Are you old enough to remember Laffing Sal at Playland? In this episode, my guest Alison and I set out to make a marionette based on Laffing Sal, and it was something that neither of us had ever done before.
Photos
Links mentioned in this episode
alisoncowellish Alison's Instagram
Josh Bayer website
Inking class online with Josh Bayer
Musée Mécanique in San Francisco
Playland at the Beach Wikipedia page
Laffing Sal Wikipedia page
The Lonely Goatherd marionette show in The Sound Of Music
Altoid boxes into wallets YouTube video
Barbapapas YouTube video
Boudica Wikipedia page
Sculpey Amazon link
The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin
Jonni Good website
Jonni Good YouTube video
Many Faces of Laffing Sal website by M. Winslow
Playland at the Beach website by M. Winslow
Tillie’s Punctured Romance Wikipedia page
Pseudobulbar affect Wikipedia page
Some of the above links are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission from them
Transcript
Thomas: Welcome to You And I Make a Thing. Joining us in this episode is the multi-talented Alison Cowell, a passionate urban sketcher, zine maker, and sometimes spooky storyteller. A familiar face at local zine fests, Alice is deeply immersed in the art community, constantly exploring and sharing her passion with others.
Alison’s work has graced several local galleries, and her unique art style is a blend of mediums, including ink, watercolor, and colored pencils, each adding a distinct texture and depth to her creations. Alison’s ability to transform ordinary scenes into extraordinary pieces of art is truly remarkable. And you can find her on Instagram at alisoncowellish.
Welcome to the podcast, Alison.
Alison: Thank you, Tom.
Thomas: Alison, before we get started on our You And I Make A Thing quest, I'm curious to know if you are working on a creative project at the moment, or you're looking forward to working on one?
Alison: I am. So right now I have a few projects going on. So my main medium is comics and I’m taking an inking class online, with an artist. A comic artist. His name is Josh Bayer.
And so I'm doing some projects for that class, but they're also sort of my projects and they're really like short format comics, where when I'm working on comics, it's usually I'm doing a story about something that's, kind of an idea that's really kind of out there and wacky.
Thomas: I like that.
Alison: And possibly also slightly tragic. One of the more wacky ones is I sort of have this idea about failed businesses, and that's something that amuses me.
And one of the ideas I came up with was, what if you didn't have enough gravy in a meal, and do you remember those old Fotomat drive throughs where you could drop off your film?
Thomas: I remember.
Alison: So what if there was something like that where you could drive up with your plate and get gravy and it was called Gravymat? So I usually do things that are sort of like these ideas that are a little out there with made up characters, you know, just sort of like these wacky little characters that I create, but I'm doing some more personal stories in this class as well.
And all this work I'm applying the different techniques that Josh Bayer, this teacher is breaking down for us.
Then the other project that I have that is really a little bit of a rabbit hole and you can really kind of spend hours and hours and hours is like, I bought myself a button maker, and I collect paper ephemera, vintage paper, vintage books.
If I see people have cleaned out their kitchen and put all of their old weird pamphlets from, you know, different companies and whatnot from the 60s and 70s, the 50s, those are priceless. and I love the way paper ages. Like it has this yellowishness to it.
Thomas: Mm hmm.
Alison: Really beautiful. It's so hard to buy paper like I've bought paper like that. It's hard to find in a sketchbook. It's usually really expensive.
But anyway, so I have been making buttons out of vintage ephemera and weird, like old comics. And I feel bad I'm cutting things up, right? But, in a way, I guess like I'm giving it new life.
And I'm trying to think of ways to display buttons, you know, people put them on their backpacks and whatnot, but I'm trying to find different ways to present them as sort of like assemblages, like an assemblage of buttons, like on a tote bag or something.
Thomas: Now these buttons, they're the type with the pin on the back?
Alison: Correct.
Thomas: Okay. Got it.
Alison: It's infinitely fun. It's just such instant gratification. I highly recommend a button machine.
Thomas: Well, that's great. Wow. You are doing quite a bit then. With the, exploration of doing comics and stories and buttons. That's fabulous.
Alison: Never enough time, but always trying to, you know, I need that creative outlet.
How about you? What are you working on?
Thomas: Well, I, of course, this podcast, I'm having a lot of fun with this podcast. I'm also right now working and learning block printing.
Alison: Whoa, that is like, okay… disclaimer, that was one of the things on my list, so I'm so sorry.
Thomas: That's all right. We can go there. You know, there's so much to learn. For me, I jumped right away into two color prints. That means that you have to have it registered, and a lot of my prints are not registering quite right, and it gives it kind of a little funky look to it, but I'm learning, I'm really, having a lot of fun with it.
