Quarantine

 The Superhero Lunchbox Project is under temporary quarantine.

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. 

Z. Artinian, Rock Star At Large

A video submission from a young friend of mine. Thanks for making a lunchbox and sharing it, Zahzah!

Herr Metzger, Matt Polchlopek : Klaus Nomi

This box was made as a payment to a friend who made a cross stitch for me, but the idea had roots long before that. 

Pastry chef, singer, friend of Bowie, and a dude from outer space, all of these things describe Klaus Nomi. Nomi was a character, and a hell of an inspiration. He blended new wave and opera and made them sound as if they always belonged together. He was equal parts gimmick and talent, with his wacky hair, plastic tuxedo and make-up combined with his gorgeous counter tenor arias.I was drawn to Nomi from the moment I found him. He seemed to have fun with the pop opera elements, but could also make you weep with his more serious arias (his version of the Cold Song from Purcell's King Arthur comes to mind) It's a shame that Nomi isn't around anymore, I can only imagine what he would be doing now. 

This box is to honor the man, the myth, the Nomi.  

 

Herr Metzger, Matt Polchlopek

 

 

Lana Nieves - Burlesque

I became friendly with Amy because of insomnia. We were both Goddard students during a time when there were less than 40 people living on campus. I usually had a difficult time sleeping, and would find myself walking around campus late at night - often with my good friend, Peter. We'd walk around (usually one of us carrying a bottle of booze that we'd take turns swigging from) looking for anyone else who was awake. If your lights were on, you were fair game. Amy's lights were often on into the wee hours of the morning. At some point, late night visits to Amy's room became a semi-regular thing. We'd usually find her working on some creative endeavor. I don't remember a hell of a lot of what was discussed during those visits, except that Amy had a pug back home, who she liked to talk about. She kept a copy of a book called This Is Your Pug on her desk. For some reason, this always tickled me. It still does. I remember really liking Amy, pretty much right away, and thinking she was like no one else. Funny, Smart. Warm. Adorable. Daring. Her artwork seemed to revolve around female sexuality. I won't pretend I understood most of it, or even that I tried to. I was at least a little bit drunk most of that time. I knew she was on to something, though. And I knew Amy was sort of...audacious? fierce? Both. Audacious and fierce. And cute. You don't see that mixture very often.

I haven't seen Amy in a long time. Decades. She's still out there, though. Still audacious and fierce. And cute. She's embraced the world of burlesque since I last saw her. Again, she's dabbling in something I'm not sure I completely grasp, but I think Amy is pretty damned great so it follows suit that whatever she's immersed herself in is lucky to have her on board. Amy turned 50 this year and her friends threw her a burlesque-themed birthday party. My understanding is that the party took the form of a performance, with Amy seated front row, center for her very own command performance of Plainfield's amateur burlesque theater. I couldn't be there but, when I heard it was going to be Amy's birthday, and I was invited to the themed-event, I knew burlesque would play a part in whatever I chose to send Amy as a birthday greeting.

The burlesque lunchbox celebrates this art form, it's true, but that's not the real, Superhero Lunchbox intention. I made this for Amy, who's an Artist. With a capital A. Amy is cool on so many levels, but let me say this: she is a born Artist, and she's living the life of an Artist. I have mad respect for the way she's created a life for herself that always includes - and probably revolves around - her artistic endeavors.  Artists are Superheroes.

Lana Nieves - The Donner Party

While I realize there's an undeniably snarky irony inherent in making a lunchbox depicting The Donner Party,  I really did mean this as an homage, more than anything else. The story of The Donner Party is the dark side of the American Dream. I guess it could be seen as being a cautionary tale about hubris, but I think it's both a tragedy, and a testament to the innate human will to survive.

The Donner family (and the families who traveled with them, including the Reeds and the Breens) were pioneers. They had real chutzpah. They packed up their stuff, and headed for parts unknown, in search of a new life, and prosperity. Their strength of character and sense of adventure make them heroes of a sort to me. This aspect of who they were gets lost in the telling of their tragic story.

Michelle Chevallier

When I first started this artwork, I was really mulling over who to choose. I don't really have personal heroes. I had purchased a multipack of vintage postcards to use for another project, and I opened it to find a bonus of not only postcards, but a pristine set of luggage labels. I had the realization that a lunchbox is like a mini suitcase, and the idea was born.

The problem was narrowing down the list of who to represent. There are many designers that contributed to the golden era of luggage labels, but I didn't have those of anyone famous. Eventually I decided that I would call this the Franz Lenhart/Jan Lavies Tribute Lunchbox, as both had a major influence on this "golden era."

Franz Lenhart had just enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts when World War I began. In 1922, Lenhart moved to Florence to complete his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti and began working as an apprentice poster designer at a local printing shop. Once Lenhart earned his diploma he moved to Merano, where he began teaching and working as an artist. A gifted portrait artist, Lenhart was a master in capturing the light and atmosphere of the Italian Alps and Dolomities.

