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Body beautiful

spm-224-naked
Photo courtesy of Larry Kirkwood
Larry Kirkwood creates molds of people from all different shapes and sizes. His exhibit will be displayed on Hayden Lawn next week.

Picture it: Hayden Lawn, next week. The lawn is covered with nude torsos, causing passersby to gawk, stop and ask questions.

But that's the whole point.

"I'm trying to get people to look at each other in terms of human beings," says artist Larry Kirkwood, who will display body casts of nude torsos on Hayden Lawn and in front of the Memorial Union as part of Body Pride Week, which runs from Monday through March 5.

Kirkwood's art began in 1993. One of his friends was making casts of random body parts, and Kirkwood wondered what it would be like to make a full cast. That's when he decided to set up an exhibit designed to get people to look at themselves and others differently.

The casts include the bodies of pregnant women, the overweight, the young and the old; the one thing they all have in common is that they represent everyday people.

"We probably have more similarities than differences," says Kirkwood, who is from Kansas City, Miss. "I'm one of those old hippies; I believe there is a better way, and that's why I do this."

The body casts are the perfect message and display for Body Pride Week, says Lynda Seefeldt, health educator for the Student Health and Wellness Center.

The week is celebrated nationwide to encourage people to have respect for size diversity.

"We hope students take some time to think about their body image and how their relationship with their body affects how they see and think about their bodies," Seefeldt says. "We are all one-of-a-kind, and that is remarkable in a world where everything can be reproduced so easily."

Kirkwood's first show in 1993 consisted of 60 male and female torsos, but he says he left a hole where the genitalia should be on the male torsos. That didn't sit well with female viewers of the exhibit.

"Women would come up to me after shows angry and ask, 'Where are the penises?' " he says.

He decided to destroy the show, completely start over and include all genitalia. Since then, he has traveled to more than 60 universities and has made casts of 502 people of diverse races, ages, sizes and genders.

ASU's exhibit will consist of about 20 body casts.

"I drive a soccer mom car, and I can only get so many in there," says Kirkwood, 60. "Depending on what body part you having sticking out the window, you get some pretty weird looks from people."

Making the casts is a seven-step process of plaster and resin. One cast takes about a month to finish, but cast subjects need only model for two hours.

"I have to get them in and out of the cast within 20 minutes, and the rest of the time is used to make them comfortable and get to know them," Kirkwood says. "I found out that we don't know how to look at ourselves, so I spend some of the time helping them to look at themselves."

Kirkwood says when he creates the casts, the experience is emotional for him and the subject.

"I have to give and give and give," he says. "One person I did a cast for had a bad image of herself, and she broke down seven times during the process. I remember driving home and thinking about it, and I broke down."

But he says the emotional drain is worth it because his exhibit is making a difference.

"I have gotten 125 to 150 letters from people telling me how it has changed their lives and changed how they look at other people," he says. "That's what keeps me going."

Kirkwood says not all people are able to view his exhibit as something more than a display of sexuality, though. Some colleges have even gone as far as to not allow the exhibit on campus.

But Seefeldt says she and others in charge of Body Pride Week feel nudity doesn't sexualize the exhibit.

"It's natural," she says. "We are concerned about how individuals will view the exhibit, but it's not meant to be offensive. We hope they'll view it as art."

The exhibit will be followed by a lecture at 5 p.m. Wednesday in Room 218 of the MU. Kirkwood will talk about reasons for the exhibit and societal changes that need to take place.

Topics include over-genderization, eating disorders, his disappointment in the voting system, unfair pay in the workplace based on gender, rape and everyday prejudices even he admits of having to overcome in his life.

"I was very particular about the body types of people I would date," Kirkwood says. "But then I started thinking that there are people who don't fit that body size that are probably really nice people. It's stupid to judge people by their outsides."

Kirkwood says he hopes the exhibit and lecture will teach students to look at each other as more than sexual objects.

"People are defining each other by sexuality, and that leaves everything else out," he says. "Beauty is not a contest. You see beauty within each piece, within each person."

Reach the reporter at heather.wells@asu.edu.


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