Heather Doyle-Maier
Denver, CO

Wild Goose Chase
2023
Paper, fabric, thread, tyvek, steel, repurposed corset pieces
6 x 8.75 x 1.25

Artist Statement

“Wild Goose Chase” was inspired by a vintage corset belonging to the grandmother of a friend. A farm woman living and raising a family on the plains of Eastern Colorado, one might wonder why she felt she needed a corset at all. To shape her figure? To maintain her identity as lovely and slender? To try to control her appearance by sheer force, out of habit? It was impossible to know the story, yet this corset, with its rigid steel bones and tight-wrapped lacings and its distinctive molding of bust and waist, was clearly well-used and, for her at least, it served an essential purpose.

A book of collected family recipes from the same friend told a different sort of story, and that story was about food. Instructions for scrumptious dishes filled that little cookbook: yummy sauces, tasty meat preparations, baked goods and delicious desserts, many with unknown pronunciations. There were recipes (dozens and dozens) for holiday food and comfort food and foods for particular events, notes (extensive) on who the recipe has been passed down from and to, and debates (clearly ongoing) about whether this version was Grandma’s original, or not, or if it was at least as good as. Essential purposes were clear here too: reinforce the bonds of family, demonstrate your cultural identity, and keep your large family fed and proudly able to farm their own land.

The relationships between women and food and bodies and control are complex, layered, and spring-loaded. In response to these two specific artifacts, I built a book that explores and enacts those tensions. Gleaned from personal interviews, five narratives inside the book relate different women’s memories of eating and family and home. Familiar foods are printed on delicate pink triangles that are incorporated into a quilt pattern, a “wild goose chase,” that is laid out on a field of a fancy lace pattern. Delicate femininity abounds in the materials, the textures, the aesthetic. Amidst this preciousness and nostalgia, however, is a tight grip: pages are stitched tightly in multiple lines, steel corset bones and ball bearings are embedded in the lacework, and a long list of “tips” for weight control is inscribed on the backside. When closed, the accordion-style book is also held tightly together with corset bindings, which must be assertively reckoned with before opening the book or viewing its contents, and to “read” the book is to reckon with not only specific histories inside but to one’s own deeply embedded relationship to body and food and to the control of both.