by Laura Lark

In the spring of 2019, I started teaching in the Fashion Design department at Houston Community College. I’d been teaching in the Fine Art department at the same campus, but I didn’t know much about the world of fashion despite the fact that nearly every single painting or drawing I’ve done since I was twelve portrays some moony, disaffected female that I came across while poring over fashion periodicals. I thought it was a good sign that I actually knew what a Flat Pattern was; I’d spent a lot of time as a kid watching my mother unpack a Butterick or McCall’s envelope, smooth out the brown printed tissue paper inside, and craft garments based on the directions provided.

 I insisted on this getup. Probably after seeing the 1968 musical film Oliver!

Designing Flat Patterns is nothing but numbers. 

There’s the Basic Sloper, the Master or Foundation Pattern that is used to make other patterns. The standard size is my own, so I can wear my creations. The Half Sloper, which is used for academic purposes, takes less time, space, and paper. I understand its purpose, but it bothers me that there isn’t anyone to wear these half-sized garments. 

I decided to make myself a half-size me for any half-sized patterns I might create. Over the years, I have created characters that have emblematized my own traits. I related to them, laughed at them, and hated them.

(All in the Family: (L to R) Erna Fae Charbonneaux, Taffeta Sash, Tubby Menard, Senorita Weepyass, Princess Littlefeather)

Until this point, though, everything I’d done was on paper, easy to hide or pack away in a drawer. 

(If she sits there long enough, maybe the shit-storm will pass.)

I started to research 3D printing, resulting in a bizarre rabbit hole populated by hyperrealistic sex dolls, a  lot of bodybuilders, little girls in ballerina costumes. There was also the occasional person who made himself into a bobble head. 

(From a post by blogger Messy Nessy, who wisely advises readers not to make eye contact with these women.)

It only took a few days to work something out with Thomas Gregg at 3D Envision Printing in Spring, Texas. He sent me the first image of my head.

(At last, a way to empathize with Connie Conehead.)

I was horrified. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to continue, but I’d come this far. I told him to go ahead; my half-slopers needed me! A couple of weeks later, I picked up a small square cardboard box containing the print and the test run. 

I opened the box. I confess to feeling a little nauseous, a little foolish and self-absorbed and vain. I closed the box and taped it shut and put it up high on one of my studio shelves.

I looked at it up there every once in a while. It was always at the periphery of my mind and my sight. Occasionally, I’d approach it carefully, as if it held a live rattlesnake. I finally decided that maybe the thing would be a little less horrifying  if it had some hair. I took the box back down, and a hairdresser friend of mine took me to Wig World. 

(Crowning glory, indeed. Pay no attention to the tomato can body!)

Suddenly I was looking at not only something I could live with, but something that I could work with. My half-slopers would not be for naught. Helen Hawk, the sixth of my characters, was born. 

I entered the printed out head into an art competition, and it made it to the finals. A day before the reception, though, I dropped it on my concrete studio floor and the back of it broke into dozens of pieces. I was so used to looking at it and not touching it. I was surprised at its powdery fragility; the pieces dissolved at the edges when I tried to glue them together. I called Thomas and ordered another head, but there was nothing to be done in a short period of time. I covered the back with the wig and glued the mask like test run over the face. It wound up winning. 

(Display box by patricia hernandez)

Now I had permission to add a body. I couldn’t afford a scan of my own; besides, I wanted an action figure, not a statue. I’m almost 72’’ tall, so I settled on a 32” Disney Princess Rapunzel doll. 

(I see now how lifelong body dysmorphic issues develop.) 

(I’ve always wanted to saw the head off of one of these things)

I dressed her a bit like I would myself. 

The head was (and is) a bit fragile, and I still wasn’t comfortable with it staring at me, so I stored it in the Disney Rapunzel doll’s original packaging. I didn’t have any plans for my new doll; I was just happy to be done with it. Mission Accomplished. I looked forward to the challenge of the next half sloper. 

Then Covid-19 happened and everything screeched to a standstill. I remember the silence in my neighborhood. It’s that same kind of quiet in the air after a big storm. Staying home wasn’t a problem for me, but I do remember feeling a little lost when I realized an upcoming exhibition of my work would be cancelled. I wondered how I would deal with such thorough isolation. I wondered what I would engage with in my studio without the usual attention or deadlines. 

For a few days. Then I unpacked the doll and I noticed something different about my reaction. I didn’t cringe. I didn’t feel like I was looking at a bad picture of myself. I didn’t feel like I was looking at myself at all. I saw it for what it was: a vehicle into a fictional world I’d never been able to enter in my art or writings because I was always in my way. It was a character. A character waiting for adventures. 

I was actually able to get out of the way and give her a couple. I tacked up a homemade green screen. It was freeing. Psychically dislodging. You can hardly tell that the back side of her head was ever fucked up, so I decided to let her keep it. I affixed the spare onto a decapitated Disney Princess Ariel Doll and brought Taffeta Sash, Helen’s evil doppelganger, out of the two-dimensional cartoon world and into the studio. 

Soon, she’ll have her first out-of-network half scale friend. I wonder if it will cause an equally momentous displacement, and if it will be as liberating. I’m hoping so. It’s funny how the world had to be reduced in order to expand. The plot will undoubtedly thicken. I’m counting on it.