Tegan & Vicki
After a low-key Halloween the previous year, in 2023 it was time to double down. Not only was I free from other demanding artistic commitments, through a strange set of circumstances I was also off work for the entire month of October. For the first time in ages, I had a crazy amount of time to play around at my own pace.
My own costume began with a doodle I made, of a crazy looking cyclops girl with pigtails. She didn’t have a name or any particular attributes; I hadn’t even shown her to my partner Bill, because it didn’t mean anything yet.
But then Bill brought me a sketch that he had made, of a weird face with pigtails, who reminded me of a gross scarecrow. I figured that if we were both planning to develop Halloween costumes based on girls with pigtails, we should probably develop them together!
My cyclops mask is a pretty traditional paper mache monstrosity, so that was easy to get going. For Bill, we decided on a ‘creepy ragdoll’ approach, and I made it as a soft cloth sculpture. I have never done anything like that before, so it is clumsy and lopsided and weird which, thankfully, is an appropriate set of adjectives for this costume! I took inspiration from my memories of a cloth doll, that occupied a small chair at my grandmother’s house when I was growing up.
The motif of my own costume came together because I have been watching all the old Ultraman shows: Ultraseven, Ultramantiga, Ultraman Taro, anything I could find. So one day I’m watching an episode of Ultraman Max, which introduces the monster called Luganoger. He’s a big space jerk who destroys planets. Like many Ultraman monsters, the costume is insanely elaborate, and nothing like mine. You may rightly be wondering: what does this have to do with anything? Well, it’s this:
Luganoger has masks on his hands.
Masks. On his hands.
That’s when I knew who I was. I was a little girl, but I was also a 40 meter tall monster with something horrible on my hands, and I was capable of fighting Ultraman!
For myself, I made a full pinafore dress from red corduroy, while Bill had a more traditional apron style worn over a skirt. I made giant shoes and oversized buttons. We lined Bill’s undershirt with quilt batting, so he would look stuffed and soft. Bill strung all the yarn for his pigtails! It was an undertaking that dominated our living room for a long time.
Bill seemed to know right away that his ragdoll character was called Vicki. It took me a lot longer to settle on Tegan, which is a portmanteau of Japanese words for ‘hand’ and ‘eyeball.’
And I made masks for my hands!
They have handles inside, for me to comfortably carry them around. Built from newspaper, cardboard, plaster gauze and paper mache… that’s what little monster girls are made of.
Halloween is Ladies’ Night
Together, we took the downtown Halloween event by storm. At least, I think we did. I can’t really see where I’m going, so I tried to keep the hem of Bill’s skirt in sight and follow him around. But I could hear people commenting, and I was keenly aware of being photographed a lot. So, I am hoping that we will find more pictures of us on social media later.
But I did wind up being the main picture for a puff piece about the Halloween event in our local newspaper, photographed by reporter Dick Mason.
