Joe Dallesandro- circa- 1955
Joe Dallesandro- circa- 1970
Joe Dallesandro- circa- 1974
4/30/11
4/29/11
JACK LAYTON-BACK IN THE DAY
(jack layton- circa- 1967)
jack layton- 2011
John Gilbert "Jack" Layton, PC, MP (born July 18, 1950)
is a Canadian social democratic politician, who has been the leader of the New Democratic Party since 2003.
He previously served on Toronto City Council, also serving at times during that period as acting mayor and deputy mayor of Toronto, Ontario.
On June 28, 2004, he was elected Member of Parliament for the constituency of Toronto—Danforth.
EMILIE'S BOOTS NEED REPAIR
my doll of a neighbor- EMILIE ODEILE
of ART SRING broke the heel of her "kinky boots," the other day. can anyone recommend a shoe repair?
i recommended WILLIE'S SHOE REPAIR, an institution of hollywood.
i will not allow emilie to walk on my back, (during yoga) until she repairs her boots.
of ART SRING broke the heel of her "kinky boots," the other day. can anyone recommend a shoe repair?
i recommended WILLIE'S SHOE REPAIR, an institution of hollywood.
i will not allow emilie to walk on my back, (during yoga) until she repairs her boots.
THIS WHEEL'S ON FIRE
remember the title song for ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS?
orginally written by bob dylan & rick danko and performed by THE BAND.
here it is preformed live by punk legends-
SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES- circa 1987.
AMAZING
posting courtesy- syd curry- mississippi/antebellum corespondent
orginally written by bob dylan & rick danko and performed by THE BAND.
here it is preformed live by punk legends-
SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES- circa 1987.
AMAZING
posting courtesy- syd curry- mississippi/antebellum corespondent
4/28/11
ANTEBELLUM'S CHAIR
antebellum has a new chair!
although "she" is from the 1930s, i recently aquired "her" for the gallery. "she" will be the "official chair of antebellum."
I LOVE "HER!"
photo courtesy- charles dimont-
pacific palisades/antebellum corespondent
GHOSTIE NEEDS A HOME
GHOSTIE the Cemetery Cat Needs a Home
This little calico tabby girl was rescued from Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
She is, quite simply, the most perfect cat in the world! Friendly, precocious, purrs incessantly (except when she’s talking), funny, extremely social and exceedingly inquisitive.
Ghostie is a little girl with a HUGE personality.
She is spayed, fully vaccinated, microchipped, FeLV/FIV tested (neg) and dewormed. Ready to rumble!
Ghostie: Female Calico, 6 mos. old
Email: ZombieDiva@me.com or call 323.599.7620
Hollywood Forever
SNAP!
although i personally don't care for GLEE, (too insipid) i find it ironic that FOX TV hosts the program, and at the same time FOX NEWS debates if is too gay..
check out activist- RAY HILL use common sense and a little ol school gay sarcasm by calling out dumbo- BRYAN FISCHER
check out activist- RAY HILL use common sense and a little ol school gay sarcasm by calling out dumbo- BRYAN FISCHER
YOGA!
if you don't already practice yoga, here's more incentive.
photo courtesy- Gavin Geoffrey Dillard-
black mountains- NC/antebellum corespondent
4/27/11
WHAT BECOMES A LEGEND- MIGUEL BERISTAIN
MIGUEL BERISTAIN was a friend of mine from the early 80s to his passing.
when i first meet miguel he worked @ FLIP on melrose ave. he spoke very little english and drove a classic cadillac convertable.
in 1989 he opened LA's first fetish nighclub called-
CLUB FUCK
he then went on to host SINAMATIC, another groundbreaking club, and loads of fun... those were the days....i miss you doll- RIP.
Photo of "Miguel". Portrait commissioned by Flip of Hollywood on Melrose. 1982.
Flip Party at The Palace. Photo courtesy- Terry Dorn (aka Durbin)
when i first meet miguel he worked @ FLIP on melrose ave. he spoke very little english and drove a classic cadillac convertable.
in 1989 he opened LA's first fetish nighclub called-
CLUB FUCK
he then went on to host SINAMATIC, another groundbreaking club, and loads of fun... those were the days....i miss you doll- RIP.
Photo of "Miguel". Portrait commissioned by Flip of Hollywood on Melrose. 1982.
