For years, I've repurposed old, metal lunchboxes. A Rambo lunchbox became a lunchbox dedicated to Great Women of Literature. Another honored Great Writers of the South. More recently, I've dedicated a lunchbox to The Donner Party. For a long time, though, I've had it in my head to create the ultimate Superhero Lunchbox...not a lunchbox featuring Batman or Wonder Woman, but a box honoring my real-life heroes.

I posed this challenge to a wide circle of friends: get your hands on a metal lunchbox, and put some thought into who or what your heroes are, and why. And then get to work making the Superhero Lunchbox of your dreams.

This online exhibit is the result of that challenge. I hope visitors to this site will find it fun and interesting, and maybe even inspiring. Lunchboxes are such useful things, and so many of us have fond memories of toting tuna sandwiches to school in our Partridge Family or Six Million Dollar Man lunchboxes. There seems to me to be no reason for us to outgrow this tradition of toting around our meals in metal boxes that say something about who we are, what we like, and what our values are. I know I've never outgrown it.

Start here, because it's what started it all for me, and work your way up. Enjoy. Leave some feedback. Make a lunchbox.

For a more detailed view, click on the individual images.

If you're moved to make a lunchbox of your own, and have it included in this exhibit, submissions are welcome. Get your hands on a metal lunchbox (no plastic, please) - you can buy a blank one from lunchboxes.com or repurpose an old one. Go to town. Choose your superhero, and and run with it. Photograph your finished lunchbox, write a few words about your subject, and send the photos and text to me at Telpher@gmail.com, with the words "Superhero Lunchbox" in the subject box.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Lana Nieves - Lana Winters

Ok, so this is a weird one. I became obsessed with season two of American Horror Story: Asylum, and its main character. The show revolves around Lana Winters, a writer and a lesbian, living life in 1960s Boston, who ends up being committed to an asylum from which there is seemingly no escape, and all because she's gay and has something to say. The asylum turns out to be a house of unspeakable horrors including filth, over-medication, physical torture, exposure to all kinds of criminally insane people (worst of all being the nuns and doctors who run the place) and a bunch of de-gayifying treatments I can't even think about.  Anyhow, people kept telling me I should just stop watching, because this fucking show upset me so much, on a personal level, every week. But I couldn't stop. I. Could. Not. It was too good. The writing was too good. Sarah Paulson and Jessica Lange and Lily Rabe were too fucking good. And Lana Winters was too likable. I rooted for her. I felt obliged to see her through to the bitter end, whatever that end would be. The whole show seemed to revolve around the idea of being abandoned and forgotten because one is a misfit: it's why no one really misses Lana Winters when she's locked up, seemingly forever.  Who really CARES about some woman? Some lesbian, no less? Some dumb-ass, loud-mouth, lesbian writer. Named Lana, for heaven's sake.  I was soooo not going to quit this one. I'm glad I didn't. It's pretty fucking great. Lana, for all her human failings, is pretty fucking great, and gets as triumphant an ending as one can get, given the nature of this drama. How can I not have love for a story where everyone dies, except for loud-mouthed, lesbian writer named Lana? A lunchbox was definitely in order.



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1 comment:

  1. HeidiFebruary 11, 2013 at 12:55 PM

    Fantastic. I really love this one. The colors really work with the genre. One of your best so far. Also, I love the post, which also summarized the end of the season---a nail biter!!!!

    Xxo
    H

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