Story Teller / She Who Walks

Story Teller: applique, free motion embroidery, pencil portrait drawing, hand stitching, block printing, fabric paint on stiff, painting linen 2011.

This piece was created for the exhibition 1001 Funny Things You Can Do With a Skirt at Seymour Art Gallery, Deep Cove BC 2011

It is a portrait of Elizabeth Dancoes by Eleanor Hannan

in the collection of Elizabeth Dancoes

She Who Walks the Desert Alone has that circling the drain look in her eye, having stayed alive too long in a place that chews up the best, and the look puts people on edge. That along with the bony appendages draping like lucre across the heavy fabric of her voluminous skirts probably account for the rumors. Like the one about the demon, who lives between her legs and pleasures her whenever she wants. You can see its tail, they say, trailing behind her. I know better – that’s no tail but a crowbar she hauls to catch the sand storm static that drives men to their knees with head pain. Another local legend has it that once, when a few stragglers tried to ambush her, ghosts flew from unseen seams in the many pleats that enfold her to finish them off. Every now and again a piece of one of those sorry fools turns up. ’Course a demon and ghosts are easier to believe in than a woman who’s smarter than you and carries a knife she knows how to use. My own personal theory is that it’s her freedom she guards so carefully. That’s a place few can envision and none care to go.