Jan Lavies was a Dutch commercial designer who was born in Holland and spent most of his career working in the Dutch East Indies for the publicity agency Aneta. During the 1930's he designed posters, advertising, luggage labels and folders for the Netherlands-Indies Hotel Association and K.P.M. the Royal Parcel Shipping Company. Lavies received many awards and praise for his modern Art Deco designs, using strong color combinations and clean compositions. His labels capture the brilliant color and natural beauty of the aforementioned exotic lands.

My components on the front and back and interior are the luggage labels, some rubber travel related stamps, and snippets and pictures from a travel-related scrapbook sheet. I was concerned about the reaction of the old labels to any sort of sealant, so I left the front unsealed. The back required contact paper to get the rubber stamps to stay put. I'm not really happy about how the back turned out with the contact paper, but this is my first lunchbox and it turned out better than I expected.
The side panels are composed of reproduction lithograph Victorian perfume labels from Victor Vassier in Paris. I chose them because they are related to the travel theme in that they were affixed to shipping crates, instead of luggage.

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.

Julia Ryder Perce

Heres my effin lunch box that i was too shy to show!! And certainly stymied by having to tell WHY helen fucking keller is my personal hero!!! Fuck!! Think about it, people!!

Editor's note: While Julia gave me permission to "edit, delete, or otherwise spindle anything" she'd written, I can't think of a single edit needed in the prose above.  Helen Keller WAS pretty awesome.

Herr Metzger, Matt Polchlopek

As a fan of horror and the macabre, I have many outlets with which to share my vision. Alas, art is not one of them.

I turned to the idea of making lunchboxes because of a friend who made a Donner Party Box (and she just so happens to run this page!) Before that, I didn’t really think about working with lunchboxes too much, however, the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a perfect canvas they can be.

Sure, everyone’s seen the Spiderman’s (Spidermen?) and the Very Brady Lunchbox, but how many lunchboxes do you see dedicated to the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky? Or decorated with the face of a serial killer/cult leader? There is a niche out there for collectors young and old alike, and I aim to fill it. 

 

Note: Matt is working on a number of lunchboxes, right now, and has other macabre creations for sale at his Etsy shop.

Gerard Holmes

Why Andy Warhol?  What kind of superhero is that? 

I was always more of a Marvel Comics than a DC kid.  The typical Marvel hero was just more interesting.  Poor Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider and takes on the characteristics of a spider.  He can’t actually spin webs, so he puts his mind to it and invents a web-spinner he can attach to his wrist.  The Thing, alternating between laughter and rage at his misfortune: his scaly skin making it impossible to be close to the woman he loves.  The Silver Surfer, whose omniscient perspective – literally looking down on the folly of humans – fills him with pity and ultimately makes him good.  Cigar-smoking Howard the Duck, “trapped in a world he never made.”  Dr. Strange.  I could go on.  The point is, these characters, two dimensional as they are, are born out of struggle, and – at least during Marvel’s heyday, the 1960s and early 1970s – they didn’t take the easy way out.  They continued to struggle.  Bruce Banner, nuclear scientist – staggeringly intelligent, considerate, even meek – never made peace with the roiling anger that inevitably, without fail, turned him into The Incredible Hulk. 

Much more interesting than a Man who’s, you know, Super, because he fell out of the sky from another planet.  Or a rich guy who likes to dress up like a bat.

Reasonable people may differ.  If DC made you happy as a kid, I’m happy for you.  I do know that in my later life I’ve always been drawn to people who are complicated, maybe a little mixed-up, not exactly who they seem to be at first.  I like people who surprise me.  I like people who struggle.  I want my friends to be happy, but I can relate to the need to keep working, trying, figuring it out.  I admire people who can do this with style, with grace.  I especially admire people who can do this in public, maybe because I’m private.

Andy Warhol was one of those people.  And that’s why he’s a superhero. 

Warhol – stop me if you’ve heard this – was the son of dirt-poor Polish immigrants in Pittsburgh, perhaps the most unpromising place in the United States to grow up with artistic tendencies in the 1930s.  He was gay.  His face was scarred with acne.  He was shy and sunken-chested, didn’t say much.

He made the world see the world his way.

I’m not talking about rising to the top of New York’s social life, or the silly Factory bullshit, or the gnomic statements.  I mean his art was new and fresh and consistently strong enough, for long enough, that it made us see differently.  Andy Warhol revolutionized painting, photography, film, design, even parties.  Together with the Velvet Underground and some of his cronies, he created, in a hole-in-the-wall on St. Mark’s Place, the lightshow that bands were STILL using when I started gong to concerts in the early 1980s, and a kind of everything-all-at-once music / theater hybrid that was still considered avant-garde when I moved to New York in the 1990s.

