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Page Two
The Ups and Downs of Skeeter Kitefly
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Last Updated
August 05, 2018
The Diverting (Diverted) Dozen
Models who posed at Huffman's Zerfall
studio: twelve in as many years.
And it’s not like crowds of women have streamed through as a result: only one or two, every year or so. Nina and Stormin’, Josephine and Miranda, K.T. and Amy-Kay, LaQuita and Pluanne, Sage and Rachael, Ginger & Candy...
Nina Silbergeld
1st of the Divertees: recommended by
Antonio of the FigFest, but too reliant upon silicone.
Rather like Garbo in Ninotchka, without the laugh. Every move she made was measured, unhurried; she even chewed gum in slow motion. Nina not only used words of one syllable, but only one at a time: “Hi,” “’Kay,” “Here?” She could hold a pose almost indefinitely...
Stormin' Molly Brown
2nd of the Divertees: a dancer at the Salome (Baloney) Oasis. Today a "virtual madam" with her own lucrative website.
Called "Bettie Page Jr." by Huffman.
She showed up at Zerfall toting a suitcase packed tight with props and accessories. Began to undress before she got upstairs, shrugging off my offer of privacy—“I’m not changing into anything, you know”—along with her bra. Shimmy-pirouetting at she slung it across the balustrade. “Only way I can take my clothes off anymore. You should see me at the doctor’s office...”
Gatherin' Stormin'
Huffman panel that turned Double-Bag Eddie
into a Crouching Gallery client.
Gatherin’ Stormin’ was my first four-figure sale. In its honor I carved myself the improved copy that hangs above my drafting table—and a second one for Bettie Page Jr., as a parting gift...
Josephine Hynde
3rd of the Divertees: a somewhat
pearshaped and puddingfaced Cairney student, but with immense appeal.
It was all in her regard. Eyes forever half closed; a mouth that smiled without adjusting its lips. A demeanor both knowing and slightly derisive. Wise enough to the ways of men to dismiss us (the men) and them (our ways) as silly, foolish, futile...
Impossible to Say
Huffman panel featuring Josephine.
To her left, men are transforming into swine; to her right, swine are transforming into men. At her feet, a pile of fallen petals and thorny stems is kindling into a blaze. Josephine ignores it all, giving the viewer her implicit closemouthed smirk.
“Weird,” she said when I showed her the completed piece. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
I pointed to the title....
Miranda Parales
4th of the Divertees: a young Selfsame
employee and aspiring glamour model, who demanded—then nearly regretted—that Huffman
let her pose.
She leaped back against the nearest wall, clutching it with outspread arms and tragic gasp. To this day I don’t know whether Miranda was genuinely frightened or engaged in bosom-heaving melodrama. Now he’s trying to drug me so he can take me and have me! O, how can I avoid such a fate? O, how might I effect my escape?...
Mamacita and Yoly
Miranda's mother and sister/photographer.
The financial side got very complicated and bilingual, with Geraldine and Miranda’s Mamacita haggling over compensation for Yoly as the source’s photographer; and a bonus for Miranda, who turned it into a ticket to L.A....
El Espejo de Miranda
Huffman's most popular sculpture, taken
from an eye-popping shot in Miranda's embryonic portfolio.
Here was one I hadn’t seen before: a spectacular rear view of Miranda in mosquito-net negligée and rubber-band thong, soulfully regarding her frontal charms in a full-length mirror...
“My sister took that in our bedroom,” said Miranda, pouring herself some wine. “Nice, hunh? You can’t see the flash in the mirror or anything...”
K.T. (Kirsten Tollhouse)
5th of the Divertees: an athletic but clumsy Cairney student with a tawny complexion and arrestingly blue-gray eyes.
Called "Periwinkle Blinkers" by her
grandmother.
K.T.’s body, despite its many injuries, was almost blemish-free; and like a good second-generation Bonnie or Stormin’ she shucked jersey, shorts, and skivvies to show it tawnily off. But in my presence she would not remove her kneesocks. I guessed this was so she could assure her grandma that Periwinkle Blinkers never posed completely unclothed...
Balls Away!
Huffman panel of a nearly-nude K.T. punting
the hell out of a sack of soccer balls.