There's just something really, really tactile about creating a design. Like this latest one I actually created in Procreate on my iPad, and then I printed it out on a laser printer and then I transferred it to the linoleum with acetone.
Alison: Okay.
Thomas: Because acetone will loosen all that laser printer ink.
Alison: Oh,
Thomas: And then it's carving and then you spend half a day just, you know, making all these cuts and then the tool goes too far and it's like, “Oh, I wish I didn't do that,” you know, all that.
So it's a very tactile medium. But I'm having a great time with that.
Alison: Wow. Love the look of linocuts and wood cuts. That's so cool.
Thomas: Well, you already mentioned something from your list, but why don't we do this? I know that I've asked you to come up with three things that you might want to do that you haven't done before, and I've come up with three things as well, so why don't we bounce back and forth, and Allison, why don't you go first? Tell me what you have in mind. Mm
Alison: Okay. Well, one of the things that was inspired by this is an idea that I've had but it was further inspired by on Thanksgiving Day, I was down by the wharf. I never go down to Fisherman's Wharf, but I happened to be down there because I was meeting a friend for dinner at North Beach.
And so I was bumbling around, you know, killing time and I stumbled into the Musée Mécanique. Have you been there?
Thomas: Oh, yes, definitely. Ha ha ha.
Alison: Gotta be like the one of my favorite places on earth is just. So incredibly strange and just a way to travel back in time to all of those weird carnival amusement park games from, oh, well, you know, they look like they're from the 50s, 40s.
Thomas: And even earlier.
Alison: Really? Okay. And the encasements for them is just like this gorgeous furniture, you know?
And I've always had this idea about, I love the idea of merchandising, but I get really tired of the way that art in our culture, you know, we have these icons of things that get merchandised, right? Like Disney, Pixar, and it's all so formulated and whatnot.
But like, I was kind of toying with the idea of a fictitious amusement park.
Thomas: Ooh!
Alison: What if you come up with a fictitious amusement park? And then the fictitious characters for it, and then ideas for, I guess not necessarily merchandising, like t-shirts or whatnot, but it is kind of like a funny way to think about it, like…
Thomas: Posters?
Alison: Posters, I guess like figurines, dolls, coffee mugs, whatever, but like not that we would actually make the actual thing.
I mean, I guess we could, but I was just thinking of like, the way these characters get pushed on kids through like cereal and toys and things like that.
Thomas: So you're thinking more of design, basically coming up with a whole like a design catalog or a design portfolio.
Alison: Not like a whole, I guess that, that seems really like so much more than I think I would have the bandwidth for, but maybe even like, I was thinking like two or three characters…
Thomas: Okay.
Alison: …from an amusement park. You know, have a name for the amusement park, a couple of the characters and some of the, I guess, design for it. Yes.
Thomas: That sounds fascinating. And that's, I love that because it's very collaborative too. It's like, okay, let's get together and think about first of all, what is this amusement park about?
Alison: Right, right.
Thomas: I'm going to ask if you have given any thought to Playland at the Beach as a prototype?
Alison: That would be amazing. I love all of Playland, you know, all of the design around the characters and it's just so much like sort of a creepy strangeness to a lot of the place.
Thomas: It was.
Alison: Which I think is just so fascinating. And I just missed, I kind of missed that. I mean, it scared me as a child. I'm sure that Sal the… what was her name? Sal, the…
Thomas: Laffing Sal.
Alison: Laffing Sal. She's obviously terrified, you know, the sign says terrified children for decades, but like, it's just so funny.
Thomas: Well Alison I think this is a wonderful idea and it actually is a great segue into one of my ideas.
Alison: Okay.
Thomas: And it actually is about Laffing Sal.
Alison: What?
Thomas: Yes. I was thinking what if we designed a Laffing Sal marionette?
Alison: What the hell? That would be amazing.
Thomas: You know, I've never made a marionette before, but I've seen them and I've held them.
And, there's a style of marionette that actually has two controls. You know, the simple marionette has like a cross on the top and you can you know go up and down back and forth and then I've seen others that actually have like a separate two handed control. You have one to control like the body and whatever, the head and then maybe the others for the arms and whatnot.
You know what comes to mind is that sequence in The Sound of Music, the Lonely Goatherd, where they get on the stage and they just have that beautiful production. Of course it was made for film, but that was something that would always intrigue me was, it's how to make a marionette puppet, and I was just thinking like Laffing Sal because she is so creepy.
Alison: Yes!
