Future Shamans

For Halloween this year, I turned Tyson and myself into "future shamans from the year 42069." It took me the three hours preceding the party we attended on Saturday night to build the costumes.


You might recognize the fabric as the final costumes from Untitled (Times For), the extreme in-camera film Ross and I made a year ago. The blue paint is also from that shoot. The spikes are made of mylar, left over from Brenna Murphy's show at CATE, duct taped around cardboard spikes sewn to cardboard bustiers. Here are two dynamic views of the construction:

They were snug, comfortable, and fully adjustable. Always rely on the waist or torso, rather than the shoulders, for structural support. The energy spikes were too powerful to be worn between houses, so we had to carry them like giant mirrored claws in the dark Chicago streets at the witching hour.

I made a costume out of cardboard on the day of Halloween last year, too. Then I went to three parties in a row, and by the end of the night, danced my outfit to pieces. I was a switchblade. This is the only photo of me that was taken. The handle of the knife reached my knees, and the blade was fully retractable.

Llama Man: Documentation

Here are some photos documenting the making of my final film for the semester. Most of them are from the super 8 shoot, which happened in early March in the Chicago Forest Preserve and on Montrose Beach.


Mark and AJ helped me out with this part, AJ working the camera and Mark helping me get my costume on and off and move stuff around.




At first we were having a really difficult time as it had rained the previous day, so these big fields we were in were very muddy and my stilts got caught in the ground. This is a disaster for anyone who knows how to stiltwalk; because you have no ankles or toes on the bottom of your 'feet', you must keep in constant motion to stay balanced, and that is impossible if your legs are glued to the ground.




We finally had to find places for me to walk on concrete drains or paths, with a natural background to make it appear as though Llama Man were walking on the grass. This is why, in the film, you'll see that his feet are cut off in several shots.




AJ did really well considering he didn't know that much about film or shooting film. We'd frame shots together and then I would yell at him through my mask how many seconds I wanted him to roll. The time was around lunch, and there were lots of working men on their breaks, eating in parked cars and watching us.




Llama Man must have looked really bizarre to them, especially since this girl kept emerging from behind the mask. I would wave at them in costume as often as possible, and usually they were good sports about it and waved back. A couple cops stopped to ask what we were doing, if we were shooting a horror film. I said yes because I didn't really want to launch into the whole explaination.



The shoot for the 16mm stuff was way different and much harder. Most of the time was spent constructing the set.


My crew could not have been a better group of people. They were all very patient and supportive and I owe them eternally for it. Here's Zaven, my camera man, on the dolly at probably around three in the morning:


Thanks guys!

Wonder Woman

This is my most recent Halloween costume (which I am wearing in this comic). I sewed the entire thing from tapestry and velour pieces I culled from my giant collection of old fabric and scraps.


I was looking primarily at one specific poster I have hanging on my wall, and while the tones of the fabric I chose are definitely more earthy, I like to think I got the pattern pretty close (minus the stars on the shorts and the head of the eagle).


I also added some beadwork to the headband, cause once you're on that crafty road, you can't really turn off and head down a different route.


I built the pattern around a corset I have (which is also what I relied on to support the costume underneath) and built the shorts around myself. It was an intensive trial and error process, and I only finished at midnight on Halloween, but it was totally worth it.

Llama Man: Sketchbook

Starting around the age of four or five and continuing until around twelve, my most prominent recurring nightmare involved a tall, tall man in a black llama suit.


He had a human face and hands, but wore a full body suit and had hooves instead of feet. He was always grinning, usually hunched over, and took pleasure in hiding children on hooks in the basement of a lifesize dollhouse. His human features were long, drawn, and really creepy.


The most common narrative of my Llama Man dream began with me pulling up in a minivan to a large, abandoned field in the middle of the forest. Across the field we can see our new home. The car holds myself and an unknown family.


We can see the house from across the clearing. There is a large cutaway where the living room is, and there is also a figure lurking around the treeline.


These are all sketches from my nightmare notebook, which I started over a year ago specifically for the purpose of reviving Llama Man under my own terms, through my artwork. Since then I have created myriad drawings and quite a few sculptural objects featuring or about him. I also made a life size costume for myself, mask, gloves, suit, stilts and all. Here are some more pages from my book, and a bit of the costume.