The Ladies Home Journal, n.d.
Collage on paper
20 x 16 inches
Collection of the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi
2015.6.6

In this collage, Hood laid the header for an 1891 article “Unknown Wives of Well-Known Men,” ripped from a Ladies Home Journal magazine atop the classified car sales page from the Houston Post. Although she layered a few other scraps of imagery into her composition this work is more painterly than many of her other collages. Hood paints thin transparent washes of color over most of the composition, with thicker black swaths obliterating the edges and creeping in from the bottom left.  While much of Hood’s imagery is ambiguous, in this collage Hood appears to directly reference how she felt about her life.

While Hood received recognition as an artist, throughout her life she was linked to several well-known men: the Spanish novelist, Ramon Sender; her husband, renowned conductor José Velasco Maidana; writer and nobleman Baron Krister Kuylenstierna; and geneticist Dr. Krishna Dronamraju. A very strong and independent woman in many ways, Hood’s archive of correspondence reveals that she formed relationships with domineering personalities. Created while she was simultaneously involved with both Velasco Maidana and Kuylenstierna, this work is perhaps a sly commentary on the way she felt in those relationships while also addressing the disparity between women and men in the art world.