I'm not making this up

 "As far as cosmetics are used for adornment in a conscious and creative way, 

they are not emblems of inauthenticity: 

it is when they are presented as the real thing, 

covering unsightly blemishes, 

disguising a repulsive thing so that it is acceptable to the world 

that their function is deeply suspect."

-- Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

Self portrait 9-11-13

 "How can an  'ideal' be about women 

if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic 

does not exist on a woman's body, 

and how much of a female life does not show on her face?"

-- Naomi Wolf, 

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women

Oh, my goddess

"I knew that I looked at the reflection of Medusa,

the Gorgon,

fairest and foulest of living things,

the unclean creature, half woman, half eagle,

slain by the hero Perseus,

and one glimpse of whose tortured face

turned the luckless beholder into stone with the horror of it."

-- Gertrude Bacon, "The Gorgon's Head"

Self portrait in Medusa mask 8-18-13

Medusa mask 8-18-1

"It was a human head, severed at the neck, but fresh and unfaded as if but newly dead. It bore the features of a woman -- of a woman of more perfect loveliness than was ever told of in tale, or sculpted in marble, or painted on canvas. Every feature, every line was of the truest beauty, cast in the noblest mould -- the face of a goddess. But upon that perfect countenance was the mark of eternal pain, of deathless agony and suffering past words. The forehead was lined and knit, the death-white lips were tightly pressed in speechless torment; in the wide eyes seemed yet to lurk the flame of an unquenchable fire; while around the fair brows, in place of hair, curled and coiled the stark bodies of venomous serpents, stiff in death, but their loathsome forms still erect, their evil heads yet thrust forward 

as if to strike."

-- Gertrude Bacon, "The Gorgon's Head"

The Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology 

of Rare Supernatural Stories 

from the Pens of Victorian Ladies

This Medusa mask has been an ongoing project since early last year when I made a plaster cast of my face. The white, hardened, gauzy mask has been laying around my workspace for months, waiting for its purpose to come along. I've photographed it a couple of times, and even used it July 23 on this blog, as a makeshift Medusa with wooden snakes for hair.

I finally decided to make it permanent and glued the snakes in place, and painted the mask to look (I hope) like weathered bronze, like a statue covered in verdigris (small inset photo above). I tweaked the color, for dramatic effect, in today's self portrait.

Medusa fascinates me. 

Her story, her mythology, her significance, is all centered around her face.

She was a ravishing beauty, the only mortal daughter of two marine deities, who was "caught" being raped by Poseidon, god of the sea, in Athena's temple.

Athena was so enraged that she punished Medusa.

You read that right. 

She punished Medusa. 

For being raped.

As if being raped wasn't punishment enough, Athena poured salt in the wound by transforming Medusa's beautiful hair in to serpents, and making her face so grisly and terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would instantly turn onlookers to stone.

And not only that, to add more insult to injury, Medusa died (while pregnant by Poseidon) when she was beheaded by Perseus, at the request of King Polydectes. Perseus then used Medusa's severed head against the king, turning him to stone so that he couldn't marry Perseus' mother.

Medusa's face is one of the most famous faces in history.

It's been written about, it's been the subject of art for ages, eons, centuries.

The polarity of who and what she represents makes her a heroine and a monster.

She embodies female beauty and ugliness.

She represents strength and victimization.

Because others couldn't handle her beauty, they took advantage of it, they abused it, and they ultimately destroyed it.

Some things never change.

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.

The icing on the face

 “They laugh at me because I'm different; 

I laugh at them because they're all the same.”

-- Kurt Cobain

Self portrait  7-14-13

 “Don't dare to be different, dare to be yourself -- 

if that doesn't make you different then something is wrong.”

-- Laura Baker

"What you're doing by being yourself is you're keeping it real, 

and you're being really brave.” 

-- Adam Lambert

It's my birthday.
It's also Bastille Day, the French National Day of independence.

So, Vive la France!

I like it that I was born on a day of uprising and rebellion, even though I'm not much of a protester or a demonstrator.

I'm not planning to storm any fortresses any time soon.
I probably won't break down many doors in my lifetime.
It's unlikely that I'll ever free anybody from any kind of oppression. 

I'm a quieter kind of rebel.

Mostly I'm just hoping to someday break down my own walls.
Mostly I'm just trying to free myself.
If, while doing that, I can help somebody else feel a little bit freer, that's just a bonus.

It's the icing on the face.

Turn, turn, turn

“Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope 

-- a slight change, and all patterns alter.” 

-- Sharon Salzberg 

Kaleidoscope self portrait 7-5-13

"Our days are a kaleidoscope.

Every instant a change takes place.

New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort."

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Kaleidoscope self portrait (2) 7-5-13

“There are patterns which emerge in one's life, 

circling and returning anew, 

an endless variation of a theme.” 

-- Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

Kaleidoscope self portrait (3) 7-5-13

“Perhaps we can recognize our way out of patterns 

rather than repeating our way out of them.” 

--Patti Digh, Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up,

Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally

My paternal grandparents didn't have many toys for me to play with.

What they had was a little collection of vintage toys leftover from my father's 1940s childhood. 

The toys lived on a bookshelf behind my grandfather's recliner: a barrel of monkeys, a ViewMaster, a floppy cloth clown that did flips on a wind-up wire contraption, a metal Slinky, jacks, a red and black musical thing that was kind of like a horn but with piano-style keys, a jack-in-the-box, and a kaleidoscope.

The kaleidoscope was my favorite, by far.

It was just a simple cardboard tube with an eye-hole in one end, and a few colorful bits of plastic in the other. Nothing fancy. Until you held it to the light and the magic happened. 

It was like a montage of intricate stained glass, or jewels, but all in shatters. Turning the tube made the shards tumble and fall and reassemble and morph and bloom and collapse. I was captivated.

"Grandpa, look at this one!" I'd say, holding my breath, carefully trying to pass the kaleidoscope to him without disrupting the little miracle that had assembled itself inside. But by the time he held it up to his eye, the pattern had shifted. He oooh'd and aaaah'd, but at another view, no doubt just as marvelous.

During my 2012 "No Day Without Art" 365 days project, I did a little research and learned how to make my own kaleidoscopes. On the outside, they don't look like much. I make them from cardboard mailing tubes or PVC pipe. Inside is an arrangement of cheap craft mirrors duct-taped together, and at the business end, a handful of plastic beads, marbles, plastic bits -- whatever I can find. They cost pennies to make.

I've made several, mostly for me, but I've given a few to my most special friends. I love that moment when they hold their new kaleidoscope to the light and look through it for the first time. They see something magical made from almost nothing. 
 

The thing about looking into a kaleidoscope is that only one person can look through it at a time. You can't really share the experience. So I figured out how to take pictures through my kaleidoscopes so that I can capture the fleeting images before they shift, so that I can share them.

As an experiment, for today's face I tucked a tiny self-portrait in with the beads and marbles of my newest kaleidoscope (look closely). I could have shared a hundred views, but that seemed like overkill, so I am only sharing three.

 

It's my first kaleidoscope that looks back.

Hey, little man.

“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.” 

-- Andy Warhol

Blueberry stem with a bearded face 6-9-13

 “I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things ... I play with leaves.”

 -- Leo F. Buscaglia

I eat a bowl of berries and almonds every morning -- a breakfast that means I never get a toy surprise in the bottom of the box.
But today -- surprise! -- I found this little twig man attached to a blueberry stem in my bowl.
He is very tiny -- barely a half inch high.
I know this, because I measured him.
He weighs nothing at all.
It could have easily overlooked him.
I might have eaten him.
I almost rinsed him down the disposal with the other stems, twigs and squishy berries.
Luckily, I didn't.

He is so small that I didn't know for sure that he even had a face until I shot a few frames through my macro lens and got a good up-close look at him. And even on my camera's display screen, I couldn't make out any facial details well enough to be certain. But when I viewed the images on my computer, I was frankly amazed at what I saw -- the little man had a distinct, intricate, complete face -- writ incredibly small, yes, but nevertheless complete -- with eyes, lips, a scruffy beard and mustache, even a messy haircut and a personality!

And to think I almost missed it.

Sometimes when I am feeling numbed by discouragement, I get side-swiped by one of life's tiny miracles and it sort of shakes me up -- the universe throws me a gift, like this fragile, yet rugged-looking, little twig man -- and I feel a trickle of wonder, a ripple of hope that my troubles might actually work out some day, and that even if they don't, I'll be OK. Somehow, I'll be OK.

Because some celestial artist carved this delicate little face just for me. Just for this day.

And even though it's just a little thing, in these moments, I sense that the universe, or nature, or God, or Gaia, or whoever is out there, knows better than me precisely when I need a boost, and then drops something intimately specific right in with my breakfast -- like a wee note of encouragement urging me to keep going for just one more day.

And so I will.

Because even though insomnia ravages my nights, making them feel endless and cruel, there is always a tomorrow waiting on the other side.

And who knows what tomorrow might bring?

Charmed, I'm sure

 "But upon that perfect countenance 

was the mark of eternal pain, 

of deathless agony and suffering past words."

-- Gertrude Bacon, "The Gorgon's Head"

Polymer clay Medusa face 5-17-13

“I was my face, I was ugliness ...
It became the launching pad from which to lift off,
the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life.
Everything led to it, everything receded from it--my face as personal vanishing point.”

-- Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

“I would pay snakes to bite her.”

-- Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters 

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