Carousel 36- Johnny Cake Faces Completed

Well, completed but not yet adhered to the carousel housing.  I worked all day trying to get the faces completed.  It took longer than I expected for being as small as they are.  Actually, it was the small size of the faces that was part of the reason for it taking so long.  Each face is only an inch and three quarters in diameter.  They were hard to keep in place while I was painting.  Some of the time I messed up what had already been painted and had to go back and repair something I thought was finished.

My old nemesis of getting the eyes in the right position came back.  On a couple of the faces I had to repaint the flesh tones and start over.   Another problem I ran into was that the features had a distinctly feminine cast to them.  I had to repaint some of the faces to make them more masculine looking.  I had to resort to adding beards and mustaches to emphasize that some of the faces were male.  I really had not intended to have a full beard on one of the faces, it happened because I could not get a smaller beard to come out right.  A little too much on one side, a little to much on the other side trying to correct the problem.  Then the other side needed to be evened up, etc.  I finally had to decide whether to have a full beard or repaint the whole face again.  I chose the beard because I had been working at the faces all day.  It wasn't exactly what I intended, but I'll consider it a happy accident.

As I had mentioned in previous blog posts, the inspiration for having the faces on the carousel was an antique Johnny Cake face that belonged to my mother.  None of the pieces looks exactly as I remember it.  My mother no longer has the piece, so there is no going back to check now.  As far as I know, we don't even have a photograph of it.  It is just a part of my childhood that has stayed in memory. 

Another inspiration for these faces was a ride and some of the amusements and decorations at the Ocean View Amusement Park in Norfolk, VA.  The amusement park was torn down years ago.  I used to go there both as a child and as a teenager.  The amusement park had rides that were probably from the 1950s because they were old and worn in the 1960s and 1970s.   I remember that some of the decorations had over sized heads with big eyes and leering, lascivious grins.  Some of the amusements, such as the fortune teller, were mechanized.  For a quarter or perhaps it was fifty cents, you could have your fortune read by an automaton.  As a kid, I used to think the expressions were really creepy.

The faces also appeared in a boat ride.  I think its name was the Tunnel of Fun, but most people referred to it as the the Tunnel of Love.  (Norfolk is a navy town, [city actually] sailors took their girlfriends [or ladies of the evening] and used the darkness to...well you get the picture.)  The boat ride started outside at an entry gate.  The swift current rapidly took you into a tunnel in complete darkness.  I can still remember the dank smell of brackish water and wet concrete; and the sound and feel of the boat bumping into the concrete walls.  (The sign saying "Keep your hands inside the boat" was not just a suggestion.  Holding onto the side of the boat might have caused injuries to your fingers.)  In the dark, you never knew what was coming next.  Every once in a while lights would flash on and grinning devil, skeleton, or eerie tableau would be illuminated while amplified shrieks filled the air. I remember it as being a really scary ride.  It was very similar to the haunted houses that are around today, but because it was done in complete darkness and in water, it made
people feel very much out of their element.  Probably the ride was not all that long, but it seemed to go on forever, as the boat went bumping along in the darkness. 

Anyway, the carnival faces from years ago have influenced my faces for the carousel.  Many of the old carnival canvas paintings had very suggestive overtones.  I have tried to reproduce that element of the past into the faces on the carousel.  The plaques will be placed on the carousel tomorrow.

I also tried some embellishment on the roof of the carousel, but I did not care for it.  I used a hole punch to punch out circles of prismatic paper to put on the roof.  I had hoped it would sparkle like lights on a carousel.  The problem was that it was too much sparkle.  I moved your eye from the menagerie animals to the roof as the main feature.  I decided that it was just too much.  It may have worked if I could have cut the pieces smaller, but there is only so much I can do when working in such a small scale.  I'm thinking that I will leave the roof just as it is.  Once the Johnny Cake faces are glued to the housing, it will be time to attach the roof and call the project finished.