The 'Longing for Head' Art Book

Longing For Head - First book from iscream press

I've completely updated and revised (taken out some extra content I had included) to bring you a better, tighter story, about female mannequinns. I've learned so much trying to make books - the biggest being how to edit myself. I'm really pleased with this new version of my book, and I hope you are too!

Measures 7x7 inches, 48 pages (including title, endpages, and info). It makes for a nice and thin coffee table book.

There's a PDF available for sale on Gumroad. It's only $3 and they accept Paypal, bank e-transfer, and credit card payments.

Want a digital copy but don't want to order through Gumroad? I take both Paypal and e-transfers by email as well.

The idea has been floating around for a long time, and then the lovely owner of Johnny Ruth, had a couple of female torsos she was needing to get rid of, and sold them to me for such an amazingly low price. I am so grateful to her for her kindness as it gave me exactly what I needed to finally make an idea a reality.

Shots of first printing.

The Concept
I have been working slowly for a long time on a body of work surrounding my fascination with mannequins, specimens/taxidermy, and wind-up toys. It finally struck me what these three things had in common; the impression of life. I had found my uncanny valley, and was eager to explore it. Initially, they were going to be all combined as one book but the mannequin exploration took off and became a completely different project of its own. The book is composed of both drawings and photographs knit together to create a bunch of small narratives that form one larger picture.

The title, Longing for Head, is a play on words. She Has No Head is a term used initially in art and comics to talk about the technical aspect of drawings, mainly of women, where it is cropped to either cut off the head or most of the face, leading the eye towards other parts of the body. It is now more widely used to discuss women in media whereby they have a lack of agency and seem to be there primarily for sex appeal. It was also the name of a popular comic criticism column on CBR. Using this term, a term for sexual desire often associated with males ('head'), and mannequins that are female in nature and literally headless, I attempt to tell an entirely female narrative that's mostly humorous and just a little bit touching. I hope you decide to join me on this adventure through the world of headless female mannequins.

The entire body of work - drawings, photographs, graphics - took me a full year to complete. I am so happy to finally have this thing out there, and I hope you enjoy it!