Reptilian Pantyhose

I know it sounds kinky, slinky, scaly, and expensive. Just the wicked accent for that black dress and spiked heels. Add the wide, low-slung crocodilian belt, and rattlesnake skin chunky bracelet. Complete the look with platinum spiked hair, botox/blood-red pouting lips, the Perfect Purse, and protruding hipbones. And that is aspsolutely Collagemama's look!

Oops, got off the track there. I wanted to tell you about the lizards on the back fence and a successful terra cotta clay project.

Last fall some of my elementary and intermediate art students made clay masks decorated with different stripes, grooves, and other textures. I wanted the kids to think beyond a basic face, and way beyond Sponge Bob on this project, so my example was very over the top. Anne Rice and Dionysus on a Mardi Gras pub crawl with Akenaten, Ed Munch, Long John Silver, and several African antelopes. We made sure to poke holes along the rim of the mask.

After the clay was fired to its splendid earthy color, we painted the masks with black tempera paint all over. A few minutes later we took the masks to the sink and washed and rubbed the paint off the top surface, leaving the black in all the textured grooves. When the masks dried, we added long raffia hanging from the poked holes along the edge. Some kids added beads and feathers. We looked at examples of masks from many cultures.

My example was so weird I kept it, and hung it from a fence post out on the patio. Despite lots of rain the black paint still accents the textures. The raffia is bleaching. The mask has become the lizard molting hang-out. Lizards get naked behind Satan's visage? (I can't help it. I've been reading a collection of Bohemian folktales about poor-but-smart peasants outwitting devils.)

My fence hosts incredibly tiny baby anoles, anoles just ready for kindergarten, teen Double-Bubble anoles, and Big Daddy in his chartreuse suit and gold chains. They are all having growth spurts. Then they have to molt. It isn't optional. They all seem to migrate to the fence post with the mask, and their skin becomes white with dark brown underneath. Molting isn't the passive activity I had always imagined. The lizards rub against the wood, then contort themselves to bite the old skin away from their toes. Imagine if you had to do that! All this rubbing and peeling takes a long time. At the most exposed, vulnerable point the lizards climb behind the raffia and up behind the mask. Do they smoke native plants? Hold secret kiva ceremonies? Do they have black light posters of Jim Morrison back there? Or do they just finally rid themselves of their Texas summer pantyhose the way so many women do as soon as they get behind the steering wheel after a long day at work?