In these three drawings I am exploring artifice. When designing costumes in theater, my entire job is making a person look like something other than what they truly are. I have always found it fascinating how an actor will appear one way when they come into a fitting and change completely when they walk on stage in the complete costume, hair, and makeup. This dichotomy is what I am trying to capture with the forced grins and eyes painted onto the eyelids. I have used musical theater as the compositional jumping off point because, in my experience, nowhere is the chasm between reality and fantasy more pronounced than in the musical. There is a quality of forced excitement and over-the-top story in musical theater that is both infectious and overwhelming, and which lends itself to the exploration of facades, personas, and the masks we wear on a daily basis to make it through the day to day.