It was all Jehan’s fault. My friend Jehan -- one of the most astonishing belly dancers I have ever known --  one day she said, “come down to Sideshows and you can draw during clown class”.  I didn’t expect a lot, but I am always up for adventure.

As Glen Heroy, the founder of Coney Island Clown Skool, came onto the stage at Coney Island Sideshows, he started explaining the problem he was giving his students that day. It was a simple classic improv; this one built around a hat he found in the back of an old car (a story that grows in detail each time this assignment is given).

Each clown came out and gave the hat a different quality: weight, smell, sound, personality, fear… each one inventive and full of story. The expressions and emotions they conveyed came in a vast variety of gestures and forms, speeds and stillness’s. It was truly fun and quite a challenge to draw. I drew with my favorite fast media, pastels on black paper, and years of drawing dancers I think paid off in capturing fleeting moments. I later sent the drawings to Glen, and he said come to Clown Skool and draw! I couldn’t turn that down. And man did we seriously need a diversion that November right after the election!