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.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Lana Nieves: No-Face

No-Face is a beautiful, tragic, lonely creature from the world of Spirited Away. He is an empty vessel, hungry for whatever he can feed off of from other beings. He notices people's greed, and uses it to lure them close to him with the promise of gold. Once close, No-Face feeds on their very personality traits, in an effort to BECOME something or someone. Only through an encounter with a child who is good-natured and pure of heart does No-Face come to see that there can be more to his existence than feeding on the greed and weakness of others.

A crafting group I belong to issued a challenge for members to create something that was inspired by Japan. Anything. I know very little about Japan. I considered doing something with a Godzilla theme. Or something about sushi. Then I thought about all the lunchboxes I'd made over the years. And the Japanese bento boxes that have become popular in the USA. And No-Face. I knew it had to be.

I love No-Face. I love that his story is one of hope, and redemption. I love it that only a child can save him from his sad existence.  

The image of No-Face and the red bridge is a construction paper collage, with a thin layer of glaze on top for texture. Inside of the No-Face bento box is a reminder of his origins. 




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1 comment:

  1. UnknownNovember 4, 2013 at 1:08 PM

    I somehow missed this one went it went up. I've been reading and thinking about Japanese design over the last few years, because I always seem to end up living in tiny spaces, and Japanese design is all about noticing the beauty in simplicity, using limited space intelligently, often by means of multiple uses. (The preceding, sloppy, sentence, is deeply un-Japanese, and probably explains why I'm attracted to the aesthetic: my natural tendency seems to be toward accumulation, verging on chaos.) Anyway, your post made me think about how the simple beauty of the old-fashioned silver or black lunchbox, with a steel clasp and a handle that lifts when the box is lifted, but rests when the box is at rest, is the most Japanese of American commonplace objects. In other words, the most Japanese-inspired lunchbox might be a plain ol' lunchbox without decoration of any kind.

    But I love this one.

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