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Note from the Atelier September 19, 2026 Hi There Reader... This week's edition is a little different. With the exception of a small handful of people who have seen Conditions of Employment in person, this is the first time I've shared the completed series. Anywhere. I've made plenty of work that has some piece of me in it, but this one is different. It's my mom's photographs, her documents, her stories and a very specific part of her life. And because of that, sharing it feels a little more vulnerable than putting one of my other paintings out into the world. So this week, there are no exhibitions, destinations or other rabbit holes. Just this. I'm very happy to finally share Conditions of Employment: Stewardessing in the Jet Age with you. Cheers!

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Conditions of Employment

A mixed-media look at stewardessing in the Jet Age

In the spring of 1959, at age 20, Carolyn Major Sekulich came across an advertisement for American Airlines stewardesses. She applied, was accepted and headed off to American Airlines’ Stewardess College in Texas that summer.

For the next two years, she lived a life that must have seemed pretty glamorous for a young woman from Gary, Indiana. She traveled during the Jet Age. She went to the premiere of Spartacus with Kirk Douglas. She befriended celebrities, politicians and professional athletes. Her best friend was also a stewardess, and whenever they could, they planned their trips so they could work together and go out during their overnight layovers.

To say she had a ton of fun is an understatement.

But she also got weighed. Frequently! Her hair had to conform to airline standards. Her nails had to be polished the right color. The seams of her stockings had to be straight.

Her physical appearance was regularly inspected and evaluated.

And when she became engaged in 1961, she could no longer be a stewardess.

Those contradictions became the basis for Conditions of Employment: Stewardessing in the Jet Age, my nine-piece mixed-media series about my mother's brief but memorable career with American Airlines.

Nine panels, one story

The nine 12-by-16-inch cradled wood panels are individual works, but they were designed to remain together in a 3-by-3 grid. They follow my mother's story from Accepted, when she answered that advertisement in 1959, through Ineligible, when her engagement ended her airline career two years later.

The ninth and final panel is different. It is simply titled Carolyn Major Sekulich. More about that one later.

The panels incorporate original artifacts from my mother's airline years: photographs, trip logs, welcome brochures, stewardess requirements, an evaluation report and even the Constitution and By Laws for stewardesses.

For the backgrounds, I rummaged through local antique stores for magazines and newspapers from 1959–1961. So the advertisements, headlines, illustrations and other bits of ephemera aren't reproductions designed to look old. They actually came from that period. (Zoom in to look at all that goodness!)

The first three panels, Accepted, Training and The Look, follow Carolyn into this new world: answering the ad, attending Stewardess College and graduating. They also begin to reveal just how much went into achieving "the look" expected of an American Airlines stewardess.

Then come Within Limits, In Service, Out of Compliance and Composed. This is where the title of the series becomes fairly literal.

There were weight requirements and weigh-ins. There were rules about hair, nail polish and stockings. Stewardesses were evaluated frequently, sometimes without knowing who was evaluating them. One of my mother's original evaluation reports comments negatively on eyeliner, the height of her shoe heels and, of all things, lemon wedges.

Composed looks at another condition of the job. Stewardesses were expected to remain pleasant and composed despite passenger behavior that today we would consider sexist or sexual harassment. I paired a photograph of my mother with an original cartoon from the era making light of exactly that kind of behavior.

But right in the middle of those panels is In Service.

Because my mother loved this job.

The series I thought I was making

When I first conceived of Conditions of Employment, I thought I would lean much more heavily into the misogyny and restrictions placed on stewardesses at the time.

There was certainly plenty of material.

But as I worked with my mother's photographs and documents, I kept remembering the stories she told me. And the way she told them.

She wasn't wistfully recounting two miserable years spent suffering under ridiculous employment rules. She was laughing about having a "date" in every city. She was remembering adventures with her best friend. She had traveled, met fascinating people and experienced a world that was very different from the one she had grown up in.

She loved it.

But she was also aggravated by the weigh-ins and inspections. Years later, when former stewardesses challenged the airlines over policies that had forced them to leave when they married, she regretted not having been part of that effort.

I realized that making the series solely about the restrictions would have meant telling the story I saw looking back, rather than the one my mother had actually lived.

Her story was more complicated than that. The conditions were restrictive. The opportunity was extraordinary.

Both things can be true.

Carolyn Major Sekulich

Ineligible, the eighth panel, contains photographs from my mother's final flight as a stewardess in 1961. She was getting married, so that part of her life was over.

But I didn't want the series to end there.

The ninth panel is titled simply Carolyn Major Sekulich. It contains a photograph of my mom taken approximately ten years later. By then she had become much more than a former stewardess. She was a wife and mother and would eventually become a grandmother.

Still, that brief airline career remained part of her.

Whenever we flew as a family, on American whenever possible, my mother would look around to see whether she knew any of the pilots or stewardesses. And, of course, she commented on their appearance and service.

Flying forever remained an occasion in my family. This is my mom, my brother and me before our first flight on a 747, posing beside the airplane. Ironically, not American. And yes, we got new airplane clothes.

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