Shapeshifting: Masks! October 23, 2010

Who or what would you like to be today?

These are works of art, but not only for passively hanging on the wall.

Each mask is initially made from plaster bandage material molded right on the face of its intended wearer. While anyone can wear them, they fit one person perfectly and are comfortable to wear for hours on end, even while dancing.

I love this half-mask style which allows the wearer to freely speak, drink and eat while keeping it on. They are also cooler this way (temperature-wise, I mean!)

This mask is embellished with feathers of peacock and turkey vulture, acrylic paints, and a found brooch for the 3rd eye.

Water mask

Horse mask

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Raven mask.  (This one I made for myself.)

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Jaguar mask

This woman was browsing at the Wearable Art Show in Reno, Nevada when she came upon my booth and picked up the Jaguar Mask.

Isn’t her outfit perfect?!

Some things are meant to be.

Rrowr.

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If you would like a mask of your own, contact me!

Special masks can be great not only for Hallowe’en but also for rites-of-passage rituals at times of life changes, theater pieces, cosplay, Burning Man, science-fiction/fantasy cons, as a documentation of the lovely pregnant belly (belly mask!), shamanic ally work, or mythopoetic play with alter egos in your own psyche.

Also available for group work with adults and teens, and children. I have experience with children as young as first graders as an Artist-in-Residence, with adult community theater troupes, with pagan covens, dancers, and celebrating individuals of all sorts.

Riding on the MUNI June 29, 2010

a poem meant to be spoken aloud

by Tina Fields

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[Note: The MUNI is a form of public transportation in San Francisco, linked municipal railcars (pictured below).  It sort of shakes up and down when it gets going fast; thus the jogging rhythm of this poem.]

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So I’m riding on the MUNI…

Yeh I’m riding on the MUNI…

I’m riding on the MUNI…

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I just came here from Nevada, on the edge of the Great Basin,

where my very nearest neighbor is a cow five miles away;

Where your psyche reaches out, expanding,

breathing out, and listens to the thoughts of birds –

a hawk!  golden spirals overhead;

bloodmind riveted on rustling,

slightest movement in the grasses…

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And I lurch to San Francisco, where I’m riding on the MUNI

And we’re packed in like anchovies but pretend no one is touching:

With my clothes wrapped tight around me I am riding on the MUNI;

With my thoughts wrapped tight around me I am riding on the MUNI

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And I’m riding on the MUNI

And I’m riding on the MUNI…

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And he swoops!  with talons twisted, each in perfect ballerina’s pointe,

exquisite fatal symmetry, dull gleaming in the twilight;

And my heart it hears the mouse scream!

and my mind shrieks bloody victory!

…and  … somehow I’ve got possession of my nearest neighbor’s paper;

got it clutched here in my talons, with a death-grip on Dear Abby…

I’m here, riding on the MUNI,

with ink tickling my tastebuds

and the scent still in my nostrils of fresh literary kill…

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But a furtive glance around… reveals…

I don’t know if they notice!

All their eyes are hid by glasses darkly gleaming in the foglight,

as we strangers huddle lonely, cradled in each others’ feathers;

With our buttocks jammed together

and our minds like shattered sunlight

as we’re riding on the MUNI.

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Animal Attributes May 17, 2010

As humans, we have many capabilities, some of which we mistakenly seem to think set us apart from the matrix of other beings; yet other animals, our elders, possess interesting capabilities as well. Yearning after these too, we’ve applied what Janine Benyus termed “biomimicry” in order to create airplanes, scuba gear, velcro, and many more very useful and fun tools.

Over the years, I have enjoyed asking my friends, students, and random acquaintances made at bus stops and the like,

“If you could add three attributes to yourself

from the animal, plant, or mineral kindoms,

what would they be?”

Not surprisingly, most people choose attributes of other animals, even though photosynthesis is among the coolest abilities around, seeing as how a being with that can bypass the entire messy business of eating and shitting in favor of simply extracting the body’s needs straight from loafing around in sunlight (aaahhhhh!)

Personally, if I had the chance to add three new attributes, I’d choose wings, gills, and soft, waterproof fur like a beaver’s. That way, I could go anywhere I liked, exploring and feeling at home in any realm – on land, up in the air, or underwater – and still be warm.

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Here are a few more of my own and others’ choice attributes, some of which begin to sound like superpowers:

• wings (feathered like a bird, or leathery like a bat)
• night vision
• antlers
• piercing sonic shrieks
• limb regeneration (the ability to grow parts back), like a lizard or starfish
• bioluminescence
• three stomachs, like ruminant animals such as cattle
• reproduction by spores, like mushrooms
• a tail, to flick or hang from
• immovability of a rock; the ability to sit and just erode
• labradorescence
• photosynthesis
• eyesight of a raptor
• twitch muscles of a cheetah
• sticky feet
• fur  (what sort? what color?)
• feet that can turn around backwards, like a squirrel
• dolphin-like swimming/breath holding/pressure resistance
• the ability to jump and balance like a cat
• the quivery alertness of prey animals
• a dog’s acute sense of smell
• the agility & balance of a mountain goat
• the ability to change genders throughout one’s lifetime, like a clownfish. (My friend Judy Pratt asks, “Wonder how our gender struggles would even out with a bit more experience of the supposed “other”???”)
• hermaphroditism, like a banana slug

My eminently practical friend Alan Winston says, “There are some attributes I’d really like to be able to summon when I want them, but which’d be inconvenient the rest of the time. Wings (and supporting musculature and lung size, etc. to make them functional for flight rather than merely decorative) would make it pretty hard to sit in cars.”  I was going along with that, laughing, when I suddenly realized, if you had honking great wings, why would you *need* a car?! Emissions problems solved!

 

We are clearly not the first to yearn after these things, as witnessed by these ancient shapeshifting sculptures from Europe, the antlered man on the Gundestrup Cauldron and the bas-relief of Lilith with owl feet and wings, both surrounded by related allies of other species.

What attributes would YOU like to add,

should the Sudden-Evolution Wish Fairy appear?

Feel free to respond in the comment box below!

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– Of course, this may go both ways. Sometimes the nonhuman relatives might wish for our attributes (as well as our cuisine):

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