Kabuki Make-up Concepts

As I find myself doing more and more hair and make-up for performance, I'm increasingly convinced- this is an ART. And one I need more practice at.

My head has not sprouted so much of this unmanageable straw stuff since I was in high school (have some fairly embarrassing proof!) I had to rush my makeup so I could make it out early to Last Thursday (an anarchic, Burner-esque Portland street fair) because I underestimated how long it would take to find anything to tame my hair back with. I have not owned real hair clips in...ever. Thank god for the box of assorted miscellany containing bits left over from my elaborate goth fall wearing days.

This is the makeup look that the above grew out of. I came up it with for my (slightly ill-fated) acro and poi show in Sao Paulo that I did for Adrian and Diedre of Bootie. In a completely uncharacteristic move, I actually designed the look a day in advance in order to shoot a run through video of my piece, which you can feast your eyes on below.

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The photographic art of the Wandering Dream Circus pt. 2

In which Kevin Hollenbeck continues to be a goddamn photographic wizard.

We shot these in the barn on the farm, where I had rigged my silk as a cloud swing in possibly the tiniest space it's ever been in. I couldn't do much on it (and when I tried, I banged my shins into the sides of the stable) but we still got some amazing shots.

Before anyone asks, yes, there were a lot of ball jokes when the contact ball came out.

The photographic art of the Wandering Dream Circus pt. 1

Kevin Hollenbeck is a crazy genius wizard who made me into a fairy.

He also made Nathen into a circus-y Peter Pan counterpart, turned a farm into a fairytale, and did it all in one night without lighting equipment other than two desk lamps and the sun shade from his car.

Kevin Hollenbeck is a crazy genius wizard photographer and he is made of pure brilliance and I utterly love him for turning two remarkably silly circus kids into something kind of magical.

(Full set is over on the facebook, if you feel so inclined)

The art of the Wandering Dream Circus, Pt 1

OH MY GOD IT'S HUGE.

(I finally figured out how to make images larger in blogger.)

Now that I'm home from Brasil, work is going full speed ahead on the Next Big Thing- the Wandering Dream Circus, a project that my performance bestie Nathen and I are putting together for a tour in June. This is some of the concept art I knocked out between flights yesterday, and it's one of three pieces that I'll put up here as I scrub the extraneous pencil marks off them in Gimp.

That would be me with the hedgehog hair sitting on the moon, by the way.

The website and facebook page for us Wandering Dreamers should be up by next week, but here's a taste of who we are and what we do:

"The Wandering Dream Circus is a fantastical exploration of a world beyond our own, steeped in darkness and whimsy, brought to a boil under a bruised and roiling sky, and served hot with a sliver of moon and a wink. Using acrobatics, juggling, fire and aerial arts to tell the story of two night travelers who find themselves lost in a strange world of darkness and dreams, the Wandering Dream Circus will conjure up stars in your eyes, spark wonder in your hearts, and plant deceptively simple questions to blossom in your mind."

The current tour, which is subject to change, takes us through Phillidelphia PA, Baltimore MD, DC, Carrboro NC, Chattanooga, TN, Tucson AZ, Monteray CA, San Francisco CA, Ashland OR and Portland OR.

What's that you say? You want fantastical circus artists to come to your town, conveniently located roughly along our current route? CONTACT US. My email is hungrily awaiting more Southern venues that we can cast out spell of childlike wonderment over. Feed it with ideas here: mishkotek@gmail.com.

Zanni Collar

Threw this together in the metal studio today for my Hallowe'en costume. I'm going as (or at least invoking the spirit of) the Zanni from the Commedia dell'arte tradition. Every year all I really want is an excuse to wear all my metal jangly costume crap on Hallowe'en- last year I was a Sky Pirate, this year, I'll be a Zanni until I get too tired of explaining my costume to people and start telling them I'm an Acrobatical Moon Kitten from the Post-Apocalyptic Cirktacular World of Tomorrow.

Although I did this quick 'n dirty (I only had three hours in the studio today), it was a good chance to try out a technique for threading ribbon through metal to make an easy collar. I've been thinking in terms of output since I was contacted for a big fancy vendor fair I could make good money at, and this is a design I'll be using more.


I also made some fun discoveries about liver of sulfur, namely, using a lot less of it than I have been. I got a fun bit of rainbow tint going on in this when I dipped it lightly in a very diluted patina. I also fucked up and got some irregular spotting from my overly-fast sanding job because I didn't hammer it flat before I went to town with the flex shaft, but for fast and dirty, I like this piece.

Mandatory self-indulgent model shots!






Time to costume up for the Renegade Circus show tonight! I'm kinda curious if anyone else in the circus community will get the commedia dell'arte reference, but I think I've delved just a titch too obscure this time. Ah well. Everyone gets Acrobatical Moon Kittens, though.

Cirk du Akro!

Final Cirk du Fantastik poster, and a bit of a lie because hell of any of us can do this move. Artistic libertie!

I really need to clean up the shading on the body, I'm having trouble getting it just right and giving the form dimension. I'll mess with it a bit before I go crash, we're hanging the show tomorrow and I need it to resemble a final product.

I started dolling up my studio space to prep for the show today with bombastic circus-y drawings and silliness on butcher paper- "Ladies and Gentlemen, for your viewing ediafication, a never-before-seen peek backstage into the...DUALITY OF SELF" reads the placard on the side. More cleverness to be added as it comes to me.