Did he eventually rest on his laurels?  Did he let other people tell his story and go along with it, and cater to the rich and stop paying attention at some point?  Yes.  So what?  Picasso had a long, silly, repetitive decline punctuated with occasional, probably accidental greatness, too.  That doesn’t matter.

Maybe it’s that I grew up caring more about music than art per se.  A great band is a band that has a strong five-year run, with maybe three albums you want to listen to for the rest of your life, and two more that are worth holding on to.  The Beatles had a seven- or eight-year run, maybe, as a recording band, depending on how you’re counting.  Then a lot of solo nonsense with occasional flashes of greatness… usually when Ringo was in the room.  But that’s a different ax to grind.

I’ve purposely avoided the Marilyns and soup cans and such here, even though I think they’re great (a new kind of portrait and still life, respectively).  I went with the banana, first because the Velvet Underground’s first record was – probably – the first time I actually sat down and looked intentionally at a work of visual art; second because it freshly struggles with one of the fundamental themes of Western art: the urge to reveal, and simultaneously to hide, sexual passion.  The banana, originally printed as a sticker with “Peel Slowly and See” above its apex, is sexy.  Sexier than Mick Jagger’s crotch on “Sticky Fingers” (though that, with its built-in zipper, was funnier).  I was lucky to find a pic online of the banana – the pink banana – partly unsheathed.

I wanted to include one of the electric chairs.  These are some of the most powerful works of art I know of.  They’re like all of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” at once.  They don’t reproduce well, though.  Instead, I included one of Warhol’s skulls, a take on the momento mori theme that would be obvious if it weren’t so beautifully composed.  Stop and look at how the colors interact, and how unexpected, and probably garish, each of them would be if they were used, individually, on a silkscreen of a skull.  Together – somehow, I don’t know why – they support each other.  It’s hideous and terrifying and hilarious and electrifying.

Andy himself appears on the top and bottom.

And inside, because – after all – it’s a lunchbox, a reminder of where your roast-beef sandwich came from.

There’s a lot more to say.  In his best work Warhol drew from the things everyone was looking at but not seeing, tweaked them, put them up on the wall (or on the floor, or just filled up the room with them), and made everyone see: not only the representation, which is enough, but the original, differently.  Leonardo did that with the nude.  Ingres did it with the portrait.  And Warhol did it with the stuff and people all around us, the unavoidable, endlessly repeating people and things that constantly wash up on the pop-culture shore.  He does it funny but generally resists the temptation to slapstick.

Why is there so little on the lunchbox?  I’ve always loved the rectangular silver balloons Warhol designed and let float around at parties, and when my boxes arrived in the mail – each cardboard box stamped “Plain Metal,” the brushed-steel surface of each lunchbox palely reflective, I thought instantly of Warhol and set aside my plans for a Walt Whitman box.  (Maybe that will come later.)  His best art – from the 60s and early 70s, and then the reawakening in the late 1980s – is simple and spare but unfussy about details.  It seemed to me like a Warhol lunchbox should follow the same aesthetic.  So I didn’t try to hide the “brushstrokes” of my adhesive, and I didn’t worry if the ink ran a bit, but I tried to put the right images in the right places.

Jennifer Hayes

The lighting in my office is crappy, and I couldn't see all my imperfections as I was working. But the more I see them now, the more it really describes my family. And it gives me a little knot in my throat.

 I created my lunchbox in the same way I do my other projects, in boxes so that the piece has a keepsake feel. 

My super heros are my parents (and my grandma). Both of my parents grew up poor (my mother didn't even have indoor plumbing in her house). So they both worked really hard to give me and my brother everything they couldn't have growing up. 

When I was younger, my dad was in the Army and his position kept him away for long periods of time. My mom had to take care of my brother and me by herself, often in another country where she didn't know anyone or even know the language. She worked office jobs to help pay the bills and save money. We didn't have much, but they loved us, and we always had a roof and food. Even the years when we weren't sure we were even going to have a Christmas tree, my mom worked several jobs to get each of us a little something. I'm glad that they love me unconditionally, tattoos, pink hair and all. 

So I turned my parents into some of my own favorite things... paper dolls. 

My grandmother had seven children, lived through the great Depression and once lived in a tent with her little ones and husband. She passed away when I was 12, but I will always remember her as one of the nicest, strongest women I've ever known. Her laugh was loud and infectious, as was her desire to help others. 

 Thank you, Lana, for this project. It's been very moving working on it.


A note from Jenn: I totally meant to add that the letter wrapped around the box is from when he was stationed in Germany for two years when I was younger, and would write to me. I was terrible about writing back, but I still have his letters. Their wedding photo is also inside as well.

Heidi Moore

My mom, Carol Offield, has led an amazing life as a powerful woman who has performed spectacular feats no one else could have.  I continue to be amazed by her daily.  

