Caricatures and Beauty Monsters

I made two amazing discoveries when I stumbled into the Son of Monsterpalooza horror memorabilia convention. Tim and I were already giddy getting a mopey caricature of ourselves drawn by Jud Lively and Lindsey Woodward of Two Tree Illustrations and magically Cass McClure's Beauty Monsters ceramics booth was directly across from us. In between freezing our faces in contorted expressions for the illustrators (though some would argue that's just my everyday pissy face), we would debate which of the amazing zombie lady vases we were going to buy from Cass and agonize every time a customer would pick up one that we wanted. We didn't want the caricature to end but we also didn't want to lose any of those damn vases. Finally the caricature was done and we ran over to meet Cass. Cass McClure, aka Junkhauler, is a Los Angeles based visual effects makeup specialist turned ceramics artist. McClure started in ceramics by creating tiki mugs under the moniker Ocea Otica and has been selling his mugs to dealers for years. He writes, “My work also utilizes skills I have picked up in a 20+year career in film and television as a makeup effects artist and model/miniature painter.” You can see that influence in the fine details and the whimsical choices in both his tiki mugs and his vases.

In the last few years he’s branched out from tiki and taken on the Vintage Beauty Monsters project and how lucky we are that he did. McClure explains, “…my ongoing series of Vintage Beauty Monster vases reimagines classic monsters as demure vixens.” His sexy Creature from the Black Lagoon Vixen is to die for. My birthday is around the corner…

Every vase is hand painted and many are inlaid with gold. These aren’t your grandma’s lady vases, kids. These are high end, meticulously crafted zombie masterpieces. Mine is displayed where my cats can’t knock it over and is flanked by plasticized turkey feet. I think Cass would approve.

Like Vintage Beauty Monsters and see more examples on Facebook.

You can find more work on Instagram at "junkhauler," or check out his blog, here.

And of course last, but certainly not least, here is the caricature by the talented Two Tree Illustrations.

I love it, I love it so much it hurts. Thank you, Two Tree twins.