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Katie Gilmartin – Artist Statement Pulp art is lurid, turgid, smutty, and salacious. What’s not to like? My interest in the genre dates from my graduate school days, interviewing older lesbians about their lives in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. More than one life story told to me was anchored by an electrifying moment in a rural podunk’s Five and Dime. She was browsing the wire racks of trashy fiction when a racy cover caught her eye: a haughty brunette, a melting blonde, and a world of tension between them. She furtively bought the novel and cried over its tragic ending, but within its pages found a name for her desires. I gathered a small collection of pulps back when you could pick them up for a few bucks. I’ve read quite a few, and for the most part judging these books by their covers would be overly charitable. Nonetheless, the covers express eloquently the social tensions and cultural preoccupations of the era. Gender terrorizes, as men resolutely strive to prove their manhood and women exist to adorn. Women’s sexuality terrifies, threatening to tear the known world asunder. Race (if not white) lurks in the shadows, enticingly exotic or menacing. Gay sexuality mesmerizes, a hovering contagion. To some extent, the very fact that all of this reads today as overblown camp or offensive dreck is an indication of how far we’ve come. And I find myself drawn to reclaiming pulp art’s busty babes; sex may have been their only source of power, but what delicious domination it was. The titles, images, and blurbs in the prints I’ve created are a pastiche. I borrow from existing pulps, add some local color and an occasional autobiographical detail, and mix it all up with my own imagination. “Whisper His Sin,” for example, is the title of a Vin Parker pulp published in 1954; I love the slipperiness of that title in my mouth, its mixture of fear and fascination. The author’s name, “Benjamin Dover,” is appropriated from local gay culture, which has been hosting “Ben Dover” parties for as long as anyone can remember. The blurb is my own: I find it a delightful challenge to see how many words like “twisted,” “vortex,” “perversion,” and “twilight,” can be crammed into a single sentence. Enjoy. Resume Education
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