Emotional blackhole status: My brain hates to see me succeed. I fight it with doin' awesome shit!

The Reach (WIP)

One of the first things I learned when I started performing was that unless your parents were somehow coming to every show you did, no one in your audience actually wanted to see you succeed. The reason we incorporate dangerous things into our acts, the whole basis behind dumb stunts for money, the sharper or more on fire your props are- the more the audience is hoping you'll fuck up, just for them.

I like to motivate myself before I go on by deciding not to give them the satisfaction.

Another piece for my class show, although it's drawing from the emotional black hole that has reared its ugly head yet again. I used to incorporate a lot of garroting wire into my work back in high school, this is another iteration of that.

I'm pretty unhappy with how this is looking, and it's a struggle to get art to work at all right now for me. Suggestions appreciated, particularly for a background.

Stenceel

If I can't get my stupid hands to do work for class, I can at least put an exacto blade in one of them and make it cut stencils.

I'm still wiped from Folklife, emotionally and physically (see: bruises featured in post previous), and trying to push myself to do work has just been an exercise in frustration. I'd put up the stuff I'm working on, but frankly I'm embarrassed by how godawfully bad it is at the moment.

(New tactic- shame art skills into doing better work!)

I printed this one on the back of the shirt that saw me through all three days of Folklife. It reads "Circus Freak" on the front, courtesy of another stencil I slapped on there a few hours before we left. I have much fondness for this article of clothing thanks to all we survived together, including all the creep-fucks who used it to ask me if I was a freak in bed too and inquired after my acrobatic skills in a highly non-professional manner.

Back and bruised!

Back from busking Folklife all weekend, and sporting this very fine souvenir. The official story is that I was going around punching hippies and one of them threw a gourd at me. Or I got in a fight with a rival performance group and had to defend my troupe's honor- disseminate whichever version you think makes me more of a badass.

Unofficially, Jeff and I were doing chaos during a Cirk du Fantastik street show and his head was coming up as my face was going down. But we're the only ones who need to know that.

Learned a hell of a lot about performance this weekend, all of which will be fueling my last push to make tons of work this term for class. I'm thinking about immortalizing this black eye in acrylic- the colors are coming up really beautifully right about now.

Fuck yer audience rough

This is another in the dual performative self/personal self series. It's really just roughed out at the moment, but the character is holding a mask that'll have a cheesy grin on it, and the right bicep will have a tattoo that reads "Fuck yer audience". My housemate Michael sparked the idea for the concept this time, all thanks to their artistic genius.

I have a loooong, much-meditated on bit of writing to accompany this one to the effect of what I as a performer REALLY think of all those beautiful people I weasel money out of, but it's still taking shape and will probably hit articulation sometime when the art is finished.

Still struggling with the eyes, although they're not as bad as the soulless pits my camera makes them out to be in the shot.

Holding this facial expression so I could use it as a reference with the mirror was hilarious. I didn't even know cheek muscles could cramp.

WIP Sundays, Second Rough Mondays, Finished Product Someday?

Oh, yes. Very much yes. I had no idea that it was going to take this direction, and I was struggling with the bottom left corner, but then it all fell into place deliciously today. I'm still unsure where the detail on the face is going (suggestions anyone? I'm a fan of the facial star, both with make-up and compositionally, but I don't know if I should darken or lighten or how well it reads) but this piece has done such a good job of telling me where it wants to go thus far, I'm just going to fix it, toss it on my wall and keep my ears open to what it wants. Hopefully it has ideas about the hair, too, because I'm at a bit of a loss there. Ideas?

With sheer luck and any sudden unanticipated free time, I'll have prints of it to sell at Folklife with weekend when Cirk du Fantastik is performing.

Works in progress sunday!

This is the first rough of a poster I'm working on for class, thanks to some very clever parlaying of my need for circus promotional material into a homework assignment. All my class work for the rest of the rapidly disappearing quarter is going to deal with the duality of the self I promote for performance, and the self I experience while performing- kind of a backstage, on stage thing. The "I can't do this any more" piece I put up a few days ago was the first part of this series, it more or less sparked the whole idea.

I really want to do a poster that has us all looking bright and shiny and posed, and accompany it with a sketch of us all smoking and ranting about the audience backstage. My life is chock full of material for this concept right now (cough, last Friday's gig, cough).

We're Cirk du Fantastik (as in, Cirk do Fantastik things for your viewing entertainment), and we're here to shout at you and take your money!

I can't do this any more

I love circus. Dear god, do I love circus. I eat it, I breathe it, I live it, I.... herd a mercenary band of flaky performers (myself included), deal with clients, book gigs, drive us all, arrange the music, then put on make-up and tease money out of recalcitrant audiences. Usually in one night.

I love circus.

But some days I feel like I can't do it anymore.

(I did this piece a week ago, during a seriously performance heavy weekend when I was also handling the bureaucracy for the circus group I run on campus. The original text over the head was a thought bubble reading "i can't do this anymore". Life quieted down on that front for about a week, but it just recently picked up, and I found myself hitting that same place again as I'm suddenly staring down an unorganized performance in Ranier tomorrow night, an unconfirmed show on Saturday, and three new clients as of yesterday.)

I got my grubby hands on the copy stand at school today, and replaced the piece from yesterday with the copy I took today. O glee!