Over the last two weeks, I have been making a mannequin to represent the story of the sugar beet laborers that lived in Greeleys Spanish Colony neighborhood. My goal has been to allow the museums visitors to understand and appreciate the story of the laborers with one glance. Every detail I have added to Manny so far has added layers of personality to this story.
After the first week, the mannequin looked like a non-specific field laborer. Last week, I added a replica sugar beet and beet knife to distinguish him as a beet laborer. Still, the story deserved more depth. I needed to reflect the arduous, dirty work these men performed daily, but Manny’s clothes looked new and clean (pictured). Manny should have looked like he harvested sugar beets all day under the summer sun and then stepped into an exhibit case.
My first task was to make Manny’s clothes look aged and worn in all the appropriate places. Drawing from her background as a costumer, Exhibits Curator Nancy Lynch said that the best way to prematurely age clothes involves a large cement mixer and rocks. Since I dont have access to those supplies, I used a sturdy washing machine, a cheese grater, and sandpaper instead. After washing the clothes several times, I grated and sanded the hat, knees, elbows, pockets and hems until they looked well worn. I also cut a chunk from the hats brim and reshaped the hat with water. Now, the clothes looked worn, but still clean.
Getting dirty can be really fun. Making a mannequin look realistically dirty is a different kind of fun. Dirt is not always the best material to use to represent itself, especially when we want to protect and preserve the artifacts on display. Instead, I decided to replicate the two main components of dirt: its color and texture.
I first combined several earth colored, acrylic paints and watered them down. With a medium sized paint brush, I dabbed the paint mixture onto the places where the laborers would have gotten the dirtiest: shirt collar and cuffs, elbows, pockets, knees, and pant hems. I also smudged some of the mixture onto the top and underside of the straw hat.
Now, Manny’s clothes had the color of dirt on them, but they still lacked texture. Several crafting stores sell bags of fake dirt specifically manufactured for decorative potted plants. However, these can be very expensive and abrasive to fabrics. In the do-it-yourself spirit, I found a tutorial that helped me make realistic fake dirt inexpensively using pencil shavings and acrylic paint.
I gathered shavings from almost every pencil sharpener in the museum and various colors of paint and got to work. Once the shavings were coated with paint and dry (pictured), I mixed different proportions of the colors together to create a unified dirt mixture. Then, I dabbed glue on each dirty spot and sprinkled on pencil shavings. Once dry, Manny looked like he had worked in lots of dirt all day.
After three weeks of hard work, I finally feel that Manny is ready to tell his story (pictured). He waits to go on exhibit in the Greeley History Museums Exhibits Office.
Written by Holly Berg, Greeley Museums Exhibits Assistant