Art-Rockwell-Girl at the Mirror TB03

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. As of 14-Aug-23 this trackable had survived for 7.0 years but it had been moved by only 16 cachers, for an average drop every 160 days. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

This is one of a series of travel bugs made to recognize paintings or illustrations seen, and admired by the bug owner. A digital copy of this work was downloaded from the internet. The copy was reduced in size and proportions cropped to accommodate the laminating materials available to the owner. Regrettably these processes diminish the effort of the artist. The text below is a mixture of my own observations and material gleaned from the internet.

My grandparents had a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post until it ceased publication in 1969. When I visited them I would gather up the back issues to read the jokes. After a while I began to notice the covers. Norman Rockwell may well have been the first artist whose work I could recognize on sight. Many critics in his lifetime sniffed at the idea that an illustrator could be considered an artist, but time has been kind to him. If art is done to elicit an emotional response, then Rockwell was an artist. Never mind that the emotion was often humor or American ideals and never mind that it didn’t it require a scholar to tell you how you were supposed to interpret it.

This work appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1954.  Many of Rockwells subjects were seemingly insecure adolescents.  This young girl seems to be asking whether or not she will ever be as beautiful as the voluptuous Jane Russell whose picture she holds in her lap.  Her coming-of-age is suggested in part by the discarded doll at the base of the mirror and partly by the comb, hairbrush, and cosmetics at her feet.  This may be my favorite Rockwell.