This shadow box is made as a tribute to the hard and under appreciated lives of the Burlesque, Dancehall & Saloon Girls of yesterday. They flaunted, they flirted and serviced their clientele for a few crumpled dollars while the addictions, abuses and un-ending years took their toll.

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I first found her whilst on a lonely forage in the dark woods ...  a desolate and worn knot in a fallen tree, choked by barbed wire, being devoured by parasitic mushrooms, a dead animal carcass at her feet. I sympathetically took her home, bathed her and lovingly painted her in her former glory for all to adore. 

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I protected her with the paired jaws of an elk that apparently had excellent dental hygiene. A long faded bouquet of roses with barbed wire stems gently caresses her side. A fine crystal whisky glass, hastily holds her imported French panties. A faded perfume bottle adorned with imitation jewels now holds her mercury and arsenic laden medicine to subside the "lady itches" that she constantly endures. Three red and white amanita muscaria (fly agaric) awaits a nibble, supporting the secretly drawn poker cards for a hopeful outcome, yet are in fact "the dead man's hand".  Not to worry, it can be washed away with a bottle of Absinthe liquor. Black lilies foretell her unavoidable future. Her life was not fair ...  she is an Angry Beaver.