By Diana Dunkelberger
During the next few months, if you wander down to the lower level of the main library, you’ll see Pat coming by to pour you a glass of ice water and take your order. Jean will be there, too, over by the gumball machine, handing out sweets. And that blond, pink-sweatered waitress you see rushing around with four plates of food and the focus of an Olympic sprinter? That’s Sondra.
Pat, Jean, and Sondra—photographs of them, that is—are on display at the Jewett Gallery’s current exhibit, called “Dishing It Out: Career Waitresses Across the U.S.A.” The work of Candacy Taylor, a Bay Area photographer and a former waitress, this collection of color photographs, displayed alongside short, chatty interviews, pays tribute to 14 seasoned diner waitresses from Gibsonia, Pennsylvania to Napa, California, with many pit stops in between.