We Built a Head
Mortuary College Part 1
When I tell people about the stuff I learned in mortuary school there are, of course, plenty of things that weird them out: sutures both visible and hidden, parts of a casket, the bones of the skull (that’s where I learned I have quite an impressive occipital protuberance), injection sites for embalming, how many eyes wide a face is. Yes, you read that last one right, and the answer is five. A face is typically five eyes wide. Go try it in the mirror later. It’s fun. The thing, though, that gets the biggest “What?” when I tell it is that we had to build a whole head.
The head I built currently sits in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house where it’s been since its completion 2002. It could legally drink this year, but, as I’ll explain later, it doesn’t have a tongue. My wife hates that head — absolutely cannot stand to be in the same room with it. She says it’s creepy, and, honestly, that does make sense because it’s actually her head. Now imagine this scene. I’ve been dating this girl for a little over two years. I go home to see her one weekend and ask if I can photograph her. Then, once she agrees, I tell her I need closeups of her face from various angles, and she needs to keep her eyes closed for all of them, so I can recreate her head for my Restorative Art class. We weren’t even engaged at that point. She agreed to marry me after that!
