I was commissioned by co-producers Gotham Chamber Opera, Music-Theatre Group and Opera Company of Philadelphia to create this original piece of art for new opera Dark Sisters.
With music by Nico Muhly & libretto by Stephen Karam, this production is inspired by the story of the sister wives of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) whose lives were media fodder in the wake of the highly publicized raid of their compound in 2008. The show focuses on the attempt of one sister to define herself and her relationship to her community.
Inspired by the red clay landscape in which the show is set and the handmade clothing the women wear, I created this illustration out of actual dirt sprinkled on canvas. The woman is an amalgam of several images taken of the FLDS wives, with their unmistakable anachronistic hairdos, gazing back at the cameras that endlessly stalked them once they were away from their homes.