Sometimes, particularly when I give lectures, I watch as a bewildered crowd looks at me with horror. Inevitably someone says, “your poor models!” and heads nod in agreement. You see, I put my friends through some rigorous photo shoots – nothing I wouldn’t put myself through, mind you – but nonetheless uncomfortable.

The way people react to realizing I’ve covered my friend in, say, wax, is almost always disgust…as if I did it without their consent, somehow. It almost makes me laugh, and we always get the misunderstanding straightened out.

Why yes, in fact I did have express permission from my model to pour wax all over her! “Oooh, okay then!”.

And so we have it again, another hair-raising story filed under “Things I Do to my Friends”.

I flew to Wisconsin to do two photo shoots for my death series called Samsara. What ended up being a $3,000 trip (more on that later) yielded no usable results, and I proceeded to begin my long, long artistic breakdown (yet again for another blog post).

But in the moment, it was exhilarating!

My friend Dave Junion in Wisconsin happens to have an abandoned train depot on his property, so I used that space to create in. Old, blank, beautiful, falling apart. All I needed was some candles, a table, and a candelier.

Unwisely, I brought the chandelier all the way to Wisconsin with me. I checked a bag just for it. It weighed 40lbs and undoubtedly TSA was concerned, but it made it through.

I found the table outside of another friend’s house in Wisconsin (you’d think I grew up there, but no, I’m a Pennsylvania girl). I assembled everything I needed, from a high-powered heater to a blow torch, candles, fabric, table, chandelier, and smoke bomb. All gathered, it took me a full day to organize with the help of my friends.

And then the torturous part. I asked my friend to lay naked on a table covered in ice for the better part of an hour while I slowly melted candles on her bare skin.

AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

We laughed so hard through the whole thing that I was afraid the candles were going to fall over on her body! I kept yelling at her to stop laughing which only made us laugh more, but I promise you, no one was injured.

The high powered heater didn’t hurt either, especially since we were in an abandoned building and it was 20 degrees F in the room. Did I mention it was February…in Wisconsin? The only problem with the heater was that it created two very different temperatures in the room and my smoke just tabled off at a certain height. I had to run around like a maniac waving cloth around to get it to disperse.

I used the window in the space for natural light, but needed to make sure it was dark enough that the candles had some effect. I photographed the chandelier first, hanging above her, then removed it and lit the candles. After I had some shots of her and the candles, I ran around the room with a lit smoke emitter so that I could get the hazy, smoky effect.

This image, an homage to classic paintings and particularly religious art, didn’t end up making it into my series. I ended up going in a different visual direction in which no locations were used at all, and the figures were more abstract than literal. However, I love this image, so on it’s own it exists in my heart as everything it was intended to be: a meditation on mortality (using candles to signify a vigil) and a look at the delicacy of death.

I am often inspired by paintings, especially Gothic, and looked upon “The Nightmare” by Henry Fuseli as a great inspiration. The pose and the lighting played a large role in creating this image. Through the series, both what was not used and what is being used, which I will share with you at a future date, is inspired by Gothic paintings.

Next I’ll share the really harrowing story of how I hung a glass coffin tied to trees 10 feet in the air in a beautiful forest in Wisconsin. Until then, my dears…until then.

Model is my best friend KD who looks as though she’s stepped out of a classic painting, and we love taking advantage of that. She’s quite literally the best, and I hope everyone finds their own KD in life with whom you can melt candles on.

My third shoot of the series consisted of an impossibly heavy bathtub, 50lbs of wax, and an epic 4 hour long scrub afterwards.

When I started conceiving of the series which would turn into “Fourth Wall”, I was enamored with textures. I wanted there to be a great mixture of various textures that would each have a different feel to them. I wanted the viewer to feel as though he or she could reach in to the image and touch different layers. I wanted the walls to feel grungy, the yarn to be fuzzy, the wax to be cracked and smooth. I had so many ideas for textures, but the image that struck me as having the most potential was this one.

I was initially going to shoot this image with a black floor so that the wax would stand out even more. However, after testing it that way, I decided I couldn’t give up the natural texture of the original hardwood floors. Fun fact: I shot the series in a studio, but that studio was actually a room in an abandoned high school that has since been turned into artist studios…in a semi-abandoned ghost town, no less.

