THE SHAMAN began and ended with the great fetish wig the character wears. A handmade wig, crafted from fibers and hung with beads, charms, and small artifacts from the maker's life isn't an original idea. Somewhere years ago read about an artist who created such wigs for himself, and I decided that I'd like to make one of my own. The idea lurked in the back of my mind. Occasionally I'd set aside an object, telling myself that I'd put that in the wig some day. I sketched pictures of what my waist-length hair would look like, and puzzled over how I'd construct it and what I'd use for fibers.
It wasn't until my big sabbatical that I eventually got around to it. I built a framework of black elastic around a Styrofoam wig form. On to this I sewed or tied black and blue rope, string, ribbon, and rickrack that I'd gathered from fabric stores, hardware stores, and surplus stores. Then it came time to enchant my long new tresses with potent objects, objects including:
- snail shells
- blue jay feathers
- died yellow turkey feathers
- a tortoise skull
- spark plugs painted red and gold
- brass bells
- good-luck I-D charms
- two strange bisque baby dolls
- a doll's head that came attached to a skewer
- a head from a Mohammed Ali boxing doll that I'd found in the trash in my old apartment building
- a brooch in the form of a Chinese opera face
- metal washers
- brass coils
- Arabian coins that had been fashioned into a necklace
- the flat end of a house key that broke in the lock
- fat beads made of dough and painted gold
- turquoise colored beads my mother had made from Egyptian paste
- opaque amber beads, also from my mother
- a red wooden spool
- red thread
You can only see a fraction of this stuff in any of the pictures, but somehow it matters that it's all there. Many cultures believe that hair holds potent enchantment. I'm learning through my guises that a wig can be a powerful transforming object, something all the more true if you make the wig with your own hands, and hang it with the fascinating flotsam of your own life.
This wig transformed me. I didn't know who I'd be when I put it on. I had imagined that I would become a Hindu fakir, that I'd glue on a beard and wear a white loincloth. But the Shaman emerged, a with a clear Native American flavor. I painted myself as pure improvisation, with no idea of the results, and made the rattle in the third image in a frenzy. The character appears to be in a trance. The act of making the wig, the character, and the pictures was intense, compressed, and trancelike itself.
A shaman is a figure, male or female, present in diverse variations many tribal cultures around the world, from South America to Siberia. They are often led to their calling by dreams or extraordinary experiences. They serve their societies as intercessors with the spirit world, functioning as healers, seers and priests. In many cases they experience physical deprivation or ritual pain as part of their spiritual journeying and vision questing. Lately traditional shamans have been sought out by people from industrial cultures for their intuitive insight, reputed ability to make real magic, knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs.
As I mentioned in my list, a few of the objects in the wig had come from my mother, who died in 1990. An embroiderer, weaver, and experimenter in many crafts, she had amassed a big collection of beads and funky, folky jewelry. A person of definite physical modesty, I don't know if she'd be entirely approving of my self-imaging and web-posting as an art form -- some of my earlier images seemed to make her rather uncomfortable when I showed them to her. But I have a feeling she would have liked the wig.
Images created September 3, 1998
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