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A blond haired blue eyed long time friend and collector of my art, Serena Jane Dean, posed for this around 2000. Jimmy Helvin did the hair and assisted the make up. I wanted all the symbols in the Goddess Kali's hands to be as exact as I could manage so I made trident on the upper left, the glitter arrows on the right and the glitter club she holds lower left. We suspended Serena from my terrace over the living room in an Eastern Mountain Sport harness. I had to take many shots to get the different arm locations with the proper tools and there were a million things to keep in place. It took morning until late night to make the image so it was very trying on all three of us. That, coupled with the Mehron black grease paint which didn't breathe, the hot Speedotron lights and the harness that was cutting off Serena's circulation, she began to expire and faint. We lowered and unhooked her and the actual shot of her face and body that I used was from one taken with her siting on a high folding ladder. We suspended the skin of a white leopard (to substitute for the lion Kali rides) that my grandfather killed in the East in the 1950's with clear string which made the entire set even more fragile. The black grease paint was everywhere on Serena for days including in her ears and her hair was totaled as Jimmy created the hair she has with her real hair and toilet paper rats. I made this before I appropriated images in collages with photoshop, so the trees, flowers, jewelry, weapons and symbols were all present during the shoot, except the flames and the energy beams that were photoshpped in later.
The costuming and makeup for the Kali photograph was so intense that the polaroid's were art on their own. I later blew them up and put them on wood and painted them with black oil paint. The below painting of Serena Jane Dean is one of my favorites and I don't think I will ever part with it.
