Fatter, Harrier, Uglier, Scarier
What happens when artist Allyson Mitchell wields her glue gun?
BY Wendy Banks
Photography by Cat O’Neil
What
Two 10-foot-tall lady Sasquatches
Who
Allyson Mitchell, artist
Where
Mitchell’s airy, furry, earth-toned studio at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
When and Why
1978 “I remember being bored when I was a kid, and not knowing who I was or what I was doing,” Mitchell says. “I would spend hours depressed, watching Mike Douglas, eating a lot after school and doing giant jigsaw puzzles.” It doesn’t seem like a promising start to a career as an artist, academic and activist, but for Allyson Mitchell, those hours absorbing pop culture and fitting together meaningful pictures from apparently random pieces were a kind of cultural boot camp.
1988-98 In a welter of Women’s Studies courses, zines, crafts and Super-8 movies, Mitchell co-founded the fat activist performance troupe Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off, and started scanning the media for positive images of fat women. At the same time, she was accumulating stuff: fun fur, crocheted afghans, abandoned crafts. One thing led to another, and soon Mitchell was blowing up old paint-by-numbers kits and piecing together fun-fur still lifes.
2003 Mitchell discovered that the women in Playboy cartoons were often portrayed as saucily zaftig. “I loved [working in fun fur], but I wanted the content to be more political,” she says. With a methodology already in place, plump, furry nude wall hangings were only a pair of scissors and a glue gun away.
2004 “With my dissertation, I was trying to trouble normative ideas about beauty and femininity, so I started thinking about going fatter, hairier, uglier and scarier.” Playboy-style Sasquatch wall hangings followed.
2006 But two-dimensional crypto-beasties weren’t enough. Now, two life-sized Sasquatches tower over Mitchell’s studio, where she squeezes work on Foodie, a film collaboration with Fiona Smyth, into her busy academic schedule—she lectures at both York and Guelph universities. “I’m teaching courses in contemporary feminist activism. How can I complain about being tired? It’s a dream come true!” she says.
How to Make a Life-Sized Sasquatch
1. Have your girlfriend photograph you in a bathing suit in the classic Sasquatch pose.
2. Using a wall projector, blow the pictures up to 10 feet tall; draw an outline to use as a guide.
3. Enlist your skilled carpenter friend (in Mitchell’s case, Suzanne MacGregor) to help build the frames in her garage.
4. Relying on trial, error and some experience, make the feet from wooden boxes that support a torso on stilts. Remember to make the arms and head removable so you can take your Sasquatch through doors!
5. Glue Styrofoam to the wooden frame, and carve it into a Sasquatch-like shape. Stretch chicken wire around the form, and stuff the gaps with more Styrofoam. Watch out for chicken-wire scratches.
6. Move the fleshed-out frame from the garage to your studio for upholstering.
7. Wrap it in quilt batting so that it looks like a giant ghostly Frankenstein. Sew batting to wire.
8. Draw fun-fur patterns on batting; enlist friends to cut out fur.
9. Glue fur on. Dismiss friends, so that you won’t have to feel guilty when they get horrible blistering glue burns.
Questions for the Artist
Q: What time of day do you like to work?
A: The dreamiest time to work is during the week, from 10 until three, because then it feels like the day’s still so big and there’s so much time. Once it hits four, it’s like, “Well, Oprah’s on, I guess the day’s over.” Sometimes I work with the TV on, and watch Dr. Phil. I hate his guts.
Q: Where does your inspiration come from?
A: I keep a little piece of paper on my fridge where I write down stupid brilliant things that my friends say.
Q: For example?
A: “Butch bathing suits.” I’m going to make a needlepoint of that.
Q: Do you ever go through a postpartum slump after finishing a project?
A: When and if there is a break, I might crash, but there has not been a break, so I cannot speak to that experience. I don’t want to sound braggy, but these days I don’t know what it feels like to be bored.
Mitchell’s Sasquatch work will be on display as part of the group exhibition, “Fray,” at the Textile Museum of Canada from July 13, 2006 until January 7, 2007.
