By Margaret Maccoll
Music teacher Clare Hopper decided to take the opportunity while pregnant to be the subject of body art which fitted perfectly the plans of her friend Corina Wagner to create a goddess artwork of a pregnant woman.
“I just was lucky my friend was pregnant,” Carina, a Gympie registered nurse and part time body painter, said.
The pair joined a tent full of artists and models as well as onlookers and photographers at the Australian Body Art Festival at Cooroy on the weekend.
The artists had only five and a half hours on Saturday to create their Other World-themed designs while crowds circled the tent watching the finished products unfold.
Clare said she had a great time being treated like a queen but “would never do it again”.
That was not the case with model Doris Li who for the past eight years has been matched with various artists as the subject of their work.
Last weekend Bodhi del Mar turned Doris into an out of this world Geisha. Bodhi said it was a thrill to be pushed out of her artistic comfort zone to produce the artwork which she said was inspired by an album cover.
Artist Opal Stone had her designs prepared in miniature on a doll though they “grew over the day”, but she almost didn’t make the event at all when her model cancelled at the last minute. Luckily her friend Samantha Cloy agreed to step in and found it an “awesome” experience.
“It’s nice to see all the community coming out,” she said. “It’s weird to get your photo taken naked – or not really naked.”
The sole man sporting paint was performer Simon who regarded it as a way of extending his performance abilities while artist Tracy Church, a mother of three sons, said she wanted to engage a male in the event.
