Out of my Comfort Zone - Again

One of the things I have most enjoyed about making art with my daughter, Sonja, is that she often pushes me out of my comfort zone.  It happened again yesterday.  This time it wasn't getting me to do something new in my own art, but getting me to help her on one of her projects.

Many years ago she took a couple of mask-making classes from Eric Bornstein at the Cambridge Adult Education Center.  For a while now she has been wanting to get back to that again, but needed to make a plaster cast of her face.  This wasn't something she could do by herself, so she asked me to do it.  She had the day off yesterday so I went over in the afternoon so we could try this.

I don't know just why, but the idea really freaked me out.  It was somehow terrifying to think about covering all but her nostrils with plaster of Paris.  After a few minutes of panic, I screwed up my courage and we moved forward.

Here's the close-up of the supplies.

Tyler kept us company while we did this.  First step was to get out all the supplies.  Sonja cut up strips of plaster-coated fabric. We also needed a bowl of hot water for dipping the strips in and Vaseline to coat her face.  Before starting she had me test to process on a small plastic container so I could see how the wet strips behaved.

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Everything was all set, so I just had to take a deep breath and move forward.  Sonja had the scary part, but I was the one who was afraid.

The baseball cap didn't stay on, but the underneath layer of plastic wrap still protected her hair.  She put Vaseline over the main part of her face, but I had to do her eyes.  She needed quite a thick layer over her eyebrows and eyelashes.  Putting that glop on her eyes was scary, but I didn't have much choice at that point.

I had to put on three layers of the strips.  The first was the scariest, especially putting it over her eyes.  To get a good cast, you have to make sure the strips are in contact with her lids so I couldn't be too hesitant about it.  After that first layer it's not so tricky except it was a little hard to make sure I had three layers everywhere.

I don't think Tyler quite knew what to think when he saw his mom's face all covered with the plaster.  Luckily the plaster dried quite quickly.  I don't think we had to wait more than about 5 minutes before she could take it off.

All finished.  You can see the final result from the inside and outside.  She was very ready to take off the plastic wrap and wash her face!

Once this cast is thoroughly dry, she's going to make a more permanent cast of the inside so that she doesn't have to go through this again any time soon.  There will be more to come one of these days...