Does Teflon wrinkle?

Coming up in a week or so, I have to do another “guest appearance” at an art group north of here. These presentations can be fun if the audience is receptive towards what I do image wise. Now and then I will take guest books from past shows and read some of the snarkier comments left by viewers who feel compelled to state their case as to why I am warped. This practice often sparks a good interaction with the attendees as opposed to me being just a trained monkey and rattling of my degrees and a bunch of blah blah blah about who I am and what I do. People like to be entertained so I put on a show.

To do so, one needs a thick skin. Any artist who has sat through critiques in art school will tell you that the first thing one learns is that they need a thick skin to survive in this business. I bring that up because one question I frequently get asked is why do I only (mostly actually) paint figures of my own color and gender? Now would any person think to turn that around and ask it of someone not my color or gender? Probably not and for good reason. The answer I give however is that like writers, one should work with what they know best, so alabaster babes are my subject of choice. I used to be able to say porcelain but even “oil of old lady” can’t perform that miracle anymore. Back to the thick skin issue, I think if I had a choice, I would take Teflon skin instead. Thick skin is just deeper but it still has pores so any crap thrown your way can still get down inside and fester. Like a bad pimple, it can get infected and eventually leave a scar. On the other hand, Teflon would allow for all the knives, daggers, sticks, stones and mud-pies thrown one’s way to just slide off and puddle around the feet where one can merely step above it all.

Teflon got me to thinking about metals and since I was out walking with my new fancy dandy roller shoes guaranteed to give me buns of steel, my thoughts turned to nerves. After all, we have nerves under our skin. So given a choice between buns of steel or nerves of steel, I would choose the latter. The former would allow one to turn tail and retreat in a timely manner (and look good doing it hopefully) but the latter empowers one to stand their ground and deflect slings and arrows of all shapes and sizes. Superman was called the Man of Steel and except for krypton, he did pretty well in the fly above it all department. Moving on in the thought process, steel morphed into a memory from years ago while sitting at an air force base. The table tent had an advertisement about Kevlar, specifically about the availability of Kevlar underwear. (I do not make this stuff up!)

Too bad that Fruit-of –Kaboom bomber was not wearing some when he landed in Detroit. No, I stole that nickname from the Quinn and Rose show on the radio, I think it is hilarious. So how does this all tie in together? Well….by the time I got home, having mentally gone over my upcoming presentation and squeezed a few emotional zits along the way, I just hoped that I would not bomb next week. Probably ought to stock up on some wrinkle cream too.