Thomas: There’s a lot that you could do with her. So anyway, that was my first suggestion.
Alison: I love it. I was just, I've been unpacking, you know, because I just moved and I was unpacking some marionettes and, you know, and it's so funny. I love puppets and marionettes and I just, any kind of creepy dolls or anything like that, I just find so interesting.
Thomas: Now, have you ever made a marionette?
Alison: I haven't, I've wanted to make other types of puppets but a marionette, I think it's just, that does scare me. It does intrigue me a lot because it scares me,
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so let's bookmark that and tell me what your second idea is.
Alison: Okay. So the second idea is to make a board game. I really like board game design, especially vintage board games. It's something that I wanted to do and I've like gone on like a Pinterest board game deep dive and there's just so many international board games that are just so the board itself is absolutely gorgeous.
You know there's a lot of like South American Indian games that are just beautiful. And that's always something that I've wanted to do and I've kind of tried to do it, but…
Thomas: Do you already have an idea for, a board game, like a particular style or a particular gameplay?
Alison: I had an idea for one when I was in the park. This was over the pandemic, and I was sketching in the park. Families, everyone was going to the park during the pandemic and there were these little kids running around, these little girls running around and one of them was saying, you guys, let's play poisonous mushroom.
I was thinking like, that would be a great board game, I don't know what it would be about I don't know. Yeah, so that was like one idea I had.
Thomas: I like that. That's a great idea. I'm sure we could come up with a storyline, a narrative, and then build that into a game.
Alison: Yeah. Or we could do like a Playland themed, a Laffing Sal game.
Thomas: That's true. All right.
Well, my second idea is to make a cabinet of curiosities, but to make it as an assemblage, actually to make it as a series of what I call mini box assemblages. So you're familiar with box assemblages, Joseph Cornell style?
Alison: Yes.
Thomas:. There's actually a number of people that I follow on YouTube that make little mini box assemblages. What they do is they use like the little white cardboard boxes you get jewelry in. Or, maybe little larger boxes that you get your iPhone in. You know, that size of box.
And, this is something that I've always been wanting to do, but it occurred to me that it would be fun not to just have one, but to have several of them. We could collaborate on this, make several of them, and make like a cabinet of curiosities, where each box has something weird and strange in it, and the whole collection, you know, on the wall would be a very strange piece to behold.
Alison: I like that.
Thomas: Yeah.
Alison: That sounds fun. I love whenever I have an art block, I like to do collage zines where I just, you know, take paper ephemera and different pieces of paper and just make up a, you know, kind of a surrealist collage that fits into the zine frame so that when you photocopy the paper and fold it, you have got like this weird sort of collage story.
Thomas: hmm.
Alison: But yeah, box assemblage is kind of like the 3D version of that. And I've seen, you know, there's this whole trend right now, doing it with Altoid boxes.
Thomas: Oh, right. Yeah.
Alison: Yeah, and people are making Altoid boxes into wallets. But, you know, but they're also making them into little 3D box displays.
Thomas: Yeah. What I love about box assemblages is that this thing that you have inside is sort of captured, right? Because it's in a box. It's sort of, there's an element to being captured inside, especially if you add other little things like pill boxes or test tubes or whatever it is that you might come up with.
Alison: Right.
Thomas: All right, what's your, what's your third item?
Alison: So the third item was another design idea, but I guess, the medium could be anything, in any kind of medium, but to rebrand a major brand or icon.
Thomas: Mm hmm.
Alison: So, you know, I love the idea of failed businesses and a failed marketing strategies. You know, and to just take something, I guess…
Thomas: Like, what would Blockbuster be in today's world?
Alison: Right, exactly. Oh, I still have my Blockbuster card.
Thomas: Uh huh.
Alison: Or something like Nike or Coca Cola. Or here's another thing that like, you know, the way the design of automobiles is so ugly nowadays, right?
Thomas: Mm hmm.
Alison: What if, you know, there was this whole push to make cars like cuter?
Thomas: Mm hmm.
Alison: I think a lot of road rage has to do with the design of cars. Because I think that as a highly sensitive person, this is something that I feel. You know, one of the things I say about highly sensitive people is that you can sometimes detect what is a trigger, like, it could be the lighting, or you can figure out what is causing there to be a block or causing tension or pain point like you can find that quickly as that's like one of your, I don't know, superpowers.
And I feel like a lot of road rage is because cars they have this sort of like toxic, like they all look like these angry sort of militaristic. They're all like these blah colors, but what if they were like cuter or more fun or more friendly or like, I don't know.
I'm thinking of like, what's coming to mind. Like, do you remember the Barbapapas?
