The Adventures of Tracy the Trashceritops

Never before in my life have I created a work of art as alluring as Tracy the Trashceritops. She’s a magical upcycled celebrity, fabulously adorned with an amazing technicolor dream-coat of aluminum cans and a wonderful mystical presence that captures the heart of every inner child. She’s loved and adored by EVERYONE she encounters. Everywhere she goes, people are magnetically drawn to her, helplessly mesmerized by her joyful seductions, and unable resist the natural urge to pull out their cell phones and take a selfie with her. Even wilst loading her in the back of my truck to transport her from one place to another, I would often hear the screeching of tires on the side of the road. People slam on their brakes, pull over, and come get a selfie with her while still in my truck. She’s pretty special, a one of a kind. This was my first time creating a sculpture like this and so I had no prior experience or knowledge about constructing such a creature, but I couldn’t be happier with the result. It was a collaboration between one of my best friends, Lynn Nicol, and I.

Lynn is about 20 years my senior. She was my best buddy throughout my mid-twenties. I affectionately referred to her as “The UPS Lady” because she was the owner of the nearby UPS Store where I met her one day while mailing some letters.  I referred to her as UPS Lady so much that none of my other friends knew her real name. (I since have become more respectful of her butch genderqueer nature and changed her nickname to “UPS Dude” even though she sold out of that shipping business long ago.) At the time we met, I was 24 and I identified as lesbian. I was completely socially awkward around other lesbians my age who honestly kind of bored me.  So, I hung out with Lynn, someone I could learn a lot from and feel comfortable around. We matched each other’s level of maturity pretty equally, being simultaneously both very old and wise, having endless conversations about all things metaphysical, and we were also very playful, immature teenage boys. (No, we were NOT lovers! Funny how I have to always clarify that when talking about my lesbian friends.) Anyway, after about ten years of friendship, Lynn came to me with an idea for a project.

Lynn works for Momentum Recycling, a local company with only a handful of workers. The owners of the company were planning on doing an upcoming trade show, some sort of “green” festival in Salt Lake City to promote recycling and to gain new clients. In the past they had received a pretty dismal response from the crowd and felt invisible during the events. They knew that they needed to do something different, something to draw more attention to their booth, something to make all of the passers-by stop and take a second look to notice their company. After scouring the internet for ideas, they saw some pictures of a cute little dinosaur sculpture made out of used plastic bottles and cans that probably resembled something similar to this: (which is actually pretty good)

They thought, “This looks cool and fun and easy to make! It will draw attention to us.” Kate, the sexy boss lady, wife to the co-founder, decided to try to make a little recycled dinosaur sculpture herself and she also challenged Lynn to make one as well. Once the sculptures were made, they would then decide which one was better, and use it for the festival. Lynn, being sort of the fierce competitive type, took this as a personal challenge to outdo her boss. She thought to herself that if she enlisted my help, we could outshine Kate’s most-likely pathetic little sculpture for sure. She then invited me over for dinner and turned on her powers of persuasion. She started showing me the inspirational pictures of the upcycled dino from the internet, stroking my ego and telling me how much better we could do than that. She offered to collect and buy the supplies, bribed me with more food and wine, and convinced me that when we were all done, Momentum would buy our sculpture from us. I took the bait and agreed to the challenge, thinking that it would be easy and fun. “No sweat!” (Mental note: Nothing that I do is “no sweat.”)

Lynn was on it! She started collecting bags full of used cans from recycling bins on her pickup route every day and piling them in my warehouse studio room. We had to temporarily take over the adjacent studio room in order to have enough space for it all. Looking for inspiration, I pillaged through a few second-hand children’s dinosaur books from the local Mormon thrift store, the DI, and instantaneously, visions of it all materializing before my eyes were running through my head and my unconscious mind quickly got busy working out the details of construction. We decided that out of all of the dinosaurs in the cartoon books, the triceratops would be the most cute and adorable one to sculpt out of aluminum cans, no contest. She would be a “Trashceritops.” (I felt pretty clever about that one.) I sketched out a basic schematic of the dinosaur, not exactly anatomically accurate, but a little cartoony and somewhat juvenile. Then we made a plan of attack.

