Jamming with Mark Reid

For those of you not familiar with the who's who of Face and Body Painting, Mark Reid is one of the best. He's won or placed very highly in the World Body Painting Competition each time he's attended, and he's a sought after instructor at all of the conventions. He's also a great guy and a good friend of mine. He was in Columbus early this year for a class and we got together with a few other painters and had a "jam". I was thrilled with my body painting that day, and even happier when I saw this picture that he sent me of our two models together.

Mine has the red orchids and Mark's has the purple irises. Can you tell where the two women meet?

The World Body Painting Competition 2009 -My Second

Boy oh Boy! Was this year different! Remy and I had quite a trip.

Remy had been studying abroad in Prague (fiction writing) for 5 weeks, so he met me in Venice when that was done, to join me on a cruise where I was hired to be the onboard face painter. We had a marvelous time being together while cruising the Adriatic and Aegean. This is me in Dubrovnik Croatia, and Remy in Santorini Greece.

After the cruise we lugged our stuff through Northern Italy, staying a few days in Padua and Verona, and then into Austria. We were so excited to see all of our friends whom we'd met the year before!

But, this is when it got tense. I had decided to mail a package to Clarissa who was modeling for us again this year, and after hours and hours of dealing with Austrian import department, and paying them an exorbitant fee for my own belongings, I finally got my paints and headdress stuff the day before our competition! I want to thank Mehron and Wolfe FX for helping me out in my time of need!

On the day of the Semi-Pro competition, it was very cold and raining, and the festival grounds had lost power, so it was near impossible for many of the competitors to work, because the airbrush and special effects entrants needed power, and because that is cruel punishment for naked models! There was a lot of discussion going on about what to do, and our start time was delayed several times. In the end, the artist sharing a tent with me found a kerosene heater which helped us and our models immensely.

I had written out a big sheet of paper with a break down of what elements of the painting we were going to do in each half hour block of our 6 hour time frame..... when we got to the fifth hour, we found out that they had cut our time by an hour! We had never heard! Our neighbors knew because it had been announced in German, but not in English. Oh! How upsetting! We decided to plug on through, and finish our design and take our punches as they came for going over the alotted time.

The theme this year was poetry, and we settled on using Beatles Lyrics as our inspiration. Once again Clarissa really came through for us. Once she got back the use of her limbs (after standing still in the cold and wet for 6 hours she was a little stiff!) she was wonderful in the photography area, doing some wonderful movement and yoga poses to show off our painting. There was so much wonderful art this year, definitely steeper competition for us, and we placed as number 11 this year, much to our satisfaction.

The World Body Painting Competition -My First

Every July, the little town of Seeboden, which is nestled against a lake in the Austrian Alps, is descended upon by thousands of body painters and appreciative gawkers for the World Body Painting Festival. In 2008, I decided to go. I had never painted a body before, only some limited exposure to face painting and theatrical makeup, but because of my henna business, and my art background, I was not unaccustomed to paint, or to working with the human body.


I entered into the Semi-Pro category, with my son, Remy, as my assistant. We met our model when we arrived the morning we were to paint, the lovely Clarissa, who is a student at Klagenfurt University, a nearby town to Seeboden. The theme was "Science: a World of Wonders", so we decided to paint the power of the earth, and did a Volcano/Tsunami scene, and transformed our model into Pele, the Hawaiian Volcano Goddess.

We were so excited with our painting, and with the wonderful feedback we got from everyone watching. Clarissa was so exuberant, and into her character of Pele, her energy was terrific! We ended up in 13th place, and with a marvelous experience. One that got me hooked on Body Painting!