I began searching for wax that didn’t use any animal products and finally settled on soy wax, as I read that it is safe to touch skin. The hunt for the bathtub was easy; the practicality of getting it up to my second floor studio was not. I had recently finished hauling 800lbs of sand up the stairs, so not only were my legs and arms sore, I had no faith in my (or my friends) ability to lift this bathtub. I hired a couple of vets to do the lifting and they were amazing. Even those two burly men had the time of their lives trying to maneuver the tub up the stairs. After about an hour the ordeal was done (until it was time to haul it out).

Once the bathtub was in place, the wax was ordered and I had finished my testing to see what the wax would dry like and if it was safe to put on my skin, I asked my friend to come model for the image. In these situations, where you are asking someone to do something completely insane, I feel you must turn to friends first.

Several challenges presented themselves. First, the wax took some time to dry and I had to apply it in layers. Therefore, my model had to sit in the bathtub in the same position for roughly 2 hours as I continuously heated the wax, filled a pitcher, poured it, and waited for it to dry. It was a difficult process, and throughout she was getting hotter and hotter as her body heat was trapped under the warm wax. I rolled a pillow and put it under her back for support, but eventually she had to try and fall asleep to forget about the difficulty of staying still and waiting.

Another challenge was how slippery everything became. The floor was slippery, the tub was slippery, and eventually my hands felt like slick stumps. Many towels were used that day to try and remedy the situation. I put fabric over her eyes to protect her when it came time to “wax” her face. Her hair stuck to the tub when I poured it through her hair.

I remember when we were ready to shoot I finally climbed my ladder and looked down at her and the pattern the wax had created. I was filled with that amazing feeling when something you have planned for looks exactly as you had hoped. The wax was an important tool for me to communicate with. I felt it so perfectly portrayed the feeling of being trapped – stagnant, unmoving, timeless. It only took a few clicks to know it was right, especially since she couldn’t move!

I will never forget that day. We took turns holding fans over her to cool her and the wax down faster. We took turns feeding her to keep her energy up. And when I finished and it was time to get her out of the tub, I will never forget the difficulty of peeling her hair off of the side of the bathtub. When she stood up her hair made a right angle and moved perpendicular to her neck. Her hair was stiff as a board and sticking straight off of her head. I wrapped her in my best Doctor Who robe and we went out to the bathrooms. Can you imagine the sight she was to behold?

After some time scrubbing it was clear that we needed much more than a sink. She spent 4 hours that night in my bathtub trying to get the wax off. With some baking soda and dish detergent the job eventually was won, and I had a picture I was truly elated about.

This has been the most interesting piece to display because of how people feel about it. I have heard many reactions that have been quite negative to it, and I understand that entirely. It is overtly creepy and has a definite sexual nature to it (in many intended ways). But that is what I love about creating. It isn’t for praise but for conversation. Differing opinions. I am grateful that this piece could do that.

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

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Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: KD Stapleton

Assistance: Kelly McGrady

Can I just take a moment to say how much JOY I am getting from building sets and creating images using my hands? I am having such a good time physically building and creating and taking my time doing so. I’ve shifted how I work slightly – not in everything I create, but in this new series that I’m working on that I’ll debut in early 2017. It has been a labor of love, and when I say labor, I mean it. First I played with yarn, and after 100 hours of “yarning”, and another huge chunk of time dedicated to building the walls for the set (and 4 hours sewing into my sister-in-law’s hand) I was ready to shoot.

For the next shoot we carried 800 lbs of sand into the studio, assembled a bed, and I even found a model in my local grocery store! But more on that shoot later. For this one, I got a very, very heavy bathtub into the studio (re: “I” as “I hired two people to do it, because I was vastly unqualified to be lifting anything that heavy.”). I ordered 100 lbs of wax, though we only ended up needing about 25 lbs worth! And then I got to melting, and covering my friend who was laid in the bathtub naked. All in a day’s work, right?

Assistant: Kelly McGrady
Model: KD Stapleton
Music: “Moonlight” by Message to Bears

After the photo shoot ended, despite having brought about 25 trash bags, we had no real way of cleaning my dear friend who I had just spent hours covering in thick wax. It took about four hours at home – scraping, pealing, heating, bathing – and any other “ing” you can think of, to get the wax off. I think it might have broken my record for messiest photo shoot yet! And that is really saying something.

What is the messiest thing you’ve done for art?!

Please note that we looked into safety precautions before doing this photo shoot and I recommend you do the same if working with materials on skin.