Greer Lankton Archive Digitization Project
In 2019, Mattress Factory was awarded a Council on Library and Information Resources grant to digitize the Greer Lankton Archive, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh.
This CLIR grant is enabling the Mattress Factory to digitize and make accessible online over 15,000 items including 2D artwork, ephemera, periodicals, photographs, photo albums, slides and negatives, journals and correspondence documenting the life and work of artist Greer Lankton.
Through the digitization process, the project is preserving, historicizing and contextualizing Lankton’s artwork while shedding light on her working practices, such as her transformative dolls which are at once sculptural, animated and performative.
This is seen in works such as Dee Dee Lux, an artwork Lankton called a “Fat Suit” which she made at age 16. The work is worn here by Lankton in the back yard of her family home in Park Forest, Illinois, with her friend Cathi Cunningham c.1975. Lankton then made a photo collage from the images she took of the artwork, a process she would repeat throughout her career.
Greer Lankton in her studio while at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, wearing Dee Dee Lux.
Lankton was known to sometimes attend parties in the East Village, NYC, as Dee Dee Lux when she moved there to attend Pratt in 1978. She later went on to wear the suit for the film "Bogus Man," directed by Nick Zedd. Illustrated here is the original collage used in the East Village Eye advertisement for Bogus Man showing at the O.P Screen, NYC, on March 30, 1980. Lankton starred as "Dee Dee Lux" alongside David Mc Dermott and Lawrence Oliver Cherry.
Detail of Princess Pamela in process with Sissy and in the doorway of Civilian Warfare c.1983
Around 1982 Lankton began remodeling Dee Dee Lux into Princess Pamela. Greer modeled the work after the African American cook-turned-jazz singer Pamela Stroebel, known as Princess Pamela, who ran an infamous soul-food kitchen out of her apartment in NYC from the 1960s – 90s.
Detail of Princess Pamela with a NYC Police Officer outside Civilian Warfare Gallery c.1983.
Princess Pamela went on to be shown in various exhibitions over the next 10 years and ultimately ended up in the collection of Iggy Pop, which was a huge honor for Lankton. Here we see the work with Iggy Pop on the occasion of the artwork's acquisition. It was also both Lankton and Iggy's Birthday in 1991.
Once completed, the Greer Lankton Archive Digitization Project will encourage a broader examination of Lankton’s multifaceted practice. Highlighting how this seminal artist was relating to issues of gender identity, sexuality, iconography, pop culture and consumerism, alongside battles with abuse, anorexia, drug addiction and the AIDS crisis which surrounded her.