Flip Party at The Palace. Photo courtesy- Terry Dorn (aka Durbin)
THE DEVIL IS A TORNADO
check out this incredible footage of a tornado hitting Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
video courtesy- jason- alabama/antebellum corespondent
video courtesy- jason- alabama/antebellum corespondent
4/26/11
WHAT BECOMES A LEGEND- RUTHIE GALLARDO
my very longtime, (since high-school!) doll of a friend
RUTHIE GALLARDO has had an amazing life thus far.
back in the day she was a regular on american bandstand, (circa 1975).
i loved hearing here story about DICK CLARK yelling to the assitant director, " where are my mexicans? get me my mexicans for this shot.'
then in the late 70s, ruthie moved to paris and became the house model for THIERRY MUGLER, (now manfred). while in gay paree, she modeled for photograpy icons & lovers-
PIERRE ET GILLES, for some of their first images; now classics.
(ruthie by pierre et gilles- circa 1988)
RUTHIE recently graduated from Southern California Institute of Architecture, and is now a landscape & architectural designer for Green blossom Design.
we get together and have tea whenever we can.
MY LITTLE FOODIE
CHEAP EATS: Asian Chicken Salad
Mandarin oranges are in season and here is recipe that is easy to put together.
You might call them cuties, clementines, or mandarin oranges. Whatever you call them, they are in season right now and this week’s Cheap Eats recipe is full of these little orange treasures. You can use store-bought rotisserie chicken or oven baked chicken breast as I did.
Asian Chicken Salad
2 C. cooked and cubed chicken
1 bag Iceberg salad mix
1 head romaine lettuce
5-6 stalks green onions
½ bunch cilantro, chopped
½ C. dry roasted, unsalted peanuts
5 fresh Mandarin oranges, peeled and segmented
Asian Ginger Dressing
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 T minced fresh ginger root
¾ C. olive oil (or sesame oil)
½ C. rice vinegar
3 T honey
1 T soy sauce
In a jar, combine the ingredients for the dressing and set aside. Arrange the lettuces, cilantro, onion, and chicken in a salad bowl. Top with Mandarin oranges and peanuts. Shake the jarred dressing and pour over the salad. You might find you do not need all the dressing. For this meal I shopped mainly at Winco. I spent about $1 for the salad dressing, $2 in chicken and $4 for the other salad ingredients. Seven dollars for a delicious spring-time meal is some good cheap eating!
repost by betty fenar- palm desert/antebellum corespondent
Mandarin oranges are in season and here is recipe that is easy to put together.
You might call them cuties, clementines, or mandarin oranges. Whatever you call them, they are in season right now and this week’s Cheap Eats recipe is full of these little orange treasures. You can use store-bought rotisserie chicken or oven baked chicken breast as I did.
Asian Chicken Salad
2 C. cooked and cubed chicken
1 bag Iceberg salad mix
1 head romaine lettuce
5-6 stalks green onions
½ bunch cilantro, chopped
½ C. dry roasted, unsalted peanuts
5 fresh Mandarin oranges, peeled and segmented
Asian Ginger Dressing
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 T minced fresh ginger root
¾ C. olive oil (or sesame oil)
½ C. rice vinegar
3 T honey
1 T soy sauce
In a jar, combine the ingredients for the dressing and set aside. Arrange the lettuces, cilantro, onion, and chicken in a salad bowl. Top with Mandarin oranges and peanuts. Shake the jarred dressing and pour over the salad. You might find you do not need all the dressing. For this meal I shopped mainly at Winco. I spent about $1 for the salad dressing, $2 in chicken and $4 for the other salad ingredients. Seven dollars for a delicious spring-time meal is some good cheap eating!
repost by betty fenar- palm desert/antebellum corespondent
BLOODY 'ELL!
A phial filled with the blood of the late pope John Paul II will go on display at his beatification on Sunday and become available for veneration by the faithful.
The Vatican said the blood, which had been stored in a Rome hospital, had been kept in a liquid state by an anti-coagulant that was added when it was taken from him.
The Polish pontiff is to be beatified at a service celebrated by his successor, Benedict XVI. More than 50 heads of state and several hundred thousand pilgrims are expected in Rome for the occasion.