In general, I was in charge of the creative and sculptural aspects, and Lynn got to do most of the grunt work. Easy enough, right? “We should have this done in no time!” We got to work; crunch crunch, stomping on mountains of cans, and sorting them into colors. I cut slits into a roll of chicken wire in appropriate places with sheet metal snips, then I bended and folded it around until it looked sort of like a dinosaur shape. This would be the under-wire skeleton frame. Then we poked two holes near the top of each can with a hammer and nail so that we could string wires through them and tie them to the chicken wire frame. This method was certainly no rocket science or fine craftsmanship by any means, but it seemed to do the trick. I designed a color pattern for Tracy’s body so that it would look like she had some sort of cool dino tabby stripes, green and black and silver on her back from tail to neck, and then we saved the red and yellow cans for her face.

My other bestie, Ruth, showed up here and there to lend a hand, and it was all good times to be had, making art in the studio. We worked enthusiastically for long hours, drinking wine and laughing, making immature jokes about how pitiful the boss’s measly sculpture would look in comparison to ours. Tedious hours left blisters and cuts on our fingers. Those hours turned into days and those days turned into weeks. After a while, we started to realize that this was all a bit more work than we had bargained for, and at about two weeks in, we realized that we weren’t going to complete our project in time for the trade show, not even close. Lynn’s boss ended up having to use the measly pathetic little sculpture that she created because ours just wasn’t even remotely done. Three and four weeks went by and we forgot all about our egoic competition with the boss lady and started to question why we were doing this in the first place.

A grimace came over Lynn’s face. She was getting disgruntled and started saying things like, “Jeez Sandy, Why do you have to make everything so complicated and elaborate? This is taking forever!” and, “How come I have to do all of the shit work? I’m covering the whole body with cans, while you sit there and fiddle around with the face?” To which I replied, “Well do you want this thing to look good or not? I’m the artist here! I need to be the one to give her some personality.” Lynn said, “Whatever, I could have done that part without you.”  “Ha!”  I laughed, “I’d like to see that!” We eventually calmed down and got over ourselves and remembered how we were still best friends. We had already invested too much time and energy into this project to turn back now and so we just pressed on forward.

Just the wire skeleton

Done Halfway up the back

front view, half done

doorknob eyeballs

finished face

I selected the brightest and prettiest cans that we had set aside for her face and shaped and attached each one just right in order to give her sort of a childlike innocence. I spray painted blue irises on old door knobs to use for the eyes and carefully shaped little cans for the eye lids. I cut up some Arizona tea cans into flat metal sheets and wrapped them around the horns with little wood caps on the ends. Then, I added just a little spray paint here and there to create interest in the focal point (her face) while mostly allowing the color of the cans to shine through. Lynn finished covering the rest of her back, tail, and legs with cans and she was getting close being done. Her face turned out to be cute as a button, and our spirits brightened up a bit. A pretty little dinosaur was starting to appear. Two months of hard work was beginning to pay off.

Just the underbelly was left. Ruth suggested that as a female dinosaur, she needed to be anatomically correct down there, and of course being the teenage boys that we are, we agreed, and we made her a nice dino vagina consisting of two pop cans shaped like labia. “What should we name her?” My clever word-mash “Trashceritops” seemed to stick pretty good, but she needed a real name, not just a faux species classification. I offered a few objectionable names that were promptly rejected, “Trixie the Trashceritops” “No. That sounds like a prostitute.” “Trashy Lola.” “No! It has to be appealing to kids” “Why, so that they can jump on her and get cut up by the sharp metal? How about Lolita?” “NO!” We decided we liked the repetitive “Tr” sound which would make it either sound slightly poetic or like it had come from a Disney movie. “Tracy the Trashceritops!” “…alright” I conceded, “but I still think Trashy Lola was a good name.”

