bedeck

An hour later in a slightly sweaty hotel ballroom bedecked with “Unionize California” signs, Friedman was being treated like the belle of the ball at the California Labor Federation’s annual awards dinner.

Their bodies were their canvases, which they bedecked in feather boas, tutus, corsets, Victorian petticoats, Edwardian frock coats, wigs, wings, headdresses, ribbons, sequins, rhinestones, satin, face paint and an abundance of glitter.

Smudgy cartoonlike pastels coexisted with raw plaster works and jewel boxes bedecked elaborately with wool, glass, straight pins, knives and sometimes taxidermized birds — animistic objects that resembled little else being made in the 1960s.

Renaissance and Medieval pieces, and the “quality camp” or “fantasy furniture” he favored — weird and whimsical pieces embellished with mythical creatures; chairs sprouting antlers, torcheres bedecked with gargoyles, commodes atop griffin feet.

Devotees from across the country have arrived to celebrate the opening, with groups of them dancing to religious songs that blare from speakers on roads bedecked with flowers.