You May Eat Confectioneries

Growing up as a child that was not allowed to celebrate Halloween, the last day of October has become a source of joy, a part of my identity, and a constant opportunity for growth and exploration in my adulthood.

I started teaching art ten years ago at an elementary school in my home town. The term “home town” is a bit grasping. I lost track of how many times we moved after attending my fifth primary school but I could make a friend and pack a suitcase well. Our nomadic lifestyle halted when my father switched professions, to the field of education. Roots for the first time began to form and solidify. Fast forward, post college, I’m teaching 700 children between the ages of prekindergarten and sixth grade. The range of diapers to middle school hormones was a special kind of hell. It was the kind of job you can only tolerate in early twenties. I constantly had to organize multiple fundraisers at a time to avoid the judgement and denial of begging the office for pencils. It was determined that my planning time wasn’t equitable with classroom teachers encumbered by a whopping 25 students. This led to being forced to teach fourth grade reading and writing during my planning periods. I was dirty towel, wrung out for every drop I was worth. It took three and a half years find my professional self-worth and a better fitting opportunity. To cope with the steady decline of my happiness, I became very spirited on any sort of theme day or holiday. Oh, we’re learning about Surrealism? Let me just become Norman Rockwell’s “Son of Man.” It’s Tuesday? Sounds like a perfect excuse for a dress, heels, pearls and painted crawling cockroaches all over my body. There was a week where I progressively built a bird’s nest in my hair. My Halloweens progressed from exclusion to multiple concepts and facial paint illusions. While I do have reoccurring nightmares when I’m stressed that a magician has tricked me into having my old job back, my creativity flourished in those chapters.

I found that working high school students is far more palatable. They can sit in chairs and skill level can be astounding. It’s a fair trade off for a little attitude a few times a week. My preferred mediums are drawing and painting. I completed many pieces in the last decade, but it’s no contest that face painting is my favorite art form. I love that the turn around to reaching completion is in a matter of hours. You have a few hours to enjoy it and then it disappears leaving you with memories, photographs and compliments. It’s a savored experience. It’s beyond décor.

I met my husband because of face paint. Having the messiest year of my love life to date, I found joy in sorrow through paint. I became Cruella Deville morphing my head in her pointy, squared, cartoon shaped head. He could have talked to a slew of eligible women but my illusion makeup opened the door. Our first date was a blind date for him due to my art. I love showing the picture of how we met as people squint trying to figure out where my real facial features are. After falling in love and painting someone else’s face in my Octobers, we got married, in a pandemic.

It’s not the right time to ask my opinions of teaching. I desire to look for the light that can exist beyond the dark cloud that is 2020. Without complaining too much, I will divulge that I do long for the days that I thought teaching elementary was terrible. While I think most experience varying degrees misery in constant crisis, it is absolutely amazing that we were able to get married. After posting some wedding photos, I received a few comments that I looked like Marie Antoinette. My complexion looks sickly in the color white so that hue was never humored. I wore a gigantic, sparkly, rose gold ball gown. I wanted to the opportunity to paint my face while in my wedding dress. My mother in law knew to mention early on in the engagement that it wasn’t in her vision to have a of sort of creature I dreamt up, walking down the aisle to marry her son. After receiving the social media comments of my Marie doppelganger, it came to me that I had to depict myself as the corpse of Marie Antoinette in my wedding dress. Photographed you will see my interpretation of Marie, yes, weeks after the wedding.