She has been a businesswoman, single parent, philanthropist, great friend, kind mother, bridge maven, and now she is a grandmother, too. 

She is unquestionably a phenomenal superheroine: It seems as though she stopped a speeding locomotive well over a hundred times when she interrupted what I was sure was the end of the world.  She soothed me with stories about what happened when she was my age, or about what happened to my grandma, or my dad.  Somehow the world, which had been barreling forward like a rocket at the speed of light at a target of complete destruction, suddenly was sailing uncomplicated in the breeze like a kite.  Then we could just laugh.  She said things like, “Stop worrying when you don’t have all the facts!” and I never listened, until I found myself repeating them to my students, hoping I could be half as smart as her.

It took the super-strength of a superheroine to be a single parent to two spirited children, particularly the demanding, devious, and difficult daughter I know I was.  

It was this super-strength, superheroine wisdom that gave her the good sense to make our childhood richer than any other kids I know: She was superheroine smart for reading aloud Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. books, instead of stuff like Stuart Little. Superheroine smart for letting us take lots of mental health days, so the other kids would have a chance to catch up.  Superheroine smart for going on strike, so we did the grocery shopping in primary school.  That was harder than doing it the standard way….and so much more fun.

Just like a superhero of stage and screen, she leapt tall buildings in a single bound when she solved the insolvable for me.  The superheroine trick that no one else’s mom could figure out was that she never did things for me.  She taught me how to do the tasks myself—beginning in kindergarten. My insolvable problem at the time was that I didn’t believe I belonged in kindergarten and wanted to advance to first grade.  So she set up a meeting for me to discuss it with the principal. Superheroine lessons, I guess. But that meeting (and, I’m sure, a bunch of background phonecalls I didn’t know about) solved an insurmountable problem. What kindergartener can talk her way into first grade? Me, it turned out, but not without her superheroine mom’s help!

My mom’s most amazing superheroine feat of solving the unsolvable and even time traveling occurred as she has cared for me as I have been sick.  The whole process of managing my illness and running a business would have caused someone else to give up.  I am so much work, and I am fully aware and very sorry that I do not always have the sunniest of dispositions.  She managed my difficult demands while living with me for several months while I was the sickest.  That’s a tall building if I ever heard it—running a business, as well as commuting back and forth between two cities.  On some days, that surely involved time travel.

Ultimately, it involved choosing between paying close attention to her business and paying close attention to me, and because I won, her business lost.  I just feel dreadfully guilty about that.  But I feel so, so eternally grateful for the gift I have had of her loving care, and her great company.

Superheroines don’t have much of a reputation for being very much fun to be around. This is one way she is nothing like a superheroine. In fact, she is great fun! We have had so much fun going around here and there and dreaming up schemes.  What a fantastic gift that has been to be with her.  

It is not surprising, then, that so many people in my life have met her and arrived at the same conclusion: Each, individually, has said the same thing:  “She’s an angel!”  So true.  A superheroine angel.  That’s what she is. I hope she is super-mortal because I never want to lose her!

Dashiell and Ryder

Dashiell and Ryder are the sons of a friend, who found out about this project, and wanted to take part, even though they didn't have lunchboxes. I'm game, and think they did a great job.


"I, Dashiell chose Curtis Granderson as my box dude/guy because he is a good teammate. He is a 5 tool player, which means he meets all the expectations of baseball: speed, consistency, power, composure, and range.
Curtis Granderson is the centerfielder for the NY Yankees. "

"I Ryder, picked Monopoly Man because he helps me get through rainy days!"

Cappy Sue

When my shared this project it sounded like a ball.  Doing a group project is not something I get to do a lot of and what a neat topic: super heros.  My biggest problem when I sat down to work on this was that so many different people and animals come to mind. For me what makes a super hero is not the ability to save people or fly but the ability to inspire other people in a positive way.  The positive way might not always be what is intended but that is just what I grabbed on to in people so I went with that.

One side has photos of my grandmother and a label for the book portable curmudgeon.  The reason is she was a curmudgeon. She was fantastic and inspiring had a will of iron.  She was the type of woman who grew her own roses and asked for a shotgun for her 80th birthday.  To me, she was a shining example of not letting others chose who you should be.

The flip side is a photo of Jean Harlow. In a whole different way I find her ability to be comfortable in her skin and embrace her bombshell self and get things done very inspiring.

The rest of my lunchbox is pretty much covered in photos of animals because they have a kindness and honesty it is rare to see in people.


Anyhow that is my wide and weird world of heroes.  Oh just for a weird note I filled the inside of the box with bits of paper I found inspiring. Things like a lost mothers day card a small boy had written for his mother that I found in a book I bought.  Another is cards from people who had sent little bits of money to help with a loved one's funeral. In my book, just less well known - but still inspiring - heroes.