Just a face in the crowd

"There is nothing like looking,
if you want to find something."

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

"Where's Waldo?" 11-25-13

"The creatures I seek do not want to be seen."

-- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"Leave me alone, and go in search of someone else."

-- Ali ibn Abi Talib

"And you were just a face in the crowd

You were just a face in the crowd

Out in the street, walking around

A face in the crowd."

-- Tom Petty, "A Face in the Crowd"

Ding! Ding! Ding!

It's game time here at A Face A Day!

Today we're playing "Where's Waldo?" 

OK, it's not really Waldo hiding somewhere in this jumble of faces. It's Barbie, disguised as Waldo. (Hey, I work with what I have.) 

You might recognize some other old friends in this group. It's sort of a reunion photo of sorts, with a few new faces mixed in. 

Happy searching!

Apple-y ever after

"You'd be surprised what poison is often hidden 

in the most beautiful camouflage."

-- Evelyn Klebert, Ghost Soldier

Barbie disguised as a crone with a poison apple 10-29-13

"I'm going to put death in all their food and watch them die."

-- Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

"The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is."

-- Marguerite de Valois

"Yes, but wait till you taste one, Dearie. 

Like to try one, hmmm? 

Go on. Go on, have a bite."

-- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Remember the shrunken apple head face from a few days ago? 

*click here in case you forgot, or missed it http://afaceaday2013.blogspot.com/2013/10/do-ripe-thing.html

Well, I've been letting it shrink some more, and today re-purposed it -- I popped on a little tuft of white hair, and turned one of my Barbies into a fairy-tale crone complete with a poison apple.

As you may already know, my Barbies all came to me from the thrift store, naked as newborns. So I make all of their clothes myself. In today's case, I made a babushka, woolen cloak, and a little burlap dress.

I also made the poison apple, from polymer clay. (The stuff is supposed to be non-toxic, but I wouldn't want to eat it.) 

So today's face is kind of "apples two ways." Like at a restaurant, where you'd get maybe a baked apple filled with apple chutney. Or perhaps apple-stuffed pork chops with a lovely applesauce gastrique. 

Except here you get a shrunken apple head and a poison clay apple. 

Because here at A Face A Day, we like you to get your money's worth.

It may not be as tantalizing as a pork chop, but still.

Don't lose your head

"How does one kill fear, I wonder?

How do you shoot a specter through the heart,

slash off its spectral head, 

take it by its spectral throat?"

-- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Barbie disguised as the Headless Horseman
with polymer clay Jack 'o Lantern head and a bronze horse 10-25-13

"No, you must believe me. 

It was a horseman, a dead one. 

Headless."

-- Sleepy Hollow

"I just sort of lost my head for a little while."

-- John Mayer

"I like a woman with a head on her shoulders.

I hate necks."

-- Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy

I have played with Barbies more during this 365 days project than I ever did as a child.

And here's why.

At least, here's why I think why.

I have 3 sisters. And with 3 sisters you don't play Barbies alone.
If you have sisters, then when you play Barbies, you play Barbies with at least one other person.

And when you play Barbies with others, especially strong-personalitied, opinionated, bossy others, they often try to dictate what and how your Barbie does what it does.

Because they also have a Barbie. And the Barbies must interact. The Barbies can't just live independent, parallel lives that never intersect. That's the whole point of playing Barbies. You've got to make them interact. They have to come out of the Barbie beach house and socialize.

For instance, your sister's Barbie needs to borrow a pair of rubbery pink pumps because she only has yellow ones. So she hops her Barbie over to you and trades shoes, and you get the pink ones, one of which is chewed. 

Or your sister's Barbie wants her Barbie to go cruising in the pink Corvette and wants your Barbie to ride along. But your sister's Barbie gets to drive, because it's her Corvette, which means your sister gets to push the car while you just sit and watch.

Or your sister says your Barbie can't wear the sparkly dress because her Barbie is wearing a sparkly dress, and they can't both wear sparkly dresses, because that's copying and her Barbie had her sparkly dress on first.

