Last week, I completed the first phase of making a mannequin to be displayed in the Greeley History Museums upcoming exhibit about Greeleys Spanish Colony. My goal was to tell the story of the Spanish Colony sugar beet laborers without words or pictures. Every detail I added to Manny added personality to this story.
If this was a typical mannequin for another exhibit, I would probably make the clothes hang just right, steam the wrinkles out, and proudly display Mr. Manny in the museums galleries.
But, Manny is not quite a typical mannequin. Overalls, a blue shirt and work boots are not specific to sugar beet laborers, or even field laborers. He needed identifying features.
What does a sugar beet laborer hold during a work day? During harvest time, laborers did not simply pull the beets out of the ground. In a few fluid motions, they plucked the beet from the earth, sliced off its top with a sharp knife and tossed the vegetable over their shoulders into a container or truck. So, the laborer would hold a beet and a knife.
After some hunting, I found a rusty beet knife in the museums collection. As for the beet, the museum owns a basket of plastic models made to look and weigh the same as real beets. I soon discovered that Manny’s stuffed arm and foam hand would not support a 5 pound fake beet. I needed a realistic, but light, solution. It was time to get crafty.
Exhibits Curator Nancy Lynch suggested a papier-mâché beet would be hollow, light, and realistic. Since I hadn’t done the craft since my second grade Girl Scout days, I looked up a few tutorials online. My first step was to make a light, yet durable mold. Feeling like a sculpture artist once again, I chose a section of chicken wire and began molding it to the shape I desired using the heavy plastic beet as a guide.
Once it resembled a beet, I mixed Elmers glue and water in a 1:1 ratio. The tutorials suggested using newspaper for the first layers because it is inexpensive and flexible, then printer paper for the outer layers (pictured).
It became a steady process. Dunk newspaper strip in glue solution. Place on model. Smooth wrinkles. Continue until beet is covered. Let it dry completely. Repeat. After four layers of newsprint, I used white printer paper, making sure to tear the strips. (Torn edges are easier to camouflage than straight ones.) The printer paper dried white, making a hard outer shell.
The next step was to paint the beet to look freshly harvested. For the first layer, I mixed beige and bright yellow to replicate the color of the beets flesh (pictured). Next, I gathered paints from medium to very dark brown. Figuring that the beets skin would be rubbed off in the high ridges, I dry-brushed the model with the medium browns and wiped the paint off in high spots with a wet rag to reveal the flesh color underneath. I layered the darkest browns and black in a few spots to represent dirt stuck in the low spots and valley down the beets center.
To finish, I cut a hole in the models top and poked fake foliage down the beets hollow center. A few more strips of papier-mâché around the stems held it in place. Finally done and dry, I stepped back and admired my handiwork (pictured). At less than one pound, Manny’s arm would support this beet much better than the plastic replica.
I positioned the props in Manny’s hands. Though he was dressed and ready, there was still something missing. For a field laborer, he sure was clean.
Written by Holly Berg, Greeley Museums Exhibits Assistant