out through the velvet curtain, turning off the safelights as she went, she remembered the drawings in the stairwell. Earlier, she had been so eager to get up to the attic that she hadn’t even glanced at them. Now she wondered if there was a way to get them off the wall and include them in the auction. Her mood lifted. Drawings by Miranda Brand! Contractors could probably cut out that part of the wall, and a museum could hang it as it was, the way they did with Italian frescoes. She would have to talk to some curators to ask about best practices for transport—you would have to protect the drywall from crumbling, obviously, but also put something down to keep the pencil from smudging …
But when she reached the place in the stairwell where Theo’s fingers had wrapped around her wrist, she could not find the drawings. She turned in a circle, bewildered.
The wall was a uniform white.
For a terrifying moment, she thought maybe she had imagined the drawings altogether. Their viciousness, the smeared lead, the look on Theo’s face when he saw them, like he thought they might reach out and grab him by the neck.
She knelt down to touch the place where the drawings had been. The surface was smooth and hard, with the fluid feel of fresh paint.
Theo had painted them over.
The drawings were gone.
MIRANDA
SERIES 4, Clippings and publications
BOX 18, News clippings
FOLDER: 1979–1984
* * *
The Village Voice
JANUARY 27, 1982
■
CAPILLARIES
Adriana Panico
In an otherwise uneven show of new talent at the Patina Gallery exhibition space last night, one artist stood out: Miranda Brand and her photo series Capillaries, which filled the entire back room.
Brand’s work will be familiar to night owls at the Palladium and Club 57, where she has shown pieces from her series Empty Spaces. (She went by the name Miranda Planchart until her elopement with painter Jake Brand last fall.) Promising pictures, to be sure, but the works she exhibited last night are in a league of their own.
Capillaries consists of portraits of women in everyday environments, but with a twist: their faces and bodies are caked in blood. A woman and man share a milkshake at a nostalgic diner, but while the man is clean, the woman is drenched head-to-toe in red liquid. A similar fate has befallen the woman sitting in a theater audience, whose off-the-shoulder dress has been stained by the blood dripping from her chin and hair. Brand herself plays the central role in most of the photographs, using the self-portrait genre to toy with the traditional power imbalance between photographer and subject.
Although the photographs’ spectacle of horror is visually compelling, what makes Capillaries truly exceptional are the expressions on the women’s faces, full of exhaustion, muted boredom, and above all, appeasement. At the diner, the woman’s lips curve in a look of feigned attention. While the theatergoer’s fellow patrons laugh uproariously around her, she stretches her blood-stained cheeks in a grimace of happiness. Spectacular yet invisible, messy yet controlled, all-knowing yet powerless: this is Brand’s vision of the contemporary woman. Think Carrie, if no one else noticed anything was wrong.
At the show, Brand, seven months pregnant, curved one hand protectively over her belly as she smiled and chatted with viewers. Although the baby is due in March, she anticipates no change to her production schedule. A relief for her new dealer, Hal Eggers of Patina: he sold all ten of the Capillaries prints on display by the end of the night.
SERIES 1, Correspondence
BOX 1, Personal correspondence
FOLDER: Toby-Jarrett, Lynn (incl. 12 photocopies of letters from MB, from LTJ private collection)
* * *
2/10/1982
Dear M,
My cousin sent me a copy of Village Voice from last month and I saw the review of your show. Great review, amazing, but CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BABY!
I think I’m still in shock. You’re due so soon! Have to say I wish you had told me. I could have knit you some booties. Not that I know how to knit, but maybe I’ll learn. How long are babies in booties? Jesus, never thought I’d be asking you that! It all feels surreal! Part of me thinks maybe you’ll call me one of these days telling me it’s all a prank.
I hope you and Jake are doing well. I know you’re busy with married life, whatever that means. I hope you’re not still mad at me. I know I was out of line, and I think you’re right, I probably would like Jake if I got to know him.