Inspired by a show of Mexican papier-mâché (cartonería ) at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, Penny Cooper wanted a mask of herself.
While Mrs & Mrs went out exploring, I took a day at home to oblige.
BELOW: Penny Cooper got greased up, and then got molded with newspapers scraps soaked in flour & water.
It had been cold in NM, but that day it was hot in the sun, and Penny Cooper sat outside to bake her mask.
It was dry in an hour or so!
I gathered pine needles in the yard, for hair. Penny wanted her whole body painted too (with gouache--opaque watercolor). I was a little surprised, because she doesn't usually like to take her plaid dress off, but I think the spirit of the landscape inspired her.
The dry and prickly landscape reminded me of Sicily, and besides looking at Mexican mask designs, I also looked up the designs on Sicilian carts. (The mask nevertheless turned out a lot like Pikachu...)
The next day bink, Penny Cooper, and I hiked the mesa at Tsankawi, part of the Bandelier National Park:
BELOW: The Ancestral Pueblo people who'd lived there for hundreds of years wore footpaths into the soft rock. "Doll size!"
Penny wondered if the people had made doll-sized pottery.
Probably, she decided, "but the dolls have taken their dishes back into the earth with them."
BELOW: Me & bink with Penny on the mesa top.
I'm wearing Mrs Maura's cap from Meow Wolf . We'd gone to that "explorable art experience" on an earlier day, and I'd loved it: so fun, so imaginative--it was like falling down the rabbit hole!
Meow Wolf was part of the overall message I received on my trip:
MAKE STUFF!
The humans of all times like to make stuff.
BELOW: Bink raises her hand toward the petroglyph hand, above her to the right:
Note a HAZARD of visiting New Mexico:
A spaceship may try to fly up your nose!