Tracy was finally done and ready to show. She made her fabulous debut at Momentum’s next marketing campaign at the down town Whole Foods Grocery. The bosses were delighted with our creation! They displayed Tracy along-side their signs and literature for recycling and received tons of attention from the patrons at the store, resulting in more sales and new accounts. Lynn and I were really proud of our accomplishment and split the credit 50/50, of course with a special mention to our lovely assistant Ruth. Lynn got a nice pat on the back from Kate, the sexy boss lady, and she was glowing for weeks after that. Unfortunately, Momentum Recycling could not afford to purchase Tracy at the time. Even still, Lynn immediately started up saying things like, “You know, we could do a whole lot more of these, every kind of dinosaur, and make a lot of money selling them to people.” To which I replied, “Ummmmm…. No. No thanks.”

But… I AM really happy that we made Tracy. All in all, It has all been a great experience. She has been so much fun to bring around to shows and to watch people interact with her. She’s gotten some great exposure in the green living industry and some good fine art show face-time as well:

at Urban Arts Gallery

at Pioneer Theater Company

Leslee checking out the anatomy.

At “Tree of Life” art show

She went to several festivals with Momentum Recycling, like the Clean Air Festival, Earth Day, and the Local First events. She made a prestigious appearance in my art show at Pioneer Theater Company, spent some quality time at the Urban Arts Gallery, and was a prominent feature at my “Tree of Life” art show. I also decided to take her to my art booth at the Utah Pride Festival. That’s where I really got to witness her power of attraction. Not a lot of people were really looking at my two dimensional art, but literally hundreds of people had come up to take a selfie with Tracy throughout the two days. She is a star.

“Oh Tracy.  Everybody loves her but nobody wants her.”  Lynn said recently.  I’m surprised we have not sold her yet, but it’s going to take a very specific person or business with a very specific indoor space to be able to really showcase her. I’m hoping for a local small eco business to snatch her up and put her on permanent display, or perhaps a really cool public space. For now, I’m certainly not going to hide this candle under a bushel. She wants to go out and be with the people. Until she finds a permanent home, I decided to let her tour around the city, temporarily staying at local or eco businesses, public spaces, and homes that have the appropriate space and viewership to make her feel really appreciated.

First stop is Stephanie Alexander’s house. I picked Stephanie because she is kind of a hero and a great asset to our community as an activist. She founded an organization called Woman Savers that helps women out of abuse, she just became a board member of Swaner Preserve in Park City, and she also volunteers and hosts fundraising events for Ching Farm animal sanctuary. Her husband David West co-founded electric vehicle company Via Motors, and has been highly involved in renewable energy propagation throughout the years. This is their family portrait with Tracy and their two rescue Dobermans, Kona and Kai.

After house sitting for Stephanie last week, I thought Tracy might look really great amidst the spacious contemporary decor and enjoy the nice picturesque view overlooking the whole valley while mingling with sophisticated high heel wearing guests at their parties.

Where should she go next? Do you have space for her at your local business? Submit your suggestions to me at queerboiwonder@gmail.com. Tell me why your space deserves Tracy the eco-celebrity as a visitor. This would have to be an indoor space, where kids would not be able to touch her (and get cut up) but somewhere she can really shine and be the center of attention.

I wanna see your selfies!  If you are one of the many people who have taken a selfie with Tracy, please post it on my facebook page www.Facebook.com/SandyParsons.  Also, if you would like to give her a permanent home and are curious about the sale price. We would let her go for $3,330. Just about enough to pay for our time and labor of love.

In the mean time, Lynn and I will just sit back, relax, and enjoy all of the laughter and smiles out there in the world that we have helped to create with a special little dinosaur named Tracy. Cheers.