Martha Fay

My latest nuns arrived in the mail today, a pair of slightly thick around the hips Sisters with ankles to match, photographed from behind as they cross a street. Their light colored habits have been hacked off at mid-calf, their matching veils clipped in what some advisor or community committee no doubt deemed a judicious compromise between the practical and the decorous. Whatever trace dignity these outfits permit their wearers in real life is here dispatched by a couple of supermarket flyer steaks, one slapped on as a backpack for Sister-on-the-right, the other making a grainy, oversize carryall for Sister-on-the-left. The resulting composite- meant to be a witty exercise in “How to make a familiar object strange,” according to the artist’s explanation printed on the flip side-is titled “Holy Cow.” “Deciding which familiar image to use was the hard part,” the artist writes.” I already had the picture of the two nuns, which I found in a magazine. It was one of those 11th hour things where I happened to notice an A & P