Sunday, October 31, 2010

My Headdress Comes Alive


My class assignment: to peruse a partnering thrift store, Community Thrift in SF, for endless art supplies to display an installation in their window. Since I have been making paper headdresses, I knew I wanted to try to make one in 3-D, and walking through the Christmas aisles, it all came to together- to make a big, baubley, shimmering, and ridiculous head piece for the model I found in the school basement.

The first step was to spray paint her white, but I left a little oval of her face because she had such a nice one, complete with false lashes. Second, I gathered anything red I could find and painted everything else. I spent one day dipping fake flowers into a bucket of red enamel paint, which was extremely messy and satisfying! Next, I built a wire frame and had some friends help me drill some holes in her head to hold it in place.

On a cold and rainy Sunday morning I showed up to install my red queen at the thrift store, knowing it would be lonely and weird to be sitting directly in the window in front of all the passing traffic. As I was gathering up my motivation, Marissa appeared like an angel with wire snips to help me! Yeah for friends! We had a great time attaching a million little trinkets to the wire with our bare and bloody hands. It was really fun to have the people outside give thumbs-up as they walked by, and while some gave me a hard time about the Christmas theme in October, (she's just red!), it was worth the time it took for the mere week it shimmered in the window.





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