primalmommy on sat 30 mar 02
I have to tell a story about my patient spouse and plaster:
Before we were a couple, we were roomates, in Texas. 1989. He worked on
a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, one month on, one month off, and paid half
the rent. Nice deal for me.
I had made a pot from a plaster cast of my face, and it had a huge
spider plant growing in it like hair. I wanted to throw it out but he
liked it. "Fine" I said. "I'll make a pot out of YOUR head and grow a
plant in it."
So I bought plaster, and one evening I laid newspapers out on the
balcony of our apartment and got him to lie down there, dressed in just
shorts. He had a full beard and moustache, and I suddenly remembered I
had to grease them, so I ran into the bathroom to get some kind of goop
to do the job. I put it on thick, then mixed up WAY TOO MUCH plaster. I
put fat drinking straws up his nose to breathe through, then piled the
plaster all over his face - deeper and deeper -- what do I do with the
extra? Just kept making it thicker. Finally squeezed some into his
bellybutton and put a handful on one of his nipples, thinking it might
make an interesting stamp (weird, i know.)
SO he laid there, and eventually the plaster heated up, and hardened. I
knocked on it, and said, "OK, now puff out your cheeks and I'll pop this
right off." The giant white glob of a head made a muffled sound through
the nose straws and shook back and forth, "no". I tugged. I pulled. The
glob said "mmmph."
I looked at the tube of goop I had used, and realized -- it was WATER
BASED and not petroleum. oh. my. god. Basically the plaster had soaked
through the beard and moustache (eyelashes, eyebrows, sideburns) to the
skin, and then SHRUNK, trapping each individual hair so tightly you
couldn't have pulled it out with pliers.
I started talking in this chirpy, rational voice pretending I wasn't
beginning to panic. What if he choked? What if his nose got plugged and
he couldn't breathe through the straws? My mind raced -- doctors have
saws to cut off casts, but this one was firmly attached to his face...
I scrounged through a junk drawer and found a serrated steak knife and
some channel-lock pliers. Starting at his forehead, a sawed- grooves
into an inch-square bit of plaster, then snapped it off with the pliers.
One inch at a time, I managed to free his forehead and eyes (it cost him
an eyebrow and some lashes) and we were able to get his nostrils free,
but the rest was firm against his face, "wired" in place by a thick
beard and moustache.
Back to the junk drawer: I found a pair or embroidery scissors, the kind
made to look like a long beaked stork. By wedging those between the
plaster and his face, I was able to cut off his beard and moustache --
one hair at a time -- and then saw free those sections and snap them off
with pliers. The little patch under his bottom lip I couldn't reach, and
he had to twist it off (involving pain and a few drops of blood, ow.) It
took almost two hours to get off those little squares of hairy plaster,
and got us some odd stares from passers by.
So there sat Jeff, who I had never seen without thick facial hair --
sans beard, moustache, one eyebrow and a sideburn... plus he pulled the
plaster off his belly and chest leaving two bare pink hairless circles
like a bullseye around his belly button and nipple.. I started to shake
and cry as soon he was safely freed and I didn't have to act calm any
more... he just sat there and laughed at me.... took a shower and evened
up his shave (first time i noticed how handsome he was, actually!) I
don't know what the cajuns on the ship thought of his odd bald spots but
he never said a word about it... and next time he was home, he said,
"now that I'm clean shaven, why don't we try that plaster thing again? "
How did I not know I'd end up married to this guy?
The bird house I made this spring was actually from that second casting
over a decade ago... I just cut the mouth at soft leatherhard and opened
it. He wanted me to cast his face again with a toilet paper tube in his
mouth to form the bird house door opening but I'm still a bit gun shy
about the idea...
Yours, kelly in Ohio.. up too late and chilly... off to climb under the
goosedown comforter and warm my feet on my sleeping husband...
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Tom's E-mail on sun 31 mar 02
Kelly,
I laughed quite a lot when I read your post. Thank God you weren't casting
his lower parts!
Tom Sawyer
tsawyer@cfl.rr.com
Wilson on sun 31 mar 02
Very funny story - when I was in sculpture class at college, we were warned about
hair and plaster - our instructor had been on the giving (as opposed to the
receiving) end of casting the "lower parts" of one of her male classmates - with
the same result as Kelly. Needless to say, after the graphic description of nail
scissors etc attempting to free the "victim", no one was quite brave enough to try
it themselves...
Kate
Tom's E-mail wrote:
> Kelly,
> I laughed quite a lot when I read your post. Thank God you weren't casting
> his lower parts!
> Tom Sawyer
> tsawyer@cfl.rr.com
>
> ______________________________________________________________________________
> Send postings to clayart@lsv.ceramics.org
>
> You may look at the archives for the list or change your subscription
> settings from http://www.ceramics.org/clayart/
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--
K&D Wilson
Nanaimo, BC
Canada
*****************************************************************************************************
No! No! No!
I won't go back in the box!!!
Longtin, Jeff on tue 2 apr 02
Primal,
I've been asked to mold many things over the years. The most interesting had
to be when a strip club in town asked me if I could make a mold for them.