So you dress your Barbie in a pair of Ken's bell bottoms and maybe a nice sport coat and a pair of loafers, and calmly watch your sister lose every last bit of her ever-loving shit.

If you've followed the blog very long, you might know that back in March I bought a bag of 7 Barbies for $2.99 at the thrift store. They were all buck naked, but otherwise in really good shape. Among other things I've put mustaches on them, stuffed all their heads into a Chinese takeout container, turned one into a zombie, painted a Day of the Dead face on another, and covered one with blood a la "Carrie."  

Good, good times.

Today, I popped the head off one and replaced it with a Jack 'o Lantern that I sculpted from clay. I even painted blood on her neck stump (with permanent marker) and hot-glued a sword in her hand (I glued it because the bitch can't grasp. My G.I. Joes can grasp. Ever hear of a little thing called the "Kung Fu grip"?)

Trust me, if I did any one of those things to any one of my sisters' Barbies, they would have raised holy Hell and screamed something at me like "I'm telling!"

But I don't have to worry about that anymore. Because now I have my very own Barbies. And I can do what I want because there is nobody here to tell me I can't. And that's why.

I'd say I've definitely gotten my money's worth.

A personal note:

The summer I turned ten years old, my parents took me and my sisters to Mackinaw Island. The trip was my "big gift" (note to parents: if everybody else goes on the trip, too, the birthday child knows they're getting juked, 'cuz everybody else got the same gift as them and it isn't their birthday.) Anyway, the horse in today's portrait was in a gift shop. It was one of a pair of $20 bronze bookends. I only had $10 -- birthday money from my grandparents, who always gave us our age in dollars. Somehow my dad convinced the shop owner to break up the pair and sell me a single stallion for $10.

I loved this horse more than I loved the trip, because nobody else got a horse. Just me, the birthday girl. Even if I did have to buy it myself.

I also remember something about fudge and a rubber tomahawk, but the details are sketchy.

Keep calm and Carrie on

Mr. Morton: "We're all sorry about this incident, Cassie."

Carrie: [voice breaking, shouts] "It's Carrie!"

-- Stephen King, Carrie

Barbie as "Carrie" 10-15-13

"I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine
and rage the likes of which you would not believe.
If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

-- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Sissy Spacek as "Carrie" (1976)

"Everybody is a book of blood; 

wherever we're opened, we're red."

-- Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vols. 1-3

Halloween is a fertile time for horror flicks and haunted houses. So in the spirit of all things horrifying, I doused one of my Barbies in a bucket of pig's blood (okay, it's just Karo syrup and red food coloring) and re-created the iconic prom scene from the 1976 movie Carrie, starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, the shy, outcast weird girl who gets bullied, and then gets telekinetic revenge.

I've been thinking about this portrait for a while, and "October-faced" seemed like the right time to rock it.

The first really scary movie I ever saw was Stephen King's The Shining. It was 1980 and was a 12-year-old 7th grader. I went with my mom and my friend Linda, who was staying at my house for a sleepover. My mom took the R rating seriously and called Linda's very traditional old-world Italian parents to get permission for her to see the movie.

They said yes.

The theater was packed when we got there. But we got our two child and one adult tickets. Finding a seat was more difficult. We ended up in the second row from the front, far left, on the aisle. For the next two hours I got the shit scared out of me.

The corpse in the bathtub.

Those twins.

Jack Nicholson's face.

I loved all of it.

I also have a really vivid memory of watching Friday the 13th, again with my mom, this time on the couch at home, both of us cowering under a blanket waiting for Jason to pop up out of the pond and into the rowboat.

So scary.

But so fun.

There is something immensely satisfying about the clash of feeling simultaneously afraid and completely safe.

Horror is a love it or hate it kind of genre. I don't consume as much of it as I used to (mostly because I don't want it to disturb my precious sleep), but every once in a while I indulge. I prefer suspense to gore, psychological thrillers to slasher films. My son Sam and I watched The Ring parts 1 and 2 last summer. It was an oddly satisfying bonding thing, kind of like I had with my own mom back in the day.

