My work sometimes develops through a confluence of many events, one such case was witnessing the adolescent development of my niece Lauren, me getting older with no husband or children, and starting to feel out of place where I was always comfortable. I began to think about the books that were given to me at her age, the stories I read about the prince coming to rescue the princess. I wanted my niece to be a strong independent individual able to make her own decisions without a timeline. One day, I came into my classroom and there was a Cinderella sticker on the Artbin case of an 18 year old art student. Why were these stories so popular, and why was I so skeptical? So I began to reread the stories. Fairy tales assume a sort of ending that we are programmed to hope for and makes the princess out to be someone weak, who is always working hard to clean and be beautiful. Upon inspection of these narratives, I began to decipher a new story by looking for clues and recoding the words and repainting the images. Letters are only omitted and are never added; all the text is intact and has only been painted out. Now they have more dubious outcomes of comedy, sex, and violence.
