CETERA
MARIE ANTOINETTE: CREATIVE INGENUITY AT ITS BEST If you were lucky enough to get to The Next Cool Event in February, you could not have missed Paris on Ponce’s exhibit of Marie Antoinette. And like the many people who were buzzing around this exhibit, you may have asked yourself, “How the heck did they do that?” The answer to this is long hours, crafty hands and a little help from friends! The goal of sourcing the right materials was a little like the items sold at Paris on Ponce, that unique bohemian shopping and prop rental shop in the heart of midtown - reused, renewed and inexpensive. The team of designers consisted of Skip Engelbrecht, Nicolette Valdespino, John Gibson, and Sonja Schenke of Paris on Ponce and Nancy Couture, co-owner of Knot Couture, an alternative wedding dress design company, along with a cadre of volunteers. They created an extravagant character from history made completely out of paper. Their challenge was to make complete opulence out of the most ordinary medium. To do this, Marie Antoinette’s head was created first with chicken wire that was bent into a large conical shape. The team then crumpled a roll of white draft tissue paper that they bought from Sam Flax Art Supplies and overlaid it on top of the frame. They covered this with lots of curly spirals. So, how did they make those spirals? Skip Engelbrecht, co-owner of Paris on Ponce, was riding mopeds with Matt Turner, co-founder of Material6, on their weekly outing. Engelbrecht was scratching his head over how to make this exhibit fascinating. He and Turner discussed using some of Turner’s machinery to help produce the display. What they came up with was pretty astounding. They designed a spiral, and laser-cut it onto 500 sheets of copy paper, producing the hundreds of swirly curls in Marie’s bouffant! Schenke then designed images of 3D flying bumblebees in Adobe Illustrator and Turner laser-cut these bees onto sheets of cardboard. These were the bees seen buzzing atop Marie’s head. Remember she was “bee”-headed. Her enormous bouffant is being carried away by a flock of bees! They topped it off by crafting large, colorful flowers out of colored tissue paper and placing these in her hair.
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