The Icarus Diaries

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

08: Featherweight

Recently I have been thinking of Icarus as a kind of footsoldier, out scavenging in an open field. Acquiring his arsenal. Gathering materials, and weighing his options. (Weighing his fate.)

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

07: Meltdown

I have been thinking about wax as a medium for simulation, about how I might use it to morph or maneuver the skin into some kind of altered state. Tissue stripped away, facial integrity diluted. A face that dissolves.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

06: Every Man His Own Balloon

I’ve been thinking about halos. And the halo effect (which is its own kind of myth). The simplicity of that geometric form, a simple curvature above the head. The perfection of it. The divinity of it.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

05: Waxing

I am finding Icarus references everywhere. He’s a symbol for so much: adventure and aspiration, peril and mishap, the embodiment of recklessness, the fragility of youth. I’m still stuck on the youth part.

Ellen McGirt|Interviews

The face, reconsidered

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

01: Facing Icarus

I am working on a series of paintings about Icarus, beginning, as I always do, by making sketches and combining them in AI with specific texts—in this case, from Ovid—who famously wrote about Icarus in book eight of his fifteen-volume …

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

02: The Backstory

Classically, Icarus is shown as a fallen angel, muscled body in freefall. The focus is on his flight, not his face. But who was he, really? 

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

03: Born to Fly

I imagine Icarus as a child, dreaming of adventure. A double portrait of a boy and a bird. A moment of stillness, calm before storm.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

04: Shadow Box

Flare up like a flame, wrote Rilke,and make big shadows I can move in.