Tape Man

Sometime last year, my très temporaire band His Holiness played a show at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe during an active art show with various installations. A display that fascinated me was a 3-Dimensional design involving clear cocoons of humans known as Tape Men.  A Tape Man is a mannequin created by wrapping plastic wrap around a human and covering them with multiple layers of packing tape. Eventually you cut your friend out of their shell, and tape it back together to have your very own Tape Man.

I recently discovered that a different street artist named Mark Jenkins made Tape Man popular, and I found many of his ideas fascinating. I told my brother about it, and we spent most of our afternoon making our first Tape Man.

This is my Tape Man rescue pose. Yes, we did put clothes on him.

As you can see, our Tape Man has a well-developed set of legs, but a very saggy upper body. Unfortunately due to lack of tape, as well as patience, we failed to create a very sturdy Tape Man. But here is a good photo with Tape Man in the car with me:

Tape Man can protect you from car thieves.

Go to the flea market to get cheap packing tape and make a Tape Man. Making a Tape Man would also make for a great first-date activity… of course, only if your date is enjoys all of the taping and saran-wrapping of the face, etc. If you come up with ideas as good as Mark Jenkins, you just might feel okay for spending so much money on packing tape.