Thomas: Uh huh.
Alison: How they would like turn into different, like, you know, furniture and stuff like that.You know, it could be something like that, an idea of like redesigning some icon of society or a brand.
Thomas: I totally get it. I love your ideas. These are all, such creative ideas.
And, I could definitely go with any one of these. I have my third idea. Why don't I say my third idea and then we can start picking from the ideas.
Alison: Okay.
Thomas: My third idea is sort of vaguely in the same vein of your design idea, but what I was thinking is to make a series of posters, could be a series of four posters, and make them of postage stamps, specifically the forever stamp.
Because what I'd love to do is I would love to have a stamp with the Sunset District, and I live in the Sunset District, and Alison, do you live in the Sunset, or do you live?
Alison: Uh, my heart is in the Sunset, but I now live in Cole Valley.
Thomas: Which is very close. So, for our listeners, the Sunset District is on the west side of San Francisco. It adjoins the beach and Golden Gate Park. And it's a quiet neighborhood, but it has a lot of heart. It has a lot of artists here.
And, I was thinking it would be fun to have an urban sketch of the Sunset, and it would say Sunset District Forever. Because it's a forever stamp.
Alison: Oh, cool. Yes.
Thomas: And have the Inner Sunset Forever, and the Outer Sunset Forever, and, I don't know, Parkside or Richmond or Golden Gate Park Forever. But essentially create four of them so that it's a sort of a traditional four stamp set. And that was my idea, it would be poster size, so maybe the four stamps all together might be 16 by 20 inches or something like that.
Alison: Oh, I love that.
Thomas: Yeah. And that would definitely be something that we could collaborate on in terms of you could take a couple stamps, I could take a couple stamps, we could come up with ideas of what, to show, what to draw, whatever.
Alison: Right,
Thomas: It's a little bit similar to your design idea about rebranding. And in this case, it would be a brand, not rebranding, but it would be branding our beloved neighborhood in terms of some postage stamps.
Alison: Yes, it would be so cool if we could do them as a screen print or something.
Thomas: Yeah, that would be great. Well, Alison, we have six ideas in front of us. Do you have any feelings as to which one gave you a lot of energy?
Alison: I have to say, I think the stuff when we were talking about Playland and Laffing Sal, and like making a marionette, that was I think really exciting.
Thomas: I agree. I think that would be a fantastic project, because there's a lot to it, right? There's the face and the hands and then there's the clothes part and then the actual part itself, the strings and whatnot. So there would be a lot for both of us to work on together.
Alison: I know, but that kind of scares me though, also about I don't know how to sew. Do you?
Thomas: I do know how to sew.
Alison: You do.
Thomas: Yes.
Alison: Wow. Okay. Awesome.
Thomas: We have many sewing machines here.
Alison: Wow. So do you, do you make garments?
Thomas: I've made costumes.
Alison: Hmm.
Thomas: So, my skill level isn't that good, but it's good enough. I mean, I can sew from a pattern if need be.
Alison: That's impressive.
Thomas: And I know where to get help if I need to get help. I can call a friend, let's put it that way.
Alison: And you have an in-house expertise.
Thomas: Yes.
Alison: Nice. Right?
Thomas: The other ideas are fabulous too. I mean, the merchandising thing and doing a board game. I would love to do that too. The forever stamps that's definitely something that I might (do on my own) but I like this idea, Alison.
Let's go ahead and do that. I was so surprised that you actually mentioned Laffing Sal
Alison: Oh, I know, that's so funny.
Thomas: Because it's right here on my list, and I thought, you mentioned Laffing Sal. How can that happen? But, of course, Laffing Sal is one of the featured pieces at the Musée Mécanique and, for our listeners, I will put a link to both the museum and also to the Laffing Sal page, because Laffing Sal was actually an animatronic that was made and distributed all over the U.S. to various amusement parks.
Alison: So I had no idea that Laughing Sal, had, like, all these, replicates all around the country. She seems to have a maritime basis in some fashion, just based on her attire. I don't know if you know more about the design of the character and why she I mean she looks like she's very red faced, like she looks very hearty and very strong, kind of like a Boudica character.
Like that was the thing, a lot of those games at the Musée Mécanique, they all are like poking fun, like, “Ha ha, everyone's drunk! She looks like she's had a bit too much to drink!” You know?
Thomas: Could be. And is she wearing stripes, or a striped pattern?
Alison: I think so.
Thomas: Yeah, I have to look her up, now that we are talking about this. I'm going to have to go look her up. And for our listeners, I'll put a link to what I find.
But Allison, I think we have our idea!
