Dry Cleaning Meets The Peter Principle

"It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week." - Laurence J. Peter

When I first read this quote I didn't know who Laurence J. Peter was, so I looked him up. He is a Canadian educator, author and Hierarchiologist, who, with Raymond Hull, wrote the book The Peter Principle: Why Things Alway Go Wrong. The Peter Principle humorously states that in modern organizations, people are promoted to their level of incompetence, which is where they stay.

I've experienced the Peter Principle in my own life when it comes to laundry. I don't know how many articles of clothing I've shrunk, scorched or bleached by accident. When it comes to ironing a dress shirt, short of permanent-press or someone doing it for me, I take the shirt to the cleaners.

This small dry-cleaning shop is on Main Street in East Haven, Connecticut, about a half mile from the subject of one of my previous paintings, "Fairmount Theater". There are so many things I love about this place: the color of the faux stone facade (which reminds me of the ochre color of Parisian apartment buildings in the sunlight), the neon sign advertising "Fur Storage Vault," and last but not least, the small bright green and red neon sign in the window which reads "Organic Dry Cleaning."

Central Cleaners is number ten in my "Sign Painting" series.

-Felice

Click Here for More Information