Every Tuesday Vicki at I’d Rather Be At the Beach hosts First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros, where we share the first paragraph or two of a book we are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Mine comes from The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey by J. Michael Orenduff.

The Pot Thief who Studied Edward Abbey

Life imitates art – but badly.   – Edward Abbey

According to the brochure, the process began with the model totally naked.

She smeared herself from head to toe with alginate, a slimy material made – as the name suggests – from algae. The alginate served three purposes. First, it retained the finest details of the surface once it dries. Second, it allowed the cast to be removed from the model without pulling away skin and hair. And finally, it insulated the model from the heat given off by drying plaster.

An assistant to the art professor covered the alginate with several layers of overlapping gauze swatches. Those initial layers of gauze were DayGlo green so that when the body cast was later being cut away, the green gauze would alert the artist that he should cut no deeper.

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