I was a university student in September 1995, entering my studio year of a 4 year fine arts degree. I had started a large piece on an actual twin mattress in the summer, about the evils of lottery and gambling in general. I wanted to create an image/self portrait of me sleeping with my head on cloud sheets and a collage crazy quilt, made of actual losing scratch tickets and marked bingo cards. I brought the mattress to my new studio space at the start of the semester to continue working on it. A few days into the term I went to the local convenience store and bought a $2 monopoly scratch ticket and won $2, I cashed it in on another ticket and went back to my studio space. When I scratched the new ticket it was a $20,000 winner! What a way to start the new semester as I was a broke, single mother of three.
I tried working on my “lottery bed” piece for months after that but it was difficult to make a statement piece on the evils of gambling when I had just won a windfall. Eventually I gave up and brought the mattress home. I remarried and moved at least four times until my new husband got tired of moving something so large and cumbersome and cut out the mattress innards but left the shell of my work for posterity.
Through the years I thought about that piece in its unfinished state and eventually decided that collage wasn’t working for me. I have kept buying lottery tickets and so the bed kept resonating with me. In 2019 we found a canvas at an Opus store in Victoria BC, that was the size of a twin bed. Seeing as we only had a Honda civic at the time we couldn’t possibly get it home but my very supportive husband arranged for opus to package it for shipping and had a courier company pick it up.
I had a collection of scratch tickets that I had been saving for years but knew that as a painter the challenge would be in creating a painting rather than a mixed media piece. I proceeded to put them together as a quilt pattern and then photographed the quilt to print out an image I could trace onto the canvas.
I am still working on “lottery bed” and have painted the quilt and sheets, the self portrait proves to be another challenge but I have spent the last few years painting more and more portraits which has improved my skill and I’m hoping to finish this piece soon. I intend on adding gold leaf to the quilt which will add to the gaudy character of scratch tickets and also highlight the mess that is created when they are scratched.
My husband has dreams that since the lottery struck while working on the piece the first time, that finishing it will produce a bigger win, I feel I’m winning just finally bringing my vision to fruition, Oh and I secretly hope for a big win too, which shows that the “lottery bed” still holds resonance. I still sleep with my head in the clouds and the thought of winning big still comforts me, maybe someday…