon after, several other women approached Brooke, wanting portraits with their own cats. (Umm, us too, please!) She knew she wanted to tackle the Italian Renaissance next. The result is the image above, painted in the style of a Renaissance wedding portrait, in which the landscapes in the background (along with the brides in the foreground) were all about showing off the husband’s property. This one features the Hancock Building and Sears Tower instead of Tuscan towers, since the subject, Lindsey, an ad agency producer in Chicago, “belongs to no one and owns the whole city.”
We suspect that Lindsey’s pearl-bedecked cat Clementine owns her fair share of it too. See more of Brooke Hummer’s work at brookehummer.com.
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Enchanted Living is a quarterly print magazine that celebrates all things enchanted.
