Apocalyptic Ballerina - The Photo Auction!
We discovered that in order to use eBay, that we needed to do a 3 day auction, so it’s starting today now and will be ending at the show on Thursday at TCHO at 7:30pm. Even though we want you to bid online, you should still come to the in-person show if you can make it. We will have a coffee/chocolate bar, the full ‘the true cost of coal’ mural will be up, the lovely/talented Dan Webb will be DJing, and we will have mannequins showcasing the various outfits Linda was wearing in the shoots. Linda herself will be ballerina’d up in one of the outfits, so do not miss it.
Check out the full story of our Apocalyptic Ballerina below. The eBay listings are linked beneath each set.
The Story
The Toxic Pier
In a world of toxic turmoil, the Apocalyptic Ballerina stands guard on a pier, ready to warn nomads to stay away from San Francisco. It had recently been deemed a ‘dead zone’ by the government, but news, even official, was traveling slowly these days. She sees a war ship approaching a dock and quickly sets to writing a note, “Caution, quarantine area”, that she stuffs into a bottle and throws into the water. She hopes they get the message in time, and she wonders how much time she has left for herself.
Nomads on the move
A warning to send
Caution, quarantine zone
Message in a bottle
Fly away bottle
The Lookout
A month had passed since the last toxic cloud rolled in, but the Apocalyptic Ballerina insisted a sentinel be posted by Twin Peaks everyday. People needed to get the gas mask warning, no one was wearing them all of the time because of the blistering. Volunteers were waning so she was on her 3rd shift in a row. She thought she saw something on the horizon, but she wasn’t certain. Straining, she almost wished they weren’t pumping anti-toxins from all the buildings, because then, she could smell it coming. It came over the hill so quickly she almost didn’t have time to put on her own gas mask, let alone sound the warning sirens. A wall of toxic cloud, they had created, and it was going to kill them.
The sentinel watches
Suspicion on the horizon
A toxic cloud approaches
Breathing in the anti-toxins
Gas mask warning sounded
The Clean Up
After the toxic cloud dissipated, there was still too much chemical debris everywhere to walk around without a gas mask. The Apocalyptic Ballerina was scouring the city for ‘garbage hot spots’ to bag up. When the acid rains came, they reacted with the plastics and metals in the garbage which created a localized fog that further poisoned the ground. She thought that if she contained the trash and stored the bags under bridges, it had less of a chance to get wet. It was too easy to get ambushed in the buildings, so she preferred to be outdoors. She was hopeful that she could try to grow food one day. Even with the reduced population, canned goods were not going to last forever.
New garbage hot spot to clean
The cleaning begins
Toes in toxic debris
Exhaustion will overtake me
Until tomorrow
The Nightmare
After days of cleaning up garbage from the streets, with little rest, the Apocalyptic Ballerina collapses from exhaustion. She tosses and turns as her mind fills with troublesome thoughts. She is a child’s toy, a ballerina doll, twisted from rough play and then tossed into the trash because she is no longer a perfect plaything. The garbage world she lands in is horrific and terrifying to the delicate ballerina doll. It echoes the history of the surface world of long ago, before the pollution reached critical mass. She tries to escape, through the darkness, but no matter how fast she runs, the world seems to travel around her, bringing her back to the beginning over and over. Weary, she pauses and wonders, at what point could we have stopped this?
Tossed into the trash
A horrified leap
Being chased by darkness
Stuck in a loop
A moment of reflection
The Path Forward
The rumor was, that the electrical field from the old transformer station repelled the chemical clouds, so the air there was safe to breathe. All of the people who the Apocalyptic Ballerina had heard of, that lived there, had died of massive organ failure however. It seemed as though, without maintenance, the transformer station could cause wide spread tumors. It was unfortunate that all the gas masks stopped functioning. There were no more replacement filters and it had just gone on too long. So, she didn’t really have much choice but to risk it. There were precautions one could take though... aluminum foil. It shielded you from the electrical field, or so she hoped. With grace and speed, she was covered in a matter of minutes. Now all that she could do was take a deep breath, and wait.
Close to the electrical field
The foil will protect me
Keep holding on
A gentle armor
Only time will tell