READ MORE-
reposted by charles dimont- pacific palisades/antebellum corespondent
TONY WARD AS JESUS
check him out @ antebellum's KEEASTER exhibition- thru may 19th
ANTEBELLUM general hours- wednesday thru saturday- 1pm til 7pm
myselfifixction- self-portrait by tony ward- 2005
ANTEBELLUM general hours- wednesday thru saturday- 1pm til 7pm
myselfifixction- self-portrait by tony ward- 2005
LAMY LOVES ABU DHABI
MICHELE LAMY in Abu-Dhabi Grand Moss square- 2011
photos courtesy- rick owens- paris/antebellum corespondent
photos courtesy- rick owens- paris/antebellum corespondent
PHOEBE SNOW- RIP
Phoebe Snow, the distinctively voiced singer-songwriter who penned the ’70s radio staple “Poetry Man”
has passed away following complications from a 2010 brain hemorrhage. She was 60.
another legend bites the dust... sad, sad... check out this CLASSIC TV CLIP OF PHOEBE AND LINDA TEAR IT UP-
PHOEBE SNOW & LINDA RONSTAND- SNL- CIRCA 1979- CLASSIC!
has passed away following complications from a 2010 brain hemorrhage. She was 60.
another legend bites the dust... sad, sad... check out this CLASSIC TV CLIP OF PHOEBE AND LINDA TEAR IT UP-
PHOEBE SNOW & LINDA RONSTAND- SNL- CIRCA 1979- CLASSIC!
4/25/11
POLY STYRENE- RIP
according to various Facebook postings and OC WEEKLY, UK punk icon/legend
POLY STYRENE passed away today.
The X-ray Spex's singer, whose real name is Marian Joan Elliott-Said, was diagnosed with cancer two months ago. She just released her solo album Generation Indigo in March.
Poly Styrene is 53, same age as moi...... if this is true, it is the end of punk rock. another nail in the coffin.
UPDATE- it has been confirmed to be true. our punk rock heroine has subcumbed to the modern age, like so many before, and unfortunately many more to come. RIP- ICON- RIP.......
Poly Styrene was the stage name of Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011),
a British musician, song-writer and singer, most notably in the pioneering punk rock band X-Ray Spex.
(IDENTITY)
Poly Styrene was born in 1957 in Bromley, Kent. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a British (Scots-Irish) legal secretary.
Her father was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.
As a teenager, Poly was a "barefoot hippie". At age 15, she ran away from home with just £3 in her pocket, and hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She thought of this as a challenge to survive. The adventure ended when, possibly hallucinating, she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for septicaemia.
In 1976 she released a reggae single "Silly Billy" as Mari Elliot. Later that year, after seeing the Sex Pistols, she was inspired to form the punk band X-Ray Spex.
(I AM A POSEUR)
In 1978, after a gig in Doncaster, Poly had a vision of a pink light in the sky and felt objects crackling when she touched them. Thinking she was hallucinating, her mother took her to the hospital where Poly was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, sectioned, and told she would never work again. Although she missed playing at the time, in hindsight, Poly felt that getting out of the public eye was good for her. She was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1991.
(WORLD TURNED DAYGLO)
Poly is best known for her vocal performances for X-Ray Spex. She has been described by Billboard as the "archetype for the modern-day feminist punk" who, because she wore braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970s rock star, sported a gaudy Dayglo wardrobe, and was of mixed race, was "one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female".
Stumbling upon a very early gig by the Sex Pistols live on Hastings Pier, playing a set of cover songs, performing to three people, Poly and two language students from Sweden, she was so inspired by this that she put an ad in the paper for ‘young punx who want to stick it together’ to form a band.
(GERM- FREE ADOLESCENCE)
Poly recorded a solo album, Translucence, in 1980. The album abandoned X-Ray Spex's loud guitar work for a quieter and more jazzy sound that anticipated the 1990s dance band Everything But the Girl.
In 1983, she was initiated into the Hare Krishna movement and recorded at their recording studios while living as a devotee in the Bhaktivedanta Manor.
In 2007, Poly was invited to the Concrete Jungle festival in Camber Sands, where she and the gathering's organizer, Symond Lawes, agreed to initiate a 30-year celebration of X-Ray Spex's seminal debut album, Germ Free Adolescents. They decided to hold a live show at the Camden Roundhouse, which was a sell-out event on 6 September 2008. A live album/DVD of this event, Live @ The Roundhouse London 2008, was released in November 2009 on The Year Zero label by Future Noise Music.
Earlier in 2008, Styrene made a guest appearance at the 30th anniversary concert of Rock Against Racism in Victoria Park, London, doing a single song, "Oh Bondage Up Yours", with guest musicians Drew McConnell (of Babyshambles and Helsinki) and 'Flash' David Wright playing saxophone.