I love this statement by author Warren Ellis about the place of scary movies and books in our psychology:

"Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. 

To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, 

is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power 

and richer hunting grounds.

It’s entirely possible that we need 

a little blood in our eyes to see some things more clearly."

-- Warren Ellis, 

"Blood in Your Eye: Why We Need Violent Stories"

(Click here if you want to read Warren Ellis's complete essay.)

In case you don't already know, Carrie has been re-made with Chloe Grace Moretz in the title role.
It opens this Friday.
It's a perfect opportunity to grab a couple of 12-year-olds and go de-fang some monsters.

Let's play pretend

"I have too many fantasies to be a housewife."

-- Marilyn Monroe

Medusa Barbie 10-4-13

"Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living."

-- Dr. Seuss

Medusa Barbie (2) 10-4-13

"It's all make believe, isn't it?

-- Marilyn Monroe

In the spirit of sharing the joy, I decided to let Barbie come out and play during "October-faced."

Why should I have all the fun?

P.S. I love it that, even as Medusa, Barbie can still be a blonde.

Una cara de un día

 "... and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, 

the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face."

-- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Day of the Dead Barbie face 9-12-13

"Al vivo todo le falta, y al muerto todo le sobra." 

("For one who's alive nothing's quite enough,

while for one who's dead anything's too much.")

-- traditional Mexican Day of the Dead saying

I realize that Dia De Muertos, or "the Day of the Dead," is still a month and a half away.

But I couldn't help it.

She was there.

So was I.

There were Sharpie markers.

It happened.

We're both trying to move on.

Because I can, that's why

“If I have to face the end of human existence,

 I want to look totally smoking when it happens. 

Now shut the hell up.”

 

-- Angeline Trevena, Fifty Shades of Decay

 

Zombie Barbie 7-26-13

 “The pretty ones are usually unhappy. 

They expect everyone to be enamored of their beauty.”

-- J. Cornell Michel, Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution

Yesterday there were cement workers tearing up my backyard, ripping out my plants, breaking up my patio with skid-steers and very loud saws and jack-hammers.

When the dust and smoke cleared, the yard was in ruins.

My patio is now a vast expanse of gray gravel and stone.
The once-lush view out my window has turned grim and kind of post-apocalyptic.

Like a wasteland.

Wreckage.

So ...
The way I see it, when life gives you post-apocalyptic wreckage, the only logical thing to do is to complete the picture by making a naked zombie to lurch across the lifeless wasteland.

Right?

And not just any zombie.
A Barbie Zombie.

Because the way I also see it, when life gives you post-apocalyptic wreckage and an abundance of thrift store Barbies, the only other logical thing to do is sacrifice one of those Barbies and make a zombie with absurdly unrealistic female proportions, so that the other zombies feel fat and ugly.



In the spirit of giving credit where it's due, thanks to The Zombie Apocalypse http://zombieapocalypsecrafts.blogspot.com/ for helping me with this idea, and for some super tips and other fun zombie crafts!

Naked Barbies in mustaches!

“Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. 

In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, 

and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, 

while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.” 

-- Virginia Woolf

Naked Barbies in mustaches 6-1-13

“I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. 

I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, 

and ain't afraid of being alone.” 

-- Katharine Hepburn 

"The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood 

that she must become something other than herself, 

deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.”

-- Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions 

In today's edition of Helpful Advice from an Exhausted Insomniac's Addled, Sleep-Deprived Brain ...

Sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do just to keep breathing.

If gluing silicone mustaches on naked thrift store Barbies helps to get you through a day without totally losing your shit, then for fuck's sake, please glue silicone mustaches on naked thrift store Barbies.

Because the way I see it, gluing silicone mustaches on naked thrift store Barbies doesn't hurt anybody. It might keep you from hurting yourself. And it's fun for the Barbies!

Here at A Face A Day, that's what we call a "win-win-win".

So if you feel like you might be about to lose your shit, STOP!
Be a win-win-winner, like me, and glue silicone mustaches on naked thrift store Barbies instead!

