“Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste at all.” – Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
1961-62: My last year of high school was an intense period of attempting to peer into the future, wondering what I was actually going to do when I grew up. Maybe there was a future for me as a beautician? How about working as a movie stylist?
Both these considerations and more seemed to be given life in my drawings of the time. Looking now at the faceless drawings above, with the focus solely on hair, reminds me that among the life occupations considered at that time was becoming a beautician with a mission.
Pondering the teenage question “what do I want to do for the rest of my life?” I was drawn to the idea of specializing in make overs – turning girlfriends who might be considered ‘ugly ducklings’ into gorgeous women, through the power of makeup, hair, clothes, and of course attitude.
In a way it was like saying: ‘since I’m not a beautiful girl myself, at least i can help those I envy to be even more attractive through the power of artifice.’ With those feelings as a psychological basis for career choice, it’s probably better that I didn’t opt for a life of make-overs.
The drawings in today’s post are anomalies among the drawings produced while I was a teenager: pages of just hairstyles, or all frontal faces, or details grouped together with small full figures on a single page. Each possesses a unique point of view. The two drawings directly above – vertical and horizontal – are the front and verso of a single 8-1/2″ x 11″ sheet. Apparently paper must have been at a premium that day!
John M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea was the one-act tragedy that I participated in senior year along with classmates Arel Dolby, Tom Brady, (Mrs. Pauline Fournier, our English teacher and coach in the middle), Joanne Hobbs, and Susan Willey in the front row; Cathy Roberts, myself, Brian Anderson, Mike Cyr, and Maxine Lord, back row. The subject matter of the play was extremely grim, but our small cast was looking anything but for the yearbook photo.
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