Skulls to Faces Sharon Long

May 10 - August 17, 2003

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Sharon Long is a graduate of the University of Wyoming who studied with Professor of Art, Robert Russin and Professor of Anthropology, George Gill. She has been creating facial approximations for 15 years and is recognized as one of the foremost forensic artists working in the United States today. Facial approximations are faces built upon the skull cast and determined by a variety of considerations, including known depth of facial musculature along twenty-one points of the skull, age at death, the location where skull was found, and objects found in association with the skull. A cast of the original skull is made, plastic eyes are inset into the sockets, and clay is meticulously placed on the skull cast to create the face. When the clay face is complete, it is cast, painted, and completed with a wig and glass eyes.

Long has created a number of faces including Spirit Cave Man (from one of the oldest mummies found in North America), an unidentified male murder victim, a woman from Macchu Pichu, a Monacan Indian Man and Woman, a 10,000-year-old Jordanian woman, Sergeant Charles Floyd (the only man to die on the Lewis and Clark expedition), an ancient 9200 year old man from North America, a woman from Jamestown, and a Fire Mummy from the Philippines. All of these faces, in addition to five related skulls, will be presented in Sharon Long: Skulls to Faces.

• Funded in part by the National Advisory Board of the UW Art Museum.

Images:

Left: Sharon Long, Spirit Cave Man, skull and facial approximation, National Museum of Natural History, 1999, 9400 years Before Present, found in eastern Nevada, USA, 1940

Center: Sharon Long, Spirit Cave Man, skull and facial approximation, National Museum of Natural History, 1999, 9400 years Before Present, found in eastern Nevada, USA, 1940

Right: Sharon Long, Spirit Cave Man, skull and facial approximation, National Museum of Natural History, 1999, 9400 years Before Present, found in eastern Nevada, USA, 1940