Beautiful monster

"She's a monster, beautiful monster

Beautiful monster but I don't mind

And I need her, said I need her

Beautiful monster but I don't mind."

-- Ne-Yo, "Beautiful Monster"

Self portrait 10-9-13

"Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me,

in the cavern that's where my heart should be,

and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin ..."

-- Jodi Picoult, Handle With Care

Self portrait (2) 10-9-13

"We all have a Monster within;

the difference is in degree, not in kind."

-- Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence

Self portrait (3) 10-9-13

The Monster:   You, make man ... like me?

Dr. Pretorius:      No. Woman ... friend for you.

The Monster:   Woman ... Friend ... Wife ...

-- The Bride of Frankenstein

My month-long "October-Faced" challenge-within-a-challenge has a dual purpose.

One is to celebrate the month of October by making it a special faces in disguise-themed project.

The other is to figure out what I'm going to be for Halloween.

I almost always dress up and stand at the end of our driveway to pass out candy to the neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Usually my boys dress up with me. Sam has been Michael Jackson in various iterations for several years. Leo has been wearing the same Cookie Monster costume since he was a little kid, which is hilarious now because he is over 6 feet tall and the thing fits him like a tiny, fuzzy, blue plush shrug with a Cookie Monster head on top. He wore it to Chipotle last year and got a free burrito.

I've been a bull rider, Elastigirl, Maid Marion (with my husband as a super-cute Robin Hood), a witch. The year I was a witch, my friend Maria brought her little grandsons by. The littlest one, who couldn't quite get his Ws in the right places, was scared of me and clung to Maria saying "I don't wike dat cwazy bitch." Of course, Maria encouraged his fledgling, accidental profanity. 

Maria: "Who is that, Ryan?" 

Ryan: "A bitch." 

Adorable.

Anyhoo.

This Bride of Frankenstein costume (well, makeup and wig so far) might be a front-runner. I still have a couple more ideas I want to explore. But this one is definitely in contention. Stay tuned.

Plasssssster casssssst

 Interviewer: "So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?"
Frank Zappa: "You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”

-- Frank Zappa

Self portrait 7-23-13

“She was the most beautiful creature on Earth -- 

her hair said so in that language only hair can speak.”

-- Gabriel Ba, Daytripper

“Phyllida's hair was where her power resided.”

-- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“Round and round they went with their snakes, snakily...” 

-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

 

I remember reading some writing advice once that said, if you have writer's block, to simply start scribbling. Just doodle and draw loops and whirls on the paper until you start making words.

Sometimes I have a vision of exactly the face I want to make on a particular day.

But honestly, much more often I have no ideas whatsoever.

 

When I don't have a face in mind and the ideas aren't flowing, sometimes it helps to "scribble," which means I just start playing.

Quite often, a face results after a lot of meandering, wool-gathering, and poking around in the detritus of my workspace.

I have lots of stuff in there.

Masks, paint, hats, glasses, toys, mustaches, clay, balloons, scissors, glue, tape, stickers, pipe cleaners, action figures, Barbies ... you name it.

I hold onto things just in case I need them later.

For instance, I made this plaster cast of my face last year. 

While my kids were at school, I was laying on the floor in my bathrobe with a blow-dryer aimed at my face (which was wrapped in wet, plaster-coated gauze), breathing through drinking straws shoved up my nostrils, wondering what the other moms were doing right then.

I didn't really give a fiddler's fuck what the other moms were doing right then. 

I just wondered.

I haven't really done anything with this mask.

But I've kept it. Just in case.

The eyes on this "Medusa" are actually mine. I recycled them from two different self portraits that printed badly because my ink cartridges were running low. 

Yay, recycling!

The bendy, wiggly wooden snakes came from the craft store. They were on sale a couple of weeks ago for $1 each. I bought all they had. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with them, but I knew I'd use them eventually.

Plus, I have lots of styrofoam wig forms laying around.

So I just started scribbling, and kept scribbling and doodling and playing until I had a face I liked ... a plaster-faced Medusa with wooden snake hair and paper eyes.

Maybe it's good.

Maybe it's art.

Maybe it's not.

Maybe it isn't anything.

Maybe it just "is."

Maybe I don't give a fiddler's fuck.

Mix-n-match

"My insides don't match up with my outsides."

"Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?"

"I don't know. I'm only me."

 -- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Self portrait 4-28-13

“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. 

I was something else altogether. 

There were so many different ways to be beautiful.”

-- Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World 

Behind every beautiful thing

"Behind every beautiful thing

There's been some kind of pain."

                                                                                                 -- Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

"The pain passes, but the beauty remains."

                                                                                       -- Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Styrofoam wig form with cutout eyes, mouth and push pins 4-20-13

"You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world,
and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain."

-- Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

All right Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”

                                                                                                          -- Abraham Lincoln

Self portrait 4-14-13

“I always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect --

they are much more interesting.”

                                                                                       -- Marc Jacobs

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