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The Dancing Pickle was commissioned by a sandwich shop/catering business in Glenwood Springs. Becky, the owner, got a matching set of gherkin earrings as lagniappe.
She (the Pickle, not Becky) had a solid steel armature bolted through her stool and running to the top of her head (access was by peeling up her beret). When the stool was chained to the building, no one could carry her away on a whim. Apparently it was tried more than once. Note the silver taps on her shoes. She looked disturbingly naked until I added her collar.
Another mascot for an eatery: many of these commissions literally come sketched on napkins. The shoulders and head are built up above the actor’s (look at the third shot); they see out of the dark area at the chin. The same dark mesh was used for a panel at the top of the head to build in passive ventilation.
The folks with this MacDonald’s franchise wanted a Ronald McDonald wall piece. I said, sure, get me a signed release. Naturally Corporate refused, but grudgingly allowed this burger on a kite.
Ventriloquist dummies commissioned by professional Wayne Francis: soft sculpture over armatures. Many life-sized.
He was the most consistently geographically challenged person I’ve met, who frequently traveled internationally. He was miffed that a girlfriend was offended when he called her his “little Swedish meatball” – she was from Switzerland.
He was the entertainment director for a cruise ship going to the Bahamas so planned to buy leis as handouts for his audience. Er, wrong ocean?
I was fine with making his mermaid Hispanic (he did accents well – one of the Siamese twins spoke posh BBC and the other punk Liverpool), but couldn’t convince him that Brazilian Carmen Miranda hadn’t worn a lei, either.
Wayne is a tall dude. When he held Ernie or the genie at full extension of his arm, their heads were a good eight feet (244 cm) up there.
I built more than a dozen characters for him.
More full body costumes:
The Chesrown Posse, commissioned by a guy named Marshall Chesrown, who at that time owned one of Denver’s largest car dealerships. I had built many stage props and costumes of papier-mâché over metal armatures; my permanent version of paper strips and flour paste is hot glue and unfolded bias tape (the kind that comes on a ginormous roll). The armature was hoopskirt boning. Light, strong, permanent: the heads for these guys as well as the bodies for the two in the middle. Much lighter and less hot than fabric fat suits. The tops of the hats were mesh to give what ventilation was possible for the hired actors greeting people out in the lots on summer days. Their costumes were roomy enough to layer up underneath at the other end of the season.
My first human(oid) puppet, Caleb, and my Calliope (business name) showpiece. It was sewn fabric over a welded armature of #9 wire (“wahr”in farmer-speak). It was surprisingly light – I could lift it over my head to carry (in its cover) to my booth at festivals. On one hurried lunch break, I found that the primo burrito stand gave a substantial break to vendors, except my credentials were back at my booth. “No problem, we saw you loading in. And next time, cut the line.”
Caleb (named for a many-times-great grandfather named Caleb Kimball) was an early stab at figuring out patterns to sew people, later evolved into ventriloquist dummies. I didn’t learn that you were “supposed” to use nylon hose – a good thing as I’d have gotten stuck in little bitty ones.
He was a fixture at science fiction gatherings, winning a contest for most gaudy tie among other accomplishments. There was a Velcro closure below his belly button where his skin met fur for a compartment where I kept business cards, my hotel room key, etc. I was very discreet when accessing it.
He and Monroe the Wonder Dog were specifically included on a wedding invitation, and both went. Monroe was better behaved.
In addition to bodies of various sizes, I did a series of bas relief wall hangings – for some their welded-wire armatures were roughly the size and shape of an ironing board. Flat on the back, sculpted out on the front.
Figures from Religious Orders
Omaha has a substantial Roman Catholic population, and in this era many school attendees walked over to where the festival was laid out. It was summer and the concrete and steel walls downtown were blistering.
The girls were conspicuous in their plaid skirts, and several revisited us and brought friends.
In addition to the art done on spec, I got requests for different orders and acquired knowledge of the parts of their habits and distinctive wimples, etc. and this often led to discussions. One recognized a Sister of Loretto. One of the other girls lamented that since Vatican 2, many orders had opted for streetwear: dangerous as you couldn’t tell who their supervisors were anymore. I pointed out that the habits were layers of heavy wool serge. A woman standing to the side with friends said “they were hot!”
Surprised and delighted, I asked “Were you a nun?”
“I AM a nun!”
The travels of Sister Bibianna:
Several claimed that this had been a teacher of theirs, so I titled her accordingly. Later, at another festival halfway across the state, a couple others also recognized her. She went to her Forever Home (no, not that one, one in Vail) where her purchaser said he was going to hang her behind the door in his guest room to discourage lengthy visits.
Father Tom was commissioned by friends of a local Monsignor. Though nuns were more popular (all those teachers for resonances), the guys were represented, too. The toes were always my favorite part. The ventriloquist had a young Jamaican guy, Tooie, whose skin was ultra suede, and his toes were a reprise.
The Wonder Dog modeling Tooie’s hair, then photobombing the portrait shot.
A reviewer of one of my solo shows claimed that I made the world’s largest refrigerator magnets.
Wayne’s first commissioned dummy was a (large!) life-sized version of the Fat Lady. I always saw her as an entertainer, content in her life and profession, who doesn’t really care what the rest of us think.
Nebraska group displaying the smaller pieces I hauled out to festivals, mostly puppets. Dwight and Jane Marsh are back left (Jane mostly behind his shoulder and a teal dragon puppet). I did a pen-and-ink drawing of Jane and another friend called “Jane Explains the Fat Lady”. The source was J. D. Salinger, where the stage mother of two balky brilliant kids tells them they have to go do their radio show because there are unknown people out there who rely on them for getting them through another tiresome day. There are times you must “do it for the fat lady”.
Wayne with Rosie Bottoms.
Crested Butte, Colorado, ran festivals where they blocked off the Main Street and we set up our booths down the middle. Slim gravitated from inside my booth to the gutter, where he held a sign saying “please give money for my sister’s operashun”. A friend provided a Solo cup with a few coins as seed money. One fellow was about to drop his beer can in the trash barrel Slim was leaning against, then got eye contact approval and set it by his side. This photo was less than an hour in. By the end of the day Slim was awash in a drift of cans, like a kid covered with sand on a beach. The person who bought him later that season thought his smell of stale beer appropriate.
(All life-sized) full body, trophy head, “ironing board” bas relief
The ibn Opec brothers:
During a previous oil crisis when there was much bad feeling about gas prices and shortages, a customer who followed me via an outlet in Glenwood Springs suggested that the market was yearning for a trophy head. Swapping out their jeweled scimitars with gas pump nozzles followed logically.
Driving out from south central Nebraska to the ski resorts in Colorado who offered festivals to bring in money when the lifts weren’t running and/or science fiction conventions, one summer my car regularly had Arabs, nuns, and a three-eyed blue-green alien strapped into the seats. The volume of sales were the hand puppets, the big weird pieces drew the crowds.
Truckers loved it. They would slow down until I started around them, then pace me and get an eyeful, then speed back up. I didn’t have a CB but it wasn’t hard to imagine their conversations. The longest string was seven handing me off to the next big rig.
It broke the monotony for all of us in those long stretches of interstate across western Nebraska and eastern Colorado.
I could count on interesting conversations at rest areas.
This little girl’s parents, who ran a wonderful gelato stand, bought her a puppet early on. After that, if Carlyle was out and about, she was there.
Shot of booth
Add/edit: Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, Wicket Woof, Anguish Languish (link)