Artist seeks out the models who inspired her comic collages

The smiling, well-coifed women featured on Anne Taintor's products ooze sarcasm and snarkiness.

Hurrah! At last I'm 40!

Honey, you couldn't handle half of me.

WOW! I get to give birth AND change diapers!

What makes them even funnier is that the women immortalized on Taintor's products are real people.

Look closely: Maybe one is your mom or grandma.

It's been 22 years since Taintor launched her vintage collage line using photos of women from magazine ads of the 1940s and '50s. Then, this past year, the models and their families started coming to life.

In the past year, Taintor got to meet one model and talk with the families of two others who have since passed away. She hopes she'll hear from even more of the women, whom she's nicknamed "The Taintorettes."

"I really don't know how to seek them out, so I have to wait for them to come to me," Taintor said during a recent phone interview from her home in rural New Mexico.

The models' stories

While shopping with a friend in San Jose, Calif., Terry Walsh Clavelli stopped in her tracks in front of an Anne Taintor greeting card rack and stared in disbelief. One of the cards had a picture of her mother, looking beautiful and smiling coyly, with the words, "She could see no good reason to act her age."

Clavelli bought the card and took it home to show her family. She held it up to old modeling photos of her mom from the 1940s and, sure enough, it was a match.

"One friend immediately said, 'Oh my God! They owe you money! You ought to sue!' I said, 'Absolutely not,'" Clavelli said.

For one thing, she probably wouldn't have a case, partly because the photo is more than 50 years old and thus part of the public domain.

The legalities don't matter, though. Clavelli and her family are flattered, not angry, to be part of this wildly popular brand.

Clavelli said her mother, Joan Walsh Meckoll, would feel the same way if she were alive, even though she was a conservative woman who, ironically, always acted her age. She passed away in 1990.

"It's nice that she's getting all the glory," Clavelli said. "She probably wouldn't like it because she didn't like to draw attention to herself … but Dad would have loved it."

After Clavelli and Taintor connected, Taintor sent the family a box of goodies, including a custom-made bracelet with Meckoll's photo on it.

"All of Anne's women, they're not being abused. It's like they're getting their final say," Clavelli said. "It's like they went through this hell of the '40s and '50s and now they're rising above it -- and saying some pretty funny things."

Taintor's been humbled, honored and thoroughly entertained by the life stories of these women. Last year, she spent a day with Barbara Luff McCraine, the woman featured in her "I can't be good all the time" piece.

McCraine declines media interviews, but shared stories with Taintor about getting paid $7.50 an hour to model -- good money in those days -- and being forced by her modeling agency to dress up and go to parties to "give the place some class."

McCraine discovered that her 60-year-old modeling photo was back in circulation when her granddaughter came over wearing an Anne Taintor T-shirt with her likeness on it.

McCraine's family gave an updated collage to Taintor. In contrast to her "I can't be good all the time" piece, their collage features a photo of McCraine, now in her 80s, smiling next to the words "I wasn't good all the time."

Taintor also recently learned the story behind her "Golly, that was fun" collage -- a piece Taintor's own mother described as "pornographic" because of the sexual innuendo.

The woman who modeled for that ad played hooky from school to do the photo shoot and ended up being grounded by her parents, Taintor said.

Golly, that was not fun.

Taintor's inspiration

When Taintor got the idea to make these collages, her life was not very June Cleaver-esque.

She was a single mother with an art degree from Harvard working an unfulfilling job with a cartographer. She recalls flipping through her collection of old magazines and staring in fascination at the women in the ads.

"I've always been kind of a tortured soul, so I loved how complacent and happy they were," she said.

Then, her sarcastic sense of humor kicked in. She imagined what they probably wanted to say and used those words to make a collage.

"Usually the picture inspires a saying. It's almost as if they're talking sometimes. I go through the magazines and somebody speaks," she said, laughing.

The empowering, witty collages struck a chord with American women and Taintor's product line evolved from magnets into a multimillion-dollar business that sells everything from file folders to Christmas cards. Taintor's new kitchen products, which include flour-sack towels and aprons, are now available online.

Plans are in the works to expand Taintor's line, although the details are being kept hush-hush.

"I've had requests for images of African-American or Hispanic women, but they just weren't in these ads," Taintor said. "Unfortunately, it's limited to slim, white women. I can't even find overweight women."

Taintor, 54, recently re-married and lets her grown daughter, Hannah, run the business from an office in New York. She remains in New Mexico, creating roughly 30 new collages a year. She draws inspiration from the hundreds of vintage images she has stashed away -- sorted in groups like "women by the refrigerator" and "women with cigarettes."

The words Taintor attaches to the photos resonate with her fans.

"So many of my customers e-mail me and say, 'That's me! That's me!'," she said of the sentiments. "I've always been kind of a hermit and kind of a loner, but I guess I'm exactly like everybody else. I guess we're all trying to suppress a certain part."

Do any of these women look familiar?

Anyone who recognizes a "Taintorette" -- a model from Anne Taintor's product line -- is asked to e-mail cs@annetaintor.com.

Where to find Anne Taintor products in the suburbs:

• Cocoon, 212 S. 3rd St., Geneva

• Scratch n Sniff, 120 N. Marion St., Oak Park

• Artisan Sho, 2011 Tower Drive, Glenview

• Yellow Bird, 1515 Sheridan Road, Wilmette