Alison: Okay, it's so exciting, I'm so excited about it!
Thomas: In just a moment, we'll be back with the second part of you. And I make a thing.
Thomas: Well, Alison, welcome back to You And I Make A Thing. And I have to say, I am just so, so impressed what we came up with. What do you think?
Alison: I am too. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Thomas: Let's describe what we have made. And for our listeners, there will be plenty of pictures in the show notes. But I do want to describe it the best that I can if you don't have a chance to get to the show notes right away.
So we made a marionette of Laffing Sal, and it stands about 25 inches tall. Laffing Sal has this, this sort of, um, how would you say it, Alison, sort of an ebullient face, this amazing look about her, a curly mop of sort of Auburn red hair.
And a sort of a tan hat. Her jacket is Navy blue, and below that underneath, she has a red and white striped blouse, and that's sort of covered with a lace cravat.
And then, her hands, she has a red fingernail polish, she has sort of a cream colored skirt and red shoes.
How else would you describe what she looks like Alison?
Alison: I would say that, she's has a very rosy complexion and her expression is one of excitement and a huge open mouth, and a grin with a missing front tooth.
Thomas: Classic Laffing Sal always had a missing tooth.
Alison: Yes, she has a double chin.
Even though the actual model of her is, I think it was about six foot 10 when I looked up in research, she's still the proportions of the actual mannequin. And I think what we captured in ours is that she has a stockier build.
Thomas: And I have to say, when we finally strung her up, which was sort of the last thing we did. We added the strings and then held her up and she really came to life.
Alison: She did! I was surprised by that more so than I thought it would.
Thomas: Well there's something about hanging on a string too, is that it's always in motion. Like it's not still, like a doll or anything like that. I mean definitely the arms are going back and forth.
And I figured out that you can sort of tilt the control bar so that the head would go back and forth. And she'd even did a sort of a shimmy, you know, if I dropped her a little bit, her knees would bend and she was doing a shimmy.
So it was just amazing to actually see her in action once we had, put her all together.
Alison: I think that her hair was so lifelike too. That definitely I think contributed to it. But yeah, absolutely. All of the joints that you put into the armature really made her come to life.
Thomas: The hair was a doll wig, is that right?
Alison: Correct.
Thomas: Yeah, I think it really made her come to life. Because there was a moment there before we had put the wig on where it was just her. And it's like, oh, okay, this looks interesting.
And then we put the wig on, it's like, okay, yeah, that's Laffing Sal, definitely!
Alison: Definitely.
Thomas: So I should say that we took quite a while to build it all.
It was built in parts. You worked on the head and the hands, and then I worked on the armature and the clothes.
And we had a meeting where we got together and we made notes and figured out sort of the dimensions of the things.
And then we went off our separate ways for a while and did our builds. And of course we were sending pictures back and forth. And then last weekend we got together and actually put it all together.
So tell me about how it felt to be making the parts and then also how it felt last weekend to actually put it all together.
Alison: I guess making the parts was a lot more time consuming or a lot more work, especially with sculpting the head, because I've never really sculpted a head before.
And there were a lot of surprises there and a lot of the adjustments, especially in sculpting a head where I'm trying to… I mean, I can easily draw a person's face, but sculpting it was totally different. So that actually took, probably almost about 40 hours to do.
And even though I'm not happy with the results a hundred percent. I mean, I guess as far as a beginner, it's like fine, but I'm like, wow, this is a huge learning curve.
And then the hands were actually, you know, that was a trial and error with paper mâché. The trial and error part was the most time consuming and figuring out what to paper mâché onto.
And painting the face and then making the little hat. All of that felt like it was a lot of trial and error and then figuring it out.
So I guess I thought maybe stringing it together was going to be the same, but stringing it together and you know, I so appreciate your engineering background I think came into so much into play with this, but I felt like it was so easy to put it together. Right? Compared to doing the parts.
Thomas: Yeah, I think the planning step that we did in the beginning actually helped that. I think that was good.
You were mentioning sculpting the head and then also doing the hands. And for the head you used Sculpey, right?
Alison: Well I made a foil, a tin foil base, and then I just put Sculpey around that.
Thomas: And so how was that different from the papier mâché?
Alison: The paper mâché, I basically, traced my hand with floral wire. So I made like an outline of my hand with floral wire.
And then I made a sculpture of tinfoil using the floral wire as sort of the framework. And then I covered the tinfoil in masking tape, and then I paper mâchéd it.
Thomas: For me, so I was doing two things. I made the armature, for which I had to figure a few things out in terms of what sizes to use and how to get the legs to do sort of the appropriate thing on the hips and stuff like that.