Apparently this club had an "art gallery" and wanted me to demonstrate the
"art" of mold-making. They wanted to make a mold of a woman. "You want me to
mold her face or something?" "No we want you to make a mold of her chest."
"Really" I asked. "Yes indeed."
Not having molded a person before I thought "what the heck!". Here was my
chance to mold a woman, a naked woman at that, and get paid for it. What
could be better.
I asked where I would do the demonstration and I they asked if I could do it
in a glass booth. I then asked if they had a specific woman in mind and they
said "We've got plenty of girls!" (The booth was in fact an office space
with a glass partition.)
When I told them how much I would charge they freaked. I ended up not making
the mold. Bummer.
Years later I think THAT would have been an interesting one!
Then ther was the time the A Leen museum called to see if I could mold an
alien. "You have an alien?" I asked with skepticism. "Yes we have an
alien...he's about 2 feet tall. We're in Roswell, New Mexico."
It takes all types.
Jeff Longtin
Complex Molds Made Easy
-----Original Message-----
From: primalmommy [mailto:primalmommy@IVILLAGE.COM]
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 7:31 PM
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Subject: plastering my man
I have to tell a story about my patient spouse and plaster:
Before we were a couple, we were roomates, in Texas. 1989. He worked on
a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, one month on, one month off, and paid half
the rent. Nice deal for me.
I had made a pot from a plaster cast of my face, and it had a huge
spider plant growing in it like hair. I wanted to throw it out but he
liked it. "Fine" I said. "I'll make a pot out of YOUR head and grow a
plant in it."
So I bought plaster, and one evening I laid newspapers out on the
balcony of our apartment and got him to lie down there, dressed in just
shorts. He had a full beard and moustache, and I suddenly remembered I
had to grease them, so I ran into the bathroom to get some kind of goop
to do the job. I put it on thick, then mixed up WAY TOO MUCH plaster. I
put fat drinking straws up his nose to breathe through, then piled the
plaster all over his face - deeper and deeper -- what do I do with the
extra? Just kept making it thicker. Finally squeezed some into his
bellybutton and put a handful on one of his nipples, thinking it might
make an interesting stamp (weird, i know.)
SO he laid there, and eventually the plaster heated up, and hardened. I
knocked on it, and said, "OK, now puff out your cheeks and I'll pop this
right off." The giant white glob of a head made a muffled sound through
the nose straws and shook back and forth, "no". I tugged. I pulled. The
glob said "mmmph."
I looked at the tube of goop I had used, and realized -- it was WATER
BASED and not petroleum. oh. my. god. Basically the plaster had soaked
through the beard and moustache (eyelashes, eyebrows, sideburns) to the
skin, and then SHRUNK, trapping each individual hair so tightly you
couldn't have pulled it out with pliers.
I started talking in this chirpy, rational voice pretending I wasn't
beginning to panic. What if he choked? What if his nose got plugged and
he couldn't breathe through the straws? My mind raced -- doctors have
saws to cut off casts, but this one was firmly attached to his face...
I scrounged through a junk drawer and found a serrated steak knife and
some channel-lock pliers. Starting at his forehead, a sawed- grooves
into an inch-square bit of plaster, then snapped it off with the pliers.
One inch at a time, I managed to free his forehead and eyes (it cost him
an eyebrow and some lashes) and we were able to get his nostrils free,
but the rest was firm against his face, "wired" in place by a thick
beard and moustache.
Back to the junk drawer: I found a pair or embroidery scissors, the kind
made to look like a long beaked stork. By wedging those between the
plaster and his face, I was able to cut off his beard and moustache --
one hair at a time -- and then saw free those sections and snap them off
with pliers. The little patch under his bottom lip I couldn't reach, and
he had to twist it off (involving pain and a few drops of blood, ow.) It
took almost two hours to get off those little squares of hairy plaster,
and got us some odd stares from passers by.
So there sat Jeff, who I had never seen without thick facial hair --
sans beard, moustache, one eyebrow and a sideburn... plus he pulled the
plaster off his belly and chest leaving two bare pink hairless circles
like a bullseye around his belly button and nipple.. I started to shake
and cry as soon he was safely freed and I didn't have to act calm any
more... he just sat there and laughed at me.... took a shower and evened
up his shave (first time i noticed how handsome he was, actually!) I
don't know what the cajuns on the ship thought of his odd bald spots but
he never said a word about it... and next time he was home, he said,
"now that I'm clean shaven, why don't we try that plaster thing again? "
How did I not know I'd end up married to this guy?
The bird house I made this spring was actually from that second casting
over a decade ago... I just cut the mouth at soft leatherhard and opened
it. He wanted me to cast his face again with a toilet paper tube in his
mouth to form the bird house door opening but I'm still a bit gun shy
about the idea...
Yours, kelly in Ohio.. up too late and chilly... off to climb under the
goosedown comforter and warm my feet on my sleeping husband...
_______________________________________________________________
Get your own FREE email account at iVillage.com!
http://webmail.ivillage.com
____________________________________________________________________________
__
Send postings to clayart@lsv.ceramics.org
You may look at the archives for the list or change your subscription
settings from http://www.ceramics.org/clayart/
Moderator of the list is Mel Jacobson who may be reached at
melpots@pclink.com.
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