That same year, she dueted with Goldblade's John Robb on a remix of Goldblades's "City Of Christmas Ghosts".
In March 2009, Styrene joined other members of PRS for Music in criticizing Google for allegedly not paying their a fair share of royalties to musicians. This followed Google's removal of millions of videos from YouTube because of a royalties dispute with the organization.
On 29 October 2010, NME.com announced that Poly Styrene was to release a solo album titled Generation Indigo, produced by Martin Glover (aka Youth from Killing Joke), in March 2011. She released a free download of "Black Christmas" in November 2010. "Black Christmas" featured and was written in collaboration with Poly's daughter, Celeste. It was inspired by the killing spree in Los Angeles instigated by a man dressed as Santa Claus.
(BLACK CHRISTMAS)
Poly Styrene announced "Virtual Boyfriend" as the first single from her new album Generation Indigo via Spinner Music.
(VIRTUAL BOYFREIND)
Styrene described herself as "an observer, not a suffering artist writing from tortured experiences. I was playing with words and ideas. Having a laugh about everything, sending it up."
She lived in St Leonards, East Sussex.
Styrene's daughter Celeste Bell-Dos Santos is the frontwoman for the music group Debutant Disco based in Madrid, Spain.
In February 2011, in an interview published in The Sunday Times magazine, which largely focused on her past and present relationship with her daughter Celeste, Poly Styrene revealed that she had been treated for breast cancer.
She died of cancer on 25 April 2011.
thanks to syd curry- mississippi/antebellum corespondent.
BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD
The Beachwood Canyon home once belonging to actor Bela Lugosi is now on the market for the first time in forty years!
With five bedrooms and four bathrooms, the 5,000 square foot house is currently listed at $2.367 Million. Lugosi is perhaps best known for playing the title role in the 1931 film Dracula, but he also enjoyed a lengthy and prolific career in Hollywood.
The home, which Curbed LA reports Lugosi lived in during the 1940s, was built in 1926. Referred to as "Castle La Paloma," it features a ballroom-sized living room, a dining room with bay windows, a library, and a service wing. There are also two master suites. Outside, the home boasts 12,000 square feet of flat and terraced grounds, and views of LA from the Hollywood sign to the coast. While the place may be in need of a little fixing up, it does come with some bona fide Hollywood history. Check out photos below.
REALTOR.COM
WARD OF THE STATE: TONY WARD- ARTIST'S MUSE
Ward of the State: Tony Ward, Artists’ Muse
RIVERA & RIVERA is pleased to announce Ward of the State: Tony Ward, Artists’ Muse,
a group exhibition of works centered on shared muse, Tony Ward.
Curated by Robert Standish, the exhibition highlights a diverse collection of images by artists whose lives and careers have at various points been impacted by Ward, as subject, muse and myth.
A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, May 21, 2011 from 6–8p.m.
Ward of the State: Tony Ward Artists’ Muse includes artwork by Greg Gorman, Steven Klein, Patrick Hoelck, Patrick Martinez, Herb Ritts, Estevan Oriol, Retna, Paul Rusconi, Bruce Weber, Robert Standish, Michael Gregg Michaud, Jules Muck, RICK CASTRO, Christoph Schmidberger, Ray Turner, Maya Mercer and Tony Ward.
Called "male icon of the century" by Paris Vogue, Ward has been the subject of numerous photographers and designers, including Bruce Weber, Jim French, Steven Meisel, Herb Ritts, Ellen Von Unwerth, Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana,
Calvin Klein, and numerous others. Ward has also appeared in Madonna's book Sex, as well as in her hyper-sexualized music videos.
Ranging from the 1980s to the present, Ward of the State will feature paintings, photographs, and works in other media based on Tony Ward’s role as a visual icon. Through their respective mediums, each artist communicates a different facet of a man not easily defined. As a collective work of art, Ward of the State reveals Ward as the embodiment of ideals of masculinity, beauty, brutality, fashion, and sexual ambiguity.
As striking and strongly featured as his face and physique are, Ward serves as a blank canvas for the artists to reinterpret and immortalize his essence and persona for their own artistic devices.
RIVERA & RIVERA Gallery, located in West Hollywood, is housed in a space designed by the Museum of Contemporary Art's architect, Arata Isozaki. The gallery represents mid-career and established artists. RIVERA & RIVERA's roster of artists have 22 museums shows aligned through 2013, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Pasadena Museum of California Art.