Next time on Helpful Advice from an Exhausted Insomniac's Addled, Sleep-Deprived Brain, I'll discuss some burning insomniac questions, like "Who the fuck is going to eat all of these cookies?" and "3 a.m. Dilemma: Ironing or pumping iron?"

Kung Pao Barbie

Hot and spicy faces.
Ready in five, ten minutes.

Barbie heads Chinese takeout 5-6-13

Because they ...

"Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it,

and a lethargy steals over all the final nerves and faculties of the soul.

She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous and indifferent."

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                  -- Virginia Woolf

Barbie head with cutout eyes and mouth 3-30-13

You never know when you meet someone
Will she be the one?
You never know and I wonder to myself
I wonder to myself
Are you beautiful?
Are you beautiful on the inside?
On the inside?
Are you beautiful?
Are you beautiful on the inside?
On the inside?

                                                      -- Chris Pierce, "Are You Beautiful"  (from the movie Crash)

Barbie head with cutout eyes, mouth (2) 3-30-13

The way you make me feel

"Who cares about pretty?

I'm going for noticeable."

                                                                           -- Veronica Roth, Divergent

 

Thrift store doll and Barbies 3-24-13

 

Big bag 'o Barbies

"Do you think I'm wonderful?" she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple.

"No," he said.

"Why?"

"Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are."

-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

 

Thrift store Barbies 3-22-13

I scored an unexpected windfall at the thrift store when I bought a bag of seven Barbie dolls for $2.99. It was mere minutes before the store closed, and yet, somehow, nobody had snatched up this lucky find.

I'm no math wiz, but at $2.99 plus tax, they come out to roughly 44 cents apiece. Of course, new Barbies come with clothes. Mine are all buck naked.

I didn't have my own Barbies when I was little. My sisters had them. Although I did have a Ken. He was a "mod-style" Ken, (right) with bushy long-ish hair and a stick-on beard, sideburns and mustache. (I scissored his mod-style hair into a buzz cut and stuck the facial hair on myself -- big surprise).

I preferred playing out back in the dirt with my "Best of the West" action figures. I had an Indian chief, an outlaw cowboy clad in all-black, with guns and a quick draw arm, and Johnny and Josie West, a couple of horses and a Jeep (not pink -- a rugged, copper-colored, real Jeep).

Thrift store Barbies (2) 3-22-13

I read a very insightful essay recently, about the psychology of girls and their Barbies. Here is an excerpt:


"In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested–citing most often the offense of impossible proportions–that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be true. British researchers recently found that girls between the ages of seven and eleven harbor surprisingly strong feelings of dislike for their Barbie dolls, with no other toy or brand name inspiring such a negative response from the children. The dolls “provoked rejection, hatred, and violence” and many girls preferred Barbie torture–by cutting, burning, decapitation, or microwaving–over other ways of playing with the doll. Reasons that the girls hated their Barbies included, somewhat poetically, the fact that they were “plastic.” The researchers also noted that the girls never spoke of one single, special Barbie, but tended to talk about having a box full of anonymous Barbies. “On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate,” one of the researchers remarked. “She has lost any individual warmth that she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture.” -- Eula Biss, "Relations"

If you want to read all of Eula Biss' essay (I recommend it), you can find it here: http://www.identitytheory.com/eula-biss-relations/

If you don't want to read it, that's fine. Do whatever you want. 

I will be out back torturing my new Barbies.

What's her face

Google eye Barbie 1-21-13

This face is actually a Barbie. A Batgirl Barbie, to be precise, sans bat-mask. I photographed her wearing a pair of plastic jiggle eyes, and then just kept manipulating the images and experimenting with effects until eventually I got these. Days like this are often practice sessions that yield something else further down the line. Taking time to free-form without a specific agenda or end product in mind is very satisfying, creatively. No rules. No lines. No voices allowed telling me what's wrong or right. Just the dizzy freedom of riding the wave as long as it lasts.

Google eyed Barbie 2, 1-21-13