My Eureka Moment While Dressing and Undressing Mannequins
How my brief career in retail display led to a valuable life lesson
Barely 21 and fresh out of art school with a degree in painting (the Rembrandt van Rijn kind not the Benjamin Moore kind) I faced the daunting prospect of finding employment in my mid-sized, midwest, hometown. There wasn’t much call for a fine artist at the time (and yes I should have thought about that four years earlier) so I opted for convention. I would get a job in an arts related field that at least paid me a living wage and in my neck of the woods that meant only one thing, the design and display department of the T. Eaton Company, the city’s major department store.
Eaton’s was a familiar destination for art school graduates, number one on the list of local employers. It had everything for the budding creative genius- saws, drills, paint, and fabrication equipment to produce free-standing three-dimensional displays, dioramas and signage. Naturally the company welcomed graphic arts grads with their training in illustration but fine arts people accustomed to painting nudes and not flats? Hmm.
I was interviewed by a middle-aged gent who naturally assumed I had taste and class and a fine discerning eye. Check. But instead of going to the workshop across the street, I was assigned to the store itself. I was placed on probation…