Opening Reception for the artists: Saturday, May 21, 2011, 6 – 8 p.m.
454 N. ROBERTSON BOULEVARD WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
phone: 310. 713.1635 f a x : 310. 388.3187 email: info@riveraandrivera.com
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and by appointment.
For additional information on Ward of the State: Tony Ward Artists’ Muse, please call 310.713.1635, or email shayna@riveraandrivera.com
PATTI SMITH- SNL
EPIC ROCK & ROLL ON SNL- PATTI SMITH GROUP- circa 1975
courtesy- syd curry- mississippi/antebellum corespondent
4/24/11
BOWIE- ONE NIGHT STAND
one night stand- circa 1973
posting courtesy- syd curry- mississippi/antebellum corespondent
XNOTDEAD #2
XNOTDEAD THE FAGAZINE-
some of my classic photography is featured in the new issue of XNOTDEAD
along with a host of other freaks
here's what the editor has to say-
And if the real freaks were the ones that other magazines persevere to offer us, imposing their proteine cocktails and their workouts...probable photoshop...their precalibrated politically incorrect ...or portfolios just as much tacky as bitchy with red and yellow signs barely worthy than a supermarket promotion...
That we fuck the impact of words. That we vomit the weight of pictures...
That we consider that the sum of invisible minorities are the real majority...That the slum of humanity is made of perfect abs and white teeth. Look at these pages the way we conceived it: without kindness and voyeurism, without pity...but with affection and humour...
By reverting all the arguments of fake scandals towards those who use it.
We are fetishistic, skinny, fat, old, sick, damaged, but we are the world. Our complexes are our strenghts...
Our ambiguities are many open windows towards your fakes convictions..
Don't complain, you are we...
revendicating the right of indifference in the difference... maybe finally to the fact of being the beautiful freaks for
"normal people" !
XNOTDEAD issue#2 available in march @ ANTEBELLUM
MASKS OF WAR
Faces of War
Amid the horrors of World War I, a corps of artists brought hope to soldiers disfigured in the trenches
By Caroline Alexander- Smithsonian magazine, February 2007
Wounded tommies facetiously called it "The Tin Noses Shop." Located within the 3rd London General Hospital, its proper name was the "Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department"; either way, it represented one of the many acts of desperate improvisation borne of the Great War, which had overwhelmed all conventional strategies for dealing with trauma to body, mind and soul. On every front—political, economic, technological, social, spiritual—World War I was changing Europe forever, while claiming the lives of 8 million of her fighting men and wounding 21 million more.
The large-caliber guns of artillery warfare with their power to atomize bodies into unrecoverable fragments and the mangling, deadly fallout of shrapnel had made clear, at the war's outset, that mankind's military technology wildly outpaced its medical: "Every fracture in this war is a huge open wound," one American doctor reported, "with a not merely broken but shattered bone at the bottom of it." The very nature of trench warfare, moreover, proved diabolically conducive to facial injuries: "[T]he...soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun," recalled Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France. "They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets."
Writing in the 1950s, Sir Harold Gillies, a pioneer in the art of facial reconstruction and modern plastic surgery, recalled his war service: "Unlike the student of today, who is weaned on small scar excisions and graduates to harelips, we were suddenly asked to produce half a face." A New Zealander by birth, Gillies was 32 and working as a surgeon in London when the war began, but he left shortly afterward to serve in field ambulances in Belgium and France. In Paris, the opportunity to observe a celebrated facial surgeon at work, together with the field experience that had revealed the shocking physical toll of this new war, led to his determination to specialize in facial reconstruction. Plastic surgery, which aims to restore both function and form to deformities, was, at the war's outset, crudely practiced, with little real attention given to aesthetics. Gillies, working with artists who created likenesses and sculptures of what the men had looked like before their injuries, strove to restore, as much as possible, a mutilated man's original face. Kathleen Scott, a noted sculptress and the widow of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott of Antarctica fame, volunteered to help Gillies, declaring with characteristic aplomb that the "men without noses are very beautiful, like antique marbles."
While pioneering work in skin grafting had been done in Germany and the Soviet Union, it was Gillies who refined and then mass-produced critical techniques, many of which are still important to modern plastic surgery: on a single day in early July 1916, following the first engagement of the Battle of the Somme—a day for which the London Times casualty list covered not columns, but pages—Gillies and his colleagues were sent some 2,000 patients. The clinically honest before-and-after photographs published by Gillies shortly after the war in his landmark Plastic Surgery of the Face reveal how remarkably—at times almost unimaginably—successful he and his team could be; but the gallery of seamed and shattered faces, with their brave patchwork of missing parts, also demonstrates the surgeons' limitations. It was for those soldiers—too disfigured to qualify for before-and-after documentation—that the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department had been established.
