Day 221 at McGill, continuing my washroom tour. I am still waiting on paperwork to ensure that I can take a class with Amelia Jones, which I attended today. After class, a woman who sat next to me asked if I knew Kate Craig’s work. At first, I did not recognize the name, but once my classmate mentioned Kate’s persona Lady Brute who wore much leopard print, I remembered her instantly. As Jayne Wark mentions in “Dressed to Thrill: Costume, Body, and Dress in Canadian Performance Art” in Tanya Mars & Johanna Householder’s “Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women” (2004), Lady Brute “took the leopard spot as her defining symbol” as did Dr. Brute, the persona of Craig’s then collaborative partner and husband, Eric Metcalfe who applied the leopard spot to all of his creations including his kazoo-saxophone. This was the early 70s.
In 1974, after their collaboration ended, Kate Craig performed The Flying Leopard in which she wore a winged leopard costume fitted with a harness that she shuttled down a cable that was “rigged from the hull of a beached freighter to a tree on the shore over the beach in Dollarton” outside of Vancouver. She put her leopard clad persona away in “Skins” a performance for video with Hank Bull in 1975 which I would love to get my hands on (the previous quote is also from Caught in the Act, only this time it’s Karen Henry’s look at Craig’s work in, “Kate Craig: Living in Character”).
Another classmate asked me in the hallway if I had made a film with a ball-gag and Mary Poppins. Yes, yes I did and you can watch it here.
I know, I know. This shirt amplifies my muffin top and looks like maternity wear, 95%