It caused a hullabaloo at the Crouching Gallery, possibly because it appeared soon after Io MacEvelyn’s “Shameful Subject” essay. But Geraldine took no notice of the turmoil, since Double-Bag Eddie broke all records purchasing Balls Away!—speedwise, dollarwise, and demand for a “Cleats ‘n’ Teats” serieswise...
Cleats 'n' Teats series
Of K.T., as commissioned by Double-Bag Eddie.
I often had to use looped straps to keep K.T. from falling out of position and onto her klutzbutt. The resulting sculptures always represented her as adroit and coordinated, as well as a yowzah poppet...
Tiffany Schloss
Not one of the Dozen Divertees: a student who wanted to be sculpted before she got too visibly pregnant.
Called "Tiff Terrific" by Huffman.
Tiffany Schloss was a knockout and knew it, having been blessed with deep cleavage and diva hauteur. She wanted to commission me to sculpt her in the grand manner, very much to her rigorous specifications. “You understand these will be nooods,” I was informed...
Amy-Kay O'Kallick
6th of the Divertees: a Cairney dramatics major,
binge-and-purge beauty pageant contestant, and petty-kleptomaniac.
Amy-Kay O’Kallick, who resembled a young Michelle Pfeiffer with avian overtones: long-legged and long-necked like a heron or egret, wearing feather boas instead of scarves...
County Fair of Souls series
Of Amy-Kay, done after she flunked out of
college and went back home to rural Tasselville.
Our contract having lapsed, I felt free to carve a “County Fair of Souls” series with fully-dressed O’Kallicks confronting stark-naked O’Kallicks in carnival settings. Search Me. Pick a Pocket. Nothing Up My Sleeve...
LaQuita Gibson
7th of the Divertees: niece of Vashti
Rodilard, and the family's acknowledged wild child.
I invited LaQuita to assume any pose that made her feel comfortable. She assumed one that left her wearing only a thong, looking very dark but not nearly so angular.
“Sorry I got to keep my drawers on—Ahhnt Vashti’d kill me dead otherwise. Don’t know what she’d do to you...”
The Mawulisa Exhibit
Major collection of West African art, presented at the Boaz "Ruthless" Luther Center.
I’d gone to this myself, to admire the bas-reliefs from Benin, and be inspired to try my hand at something comparable: not just in ebony but exotica like wenge, iroko, zebrawood.
LaQuita Gibson was inspired to be immortalized...
Woman in Drawers with Cellphone
Relief panel of LaQuita.
Now here was LaQuita Gibson in a wildchild thong, gabbling incessantly to her cellphone, to Pluanne, to me:
“So does being an artist make you a ‘mo, or do you like girls? Ever been with a black chick? True what they say, you know—do it once and” [double snaps] “never go back! ‘Cause the sistahs got back, even li’l Plue there...”
Pluanne (Plue) Torty
LaQuita's younger cousin/sidekick/attendant, who herself became the 8th—and most covert—of the Divertees.
Her schoolmates included friends Janet and
Shawnda, and snooty-conceited D'Enyce whom they all despised.
My first image of Pluanne Torty was a chocolate Easter bunny with the ears bitten off—or folded back into thick braids. She was shorter, lighter, and cuddly-plumper than LaQuita, with flawless teeth that her lips never closed over, and saucerlike eyes behind glasses the size of lima beans. LaQuita usually called her Plue—in two syllables, “like gooey chop suey...”
Franklin and "Mambo Annie" Torty
Pluanne's parents: Franklin being Vashti
Rodilard's cousin, and Annette a Baptist deaconess whom LaQuita claimed was
a voodoo queen.
I’d taken her advice and tuned my radio to the Cutthroats pre-game program; this along with dropping Sleepy LeThean’s name satisfied Mr. Torty that I was a trustworthy fellow.
“Mambo Annie” wasn’t falling for that. She looked every inch a Baptist deaconess and more than capable of being mean as a snake...
Great-Grandfather Rodilard
Late family patriarch: grandfather of Vashti and Franklin, great-grandfather of LaQuita and Plue.
According to LaQuita, Pluanne’s mother made a devil-doll of their great-grandfather Rodilard so she could reanimate his corpse and put it to work mowing the lawn...
