While doing research on Sleeping Beauty for Blinded by Enchantment , I was amazed at the array of Sleeping Beauty costumes flowing forth when I did a Google image search on the subject. Fascinated by the images in all their subtle variety and shades of pink I started to download them and pretty soon had a hundred. I expanded my image search to include the phrases Aurora and Briar Rose. I acquired nearly 250 unique head to toe images of Sleeping Beauty dress up before exhausting the image search parameters I had set. Each one of them is part of this installation.

Part of the intrigue for me is the irony of taking something so immediately available and fast, digital images returned on a Google Image Search, arriving within seconds of a query, and executing the project in a tangible form which was intensely time consuming and laborious. The process spanned several weeks and multiple experiments with materials in order to achieve the vision I had of the little princesses in all their glory.

To create the installation I sized and printed out the images, enlisting at least eleven friends to come over and help me cut out little princesses in several cutting sessions. I was happy to receive such generous enthusiasm for the cutting of “paper dolls” and intrigued by the pleasure that my friends and I experienced cutting and arranging the princesses, mesmerized at the adorable variety, so alike and yet not one image exactly the same. I was Blinded by the Enchantment of making the princesses “real”!

Thank you to friends and family who volunteered to cut out the princesses, I couldn’t have executed it without your help!