There were so many images when I was growing up in magazines and on television of the perfect post-WWII home. When I first looked at storybooks as a child, I felt this desire, this compulsion to go right into the page and join those characters.”—Laurie Simmons in a 2016 Tate interview 

Anytime our dreams fail to be realized, cinema beckons to us with the promise of sanctuary. For a couple hours, our daily struggles are placed on hold as we escape into the lives of others. What may be 
unattainable in reality can suddenly seem within our grasp. The desires we shy away from articulating out loud are expressed with wit and poetry by the characters flickering before us. Illusions of perfection may only exist on a movie screen, but we can learn a lot about ourselves by lingering in them. Few films have 
tackled these concepts as brilliantly as Woody Allen’s 1985 masterpiece, “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” in which a Depression-era waitress (Mia Farrow) is pursued by the fictional man of her dreams as well as the man who portrayed him onscreen (both played by Jeff Daniels). The picture is ultimately a tragic one, as 
sustainable happiness proves elusive for Farrow’s mortal heroine. One of the most refreshing things about Laurie Simmons’ similarly provocative feature directorial debut, “My Art,” is in how it challenges the very notion of what constitutes a happy
Anytime our dreams fail to be realized, cinema beckons to us with the promise of sanctuary. For a couple hours, our daily struggles are placed on hold as we escape into the lives of others. What may be 
unattainable in reality can suddenly seem within our grasp. The desires we shy away from articulating out loud are expressed with wit and poetry by the characters flickering before us. Illusions of perfection may only exist on a movie screen, but we can learn a lot about ourselves by lingering in them. Few films have 
tackled these concepts as brilliantly as Woody Allen’s 1985 masterpiece, “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” in which a Depression-era waitress (Mia Farrow) is pursued by the fictional man of her dreams as well as the man who portrayed him onscreen (both played by Jeff Daniels). The picture is ultimately a tragic one, as