I actually went through two iterations of it, taking a jigsaw and sawing some pieces out. Once I sort of got the size right, then that was pretty easy to put together.
The more difficult part for me was sewing the jacket. And that's because I didn't know at all where to find a pattern for a jacket. So I went online and I just started Googling patterns for jackets.
And then the question is like, what type of jacket? So, you know, I finally found a type of jacket that looked like it worked, but then, you know, patterns aren't free online. But I went to Google Images and I found something where I could look at the pattern and say, okay, this sort of makes sense.
Then I did a couple of iterations of where I drew a pattern and cut it out and then taped it together to sort of get a rough idea of whether it had the right shapes and all that. I like to work with paper in that way, so that, that was helpful.
And then, oh, the sewing part, I can talk about that. You know part of being a beginner is encountering roadblocks. And for me, this was a big, big roadblock. It was, it was all internal because, you know, in the first half of this episode, I had sort of confidently said, “Oh yeah, I've sewed before.”
I've sewed from a pattern. Well, here I didn't have a pattern. I had to make my own pattern and it's probably been like 30 years since I've sewed anything on a sewing machine.
And I'm pretty sure that the sewing machine was set up for me. So all I had to do was put the foot down and hit the accelerator and go.
And this time I just felt… because I think I also mentioned in the first half of this episode that I live with a couple of people who are sewing all the time. They know what to do. So I felt a lot of imposter syndrome.
I mean, I felt this resistance for a couple of weeks where I couldn't even think about it. I was just so tied up in knots.
I remembered this book that I read by Seth Godin, it's called The Icarus Deception. And he talks a lot about resistance. Godin says that the trick to resistance is to dance with it, to just recognize that it's a partner.
And it never feels like that, right? Resistance doesn't feel like a partner. But his point is to always sort of go toward the resistance and figure out a way to dance with it.
So I kind of remembered that and I thought, okay, I just have to do this. And my wife was very gracious. She just let me take out her sewing machine and I opened up the manual. And she has a Brother sewing machine.
And the manual is surprisingly good. I mean, it actually is very clear like this. You have to do this. This is how you spool thread on a bobbin. And this is how you thread the thread through all the crazy, things that has to go through to get to the needle and all that kind of stuff.
And I figured it out and I was actually sewing, you know, so I was really happy at that point, but, boy, did I feel lots and lots of resistance.
Alison: Yeah. I'm so impressed that you made a pattern for a doll basically, and then sewed it and it looks incredible.
Thomas: Well, thank you. I really struggled with the lapel part.
Alison: That's the hardest part.
Thomas: Because the lapel is folded over and so you have to sew it on the other side. You know, I sewed it wrong a couple times. I had to take the ripper and rip out the thread and try again and all that.
I was going to ask, do you experience roadblocks like that too when you're starting something new?
Alison: Yeah, all the time. Yes, all the time.
Thomas: Was there a specific roadblock that you, encountered when you were doing the head or the hands?
Alison: Yeah, the head was pretty difficult in terms of, I kept coming at it as somebody who works on paper doing sketching. I guess in sketching you can convey so much information with so much little output.
But with sculpting, even though I was trying to follow using the actual Laffing Sal photos, I was really trying to follow those and I kept finding that I'd spend a lot of time on it.
I would adjust, especially the mouth was very hard. I remember I sent you a photo and you and I think you said like make the chin a little less protruding or a little more protruding and it seemed like every time I made an adjustment in one part of the face, it was kind of like mushing around other parts of the face.
And she has such an unusual face you know, she has like a very heavy brow, she has an upturned nose, she has very full cheeks.
So these are things that all really need to be conveyed. I think it was probably ambitious for a first time sculptor, especially like the teeth also were difficult, getting them to be attached to the upper lip.
Thomas: Oh, right.
Alison: That was tricky. I think another harder part of it, though, was I ran out of Sculpey. I had to buy more. I having never done this, you know, you don't know, how much material you need or what.
And then I guess the same with painting it. I mean, I've worked with acrylics a little bit. So I understand how they dried so quickly and stuff, but it's been a while.
And, I just kind of didn't estimate the amount of paint I would need, and I think And clay is so dry that it uses a lot of paint.
Thomas: Oh, it absorbs the paint really fast.
Alison: Yeah, I think to just get any kind of color that's far enough away from the color of the Sculpey, you kind of need to use a few layers.
So the painting took a long time, especially getting the lips painted correctly and the teeth and, the details around her eyes. I mean, I kept those kind of minimal because I didn't want her to look… I mean, I know she looks like a clown, but I wanted her to look like a person who's clownish versus like a, don't know, like a fake clown.