Lubaba in a Gym Suit
Huffman panel of Pluanne, carved as per Pluanne's
instructions.
Actually that one isn’t risqué: my hand is wiser than my brain or tongue. “Lubaba” was Pluanne’s body wearing LaQuita’s head—at Pluanne’s insistence...
Plue Velvet
Huffman's surreptitious in-the-round of Pluanne. Title taken
from its turquoise velour cowlmask.
Started in haste, it was finished with care. Blending the nude, the maid, and the cat from Manet’s Olympia into a single odalisque that sprang to life in the carving. With a face intended to be recognizable.
(Trespassers will be violated...)
Sage Maltese
As in "Falcon": 9th of the Divertees.
Admirer of the 1940s (and unadmitted occupant of her own forties).
Recommended by Stormin’ Molly Brown, who called her “a ringer for Julie Newmar.” Splendid, I thought: Batman, My Living Doll, Li’l Abner’s Stupefyin’ Jones. Then Sage turned out to be more of a ringer for Mary Astor as Brigid O’Shaughnessy: cloying throbs, lopsided hairstyle, and roughly twice as old as she claimed.
Be—generous, Mr. Spade!
“Julie Newmar??”
“Oh, I always get those two mixed up,” said Stormin’...
Rachael Guterra
10th of the Divertees: a meek Cairney
student, inanely disappointing as a model.
A mild-mannered model with a bossa nova body, the face of a lamb and the soul of a sheep. Set against her Brazilian background, this should have led to Blame It on Rio crossed with Blade Runner: post-apocalyptic samba. But our sessions came off as ersatz, bogus, torpid: sham laddering...
Ginger & Candy
11th and 12th of the Divertees, working as
a team: more like
Julius Avenuewalkers than Cairneyites.
Both were streetsmart (Julius Avenuewise?) yet insensible. Accommodating, yet mechanical to the point of sterility. Where Stormin’s eyes had danced with zestful relish, Ginger & Candy’s shared an Arrid Extra Dry...
The Glorious Fourth
Huffman work-in-progress: latest attempt to mine the long-played-out Megan & Candy sessions. (Previous results included the panels Glass Houses, Counter Feint, and No I.D.)
Two nude caryatids holding an American flag aloft between them. Patriotism is also all the rage these days.
But yes, a degree of hackwork...
The Mute Commute
A semi-diorama inspired by Huffman's first
sight of Judith on the bus. (Conceived as a "Living Death Mask"
panel.)
As we take our implements and reproduce Alice’s head from collar to crown. Her dovetailed diamond with fishtail undercutting. Her hairwave with a No. 11 veiner. The delicate hollows around her haunted sockets with a Stubai detail knife.
And in the process I capture her expression perfectly: better than in my sketches, better even than in my mind. By damn...
Cover Lady (After Eating Ice Cream)
Huffman's sketch of Judith at the Mesher Road Malt Shoppe in Knotts.
A sketch in every sense of the word. Yet it apprehends her essence with minimal squiggles and smudges. As with Stormin’, as with the best of them, the Dutch charcoal takes to her like lotion on a sunbather. Rendering her elegance, her refinement, in crumbly porous carbon on the back of a cardboard booth promo.
Imagine that...
Watch Your Back
The first sculpture for which Judith formally poses, and whose
preliminary sketch allays any doubts she might have had about Huffman.
(Briefly titled Can You Read My Spine?)
Her hair's not so much adamant as it is resilient. As are the rounded shoulders, the provocative spinal groove, the finesse of flank and loin. She is neither lean nor spare but willowy: deft with supple grace.
It’s a very nice back. And recognizable as the original.
Judith touches her sanguine dorsals with the extreme tip of one finger.
Then turns to me and wraps her long strong arms around my neck...
Prized
The third piece resulting from Huffman's
using Judith as model—this time as close collaborator. First of twelve
panels planned for The Absolute Woman.
(Working
title: Trophy.)
Okay then—a swimmer stretched at full length—reaching to seize a silver medallion just outside her grasp. Aspiration, determination, tenacity, mettle, pluck. Plus every ripple of skin and sinew, delineated punctiliously...
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