"My work begins where the work of the surgeon is completed," said Francis Derwent Wood, the program's founder. Born in England's Lake District in 1871, of an American father and British mother, Wood had been educated in Switzerland and Germany, as well as England. Following his family's return to England, he trained at various art institutes, cultivating a talent for sculpture he had exhibited as a youth. Too old for active duty when war broke out, he had enlisted, at age 44, as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Upon being assigned as an orderly to the 3rd London General Hospital, he at first performed the usual "errand-boy-housewife" chores. Eventually, however, he took upon himself the task of devising sophisticated splints for patients, and the realization that his abilities as an artist could be medically useful inspired him to construct masks for the irreparably facially disfigured. His new metallic masks, lightweight and more permanent than the rubber prosthetics previously issued, were custom designed to bear the prewar portrait of each wearer. Within the surgical and convalescent wards, it was grimly accepted that facial disfigurement was the most traumatic of the multitude of horrific damages the war inflicted. "Always look a man straight in the face," one resolute nun told her nurses. "Remember he's watching your face to see how you're going to react."
Wood established his mask-making unit in March 1916, and by June 1917, his work had warranted an article in The Lancet, the British medical journal. "I endeavour by means of the skill I happen to possess as a sculptor to make a man's face as near as possible to what it looked like before he was wounded," Wood wrote. "My cases are generally extreme cases that plastic surgery has, perforce, had to abandon; but, as in plastic surgery, the psychological effect is the same. The patient acquires his old self-respect, self assurance, self-reliance,...takes once more to a pride in his personal appearance. His presence is no longer a source of melancholy to himself nor of sadness to his relatives and friends."
Toward the end of 1917, Wood's work was brought to the attention of a Boston-based American sculptor, inevitably described in articles about her as a "socialite." Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Anna Coleman Watts had been educated in Paris and Rome, where she began her sculptural studies. In 1905, at the age of 26, she had married Maynard Ladd, a physician in Boston, and it was here that she continued her work. Her sculptural subjects were mostly decorative fountains—nymphs abounding, sprites dancing—as well as portrait busts that, by today's tastes, appear characterless and bland: vaguely generic portraits of vaguely generic faces. The possibility of furthering the work by making masks for wounded soldiers in France might not have been broached to Ladd but for the fact that her husband had been appointed to direct the Children's Bureau of the American Red Cross in Toul and serve as its medical adviser in the dangerous French advance zones.
In late 1917, after consultation with Wood, now promoted to captain, Ladd opened the Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris, administered by the American Red Cross. "Mrs. Ladd is a little hard to handle as is so often the case with people of great talent," one colleague tactfully cautioned, but she seems to have run the studio with efficiency and verve. Situated in the city's Latin Quarter, it was described by an American visitor as "a large bright studio" on upper floors, reached by way of an "attractive courtyard overgrown with ivy and peopled with statues." Ladd and her four assistants had made a determined effort to create a cheery, welcoming space for her patients; the rooms were filled with flowers, the walls hung with "posters, French and American flags" and rows of plaster casts of masks in progress.
The journey that led a soldier from the field or trench to Wood's department, or Ladd's studio, was lengthy, disjointed and full of dread. For some, it began with a crash: "It sounded to me like some one had dropped a glass bottle into a porcelain bathtub," an American soldier recalled of the day in June 1918 on which a German bullet smashed into his skull in the Bois de Belleau. "A barrel of whitewash tipped over and it seemed that everything in the world turned white."
Stage by stage, from the mud of the trenches or field to first-aid station; to overstrained field hospital; to evacuation, whether to Paris, or, by way of a lurching passage across the Channel, to England, the wounded men were carried, jolted, shuffled and left unattended in long drafty corridors before coming to rest under the care of surgeons. Multiple operations inevitably followed. "He lay with his profile to me," wrote Enid Bagnold, a volunteer nurse (and later the author of National Velvet), of a badly wounded patient. "Only he has no profile, as we know a man's. Like an ape, he has only his bumpy forehead and his protruding lips—the nose, the left eye, gone."
READ MORE-
repost courtesy- kate mcconn- inglewood/antebellum corespondent
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