Thomas: That's true. She doesn't look fake. I mean, she looks real.
Alison: She's a real person.
Thomas: When we strung her up and started moving her, it's like, oh wow. there's definitely some realism here.
Alison: Yeah, for sure. And then I had a roadblock also with the paper mâché because I hadn't done that for years. And I did some YouTube videos and was looking up different recipes because I couldn't find that material that you had.
Thomas: Mm hmm.
Alison: And I bought some Elmer's glue and I tried doing glue and water mixture. And, I used the wrong paper. I used like tissue paper, that you use for wrapping gifts and stuff.
Thomas: Right. Right.
Alison: And that was a mistake. I ended up making something and it looked all right, but it was just a soggy mess and it took forever to dry.
And then when I was looking at a bunch of videos online of this woman who makes these incredible masks and sculptures out of paper mâché and she was just using flour and water and I was like, all right, and it really works.
Thomas: Is that Johnny? Johnny, I forget what her last name is. (Thomas ius referring to Jonni Good – Ed.) Yeah, she's fabulous. I'll put a link in the show notes to some of her videos.
Alison: Yeah, she was incredibly helpful in how she explained things. And so, yeah, once I got going with her, I was like, “Okay, I can do this.”
Thomas: Yeah. Gosh, YouTube is such a great resource for learning any of this.
Alison: Yeah, it's so true. We are in such a different age for creators.
Thomas: And that's why I think it's worth this type of thing where we're trying to make something that we've never made before, because I think there's a lot of support now, in the sense of tutorials and things like that we can access.
Alison: Absolutely!
And materials, just being able to get a pound of Sculpey, you know, delivered to your apartment.
Thomas: Well, that's true too.
Alison: And now where I live, I go to my grocery store at Gus' and it has Mendels next to it so I could get my groceries and get some more acrylic paint.
Thomas: Nice. You know, I wanted to say that we chose a subject in Laffing Sal that was emotional and nostalgic, would you agree?
Alison: Mm-Hmm. Absolutely.
Thomas: There's just something emotional for me because I remember Laffing Sal at Playland at the Beach.
Of course, I remember being frightened by her because originally she was in this display case that's way above you, and she's six foot ten, and she's moving back and forth and laughing. It can be pretty frightening especially when you're a little kid looking up.
And you know, she's still around, right? She's still at the Musée Mécanique and you can go in and take a look, and they've done a wonderful job preserving her
And then there's just the nostalgic part of it, of being a part of San Francisco history. Even though Laffing Sal was built for many other amusement parks around the country, at least in San Francisco, when you say Laffing Sal, she's associated with Playland at the Beach.
Alison: Right. I was doing a little research on her as I was getting into the project and. definitely there's the nostalgic aspect, with Playland at the Beach no longer, and sort of all of those amusement parks of that era from like the 20s, that predated Disney World or Disneyland, those are all kind of gone now.
And she was this character, Laffing Sal, and was a staple at those types of things.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.
Alison: As a call out to the fun houses.
Thomas: Mm hmm. You mentioned in the first part of the episode that you were taking an inking class and later you showed me that you were actually working on a Laffing Sal comic. How's that going along?
Alison: It's good, I've just been inspired by the part of her character that I've created. What I find so interesting is that first of all, why was this character considered funny at the time?
And then also, why was it all so scary and what was the comic angle about the history of this character and what were the social and cultural influences that might have been behind it?
I mean, there's not a lot of information out there. There's some really good websites. One of them is called the Many Faces of Laffing Sal, it's part of the Playland at the Beach website, it has a lot of history about Playland.
They talk about how there were several different models of Laffing Sal, and the one that we did our marionette of apparently was never actually at Playland. It was in storage apparently as a backup.
Thomas: I didn't know that.
Alison: Yeah. So it was in storage as a backup that was never used. And then it was found later. It was in pristine condition. The other ones were somewhat similar clothing and stuff, but her hair was a little different and her features were a little bit more cartoony. The one I think, if you can believe it, the one at Musée Mécanique is a little more refined.
But so what was interesting, I did kind of this dive knowing that she was created in 1925, by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company that made mostly like amusement park rides, like roller coasters and things.
Thomas: Right.
Alison: And around that time, that was really when I think this character kind of came out of the culture of vaudeville. So I started looking into vaudeville and then into like older silent film characters and ask, where would a character like this come from?
Thomas: Right. Right.
