Performance Artist Noted

Hillary Carlip found her first discarded grocery list at 15. To her, it was an inspired insight into someone else's life -- someone she had never met nor would likely ever know if she did. 

So she made him up!

Carlip got so good at creating entire characters from the discarded grocery lists she collects that she took them to the stage, where she would walk across it, reciting the lists in character. She then wrote a book, for which she assembled wardrobe and enlisted the help of a make-up artist friend, and illustrated it with pictures of herself as the characters. A la Cart: The Secret Lives of Grocery Shoppers contained essays and other errata, which further developed the characters -- one even had an eHarmony profile which Carlip says gets responses to this day.

She is now in talks to bring her act to TV.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008