Alison: And there were a lot of themes around like how a country bumpkin in the city is funny. If she's kind of clumsy. There was a particular film called, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, which was very kind of Laffing Sal-esque,
Thomas: Oh, okay.
Alison: Where this woman who's like a kind of a country bumpkin, and she's going to the city, and she's just kind of the butt of the joke, right?
And also the laughter, the uncontrollable laughter, the thing that's so creepy about that is, I was looking into that also, and that's very similar to like the character of the Joker. The uncontrollable laughter is insanity.
Thomas: Uh huh.
Alison: And also her missing tooth, you know, just kind of like conveying like, oh, it's so funny that like she's unkempt, or she has this deficit.
And then the laughter is actually, I was looking it up. It's called the pseudobulbar affect in psychology. It's a condition that's associated with a lot of neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's.
And so, you know, it's kind of a really strange thing to make into comedy.
Thomas: In those years, it was, they did that, and we don't do that anymore, thank goodness. But that was part of that era of how they viewed the world, basically, and how they viewed people.
Alison: Exactly. And I guess it's also sort of the type of thing, it was obviously something that was very scary when that happened to someone, and so, you know, there's a fine line between what scares people and what you can get people to laugh at, because a lot of times when people see something they don't understand, they laugh.
Anyway, that's kind of probably a little more about Laffing Sal than you wanted to know, but yeah.
Thomas: That's great. I'm inspired that you are doing all this research and that that's going to go into your comic.
Alison: Oh, thanks.
Thomas: I can’t wait to see it.
Alison: Yeah, thanks. I'm having fun with it.
Thomas: So, last question is what did you learn about yourself In this whole project?
Alison: I guess I learned that it's important to try new things and to, you know, it's hard enough to be able to make time to do art when you have the medium that you typically work in,
Thomas: Mm hmm.
Alison: But it's important to, especially as adults, you know, as kids, we say to kids, make art, do a project, do this, make an art project.
And as adults, why do we stop doing that?
Because it's so important, it's so fulfilling, and there's so much discovery involved, in terms of like, like what you said, like how to lean into resistance, and that is such a life lesson. So yeah, I guess it's just to make more things.
Thomas: And for me, I just keep learning again and again with this podcast and with all these projects that, I'm getting used to the idea of being persistent. Because sometimes it's hard to do that.
Sometimes it's like, you start something and it's like, “Oh, okay, this is a little harder than I thought it would be. Let me, let me go to what's comfortable.”
You know, because I've done that a lot and so what I'm learning is that I can really lean into learning something new as long as I stay committed and stay persistent and keep at it, I'll get through it. Even with all the emotions that come up. Because, boy, did this project bring up a lot of emotions for me.
Alison: Well, I want to hear, I want to hear about more what else came up.
Thomas: Just the real imposter syndrome around doing the sewing. That was very, very emotional for me. and I didn't expect that, you know.
And I think you heard that in the first part of this episode where I said, “Oh yeah, I've done sewing before.” And well, actually, the last time I did sewing, no, that was set up for me.
So here I did it all by myself and I'm happy with that.
There were a few things that came up where I had to ask like, “Okay, what am I doing here? Why am I getting four threads instead of two threads coming out?”
You know, when you're done sewing and you pull it out and it's like, “Well, how did this extra loop get in there?” That sort of thing. I still haven't quite figured that one out.
And also, so I didn't say this to you, Allison, but I also felt like I was perpetually behind.
Alison: Oh god, no. That was me.
Thomas: Well, I know you mentioned that a couple of times and I'm thinking, but I'm more behind than you are, which is, I know it's not true, but isn't that funny how when you're in partnership, when you're in collaborating with someone, you feel that sense of urgency, you feel that sense of responsibility and it's all good. Right?
Alison: Right,
Thomas: That's the way it should be, but you know, we're talking about the emotional part of it. I was also just feeling like, oh, I'm dragging this one out.
Alison: Oh god, that's how I felt. Because I feel like I'm always the slow poke. I must be driving him crazy.
Thomas: No, no, you weren't. There was a moment where, I forget what you said, you had texted me and said, you know, this is how far I've gotten with this piece. And I was going, “Oh, good!” I'm glad that I'm not the only one, you know, I guess what I can say is just learning to trust yourself and trust your own abilities. Does that make sense?
Alison: Yeah, for sure.
Thomas: You know?
Well, Alison, thank you so much for this project. It turned out so much better than I thought it would turn out. It's amazing what it looks like and I'm also just looking forward to letting people see what we made.
So thank you!
Alison: Thank you, Tom. Thanks for inviting me on this adventure. It's been so fun and it's just opened up this whole new creative world and I really appreciate it.
