Marilyn

 If you set out to make a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, you discover she has a thousand faces. Of course none of us were looking at her face, but that doesn't explain her protean visage. Just as Elvis could take on any musical persona, Marilyn could be any woman you wanted –– and wanted is the key word. Even as a photographer's model she was acting, and her emotions radiate from her poses and expressions.
Once I had found my way down to the bone structure of her face I was startled to find it almost African-American. Norma Jean who are you?

That was the question, wasn't it? She became the sex idol for an uptight era because she could make us feel through the flesh, but nobody had a clue who was inside that Vavoom. By some accounts she was as intelligent as she was brilliant at projecting emotions.

She had to be brilliant. By contemporary standards she is way too plump, but her sex appeal is just as vivid as it ever was. Tricksters remake the world by transforming our perception of it –– disrupting the boundaries. Marilyn helped trick us into the Sexual Revolution by laying herself bare –– without ever revealing who she was.
Carving Marilyn brough out the lushness in the woods. The hardest part was finding a truly blond wood for her hair. Osage Orange is bright yellow when you first cut it open, but exposure to the air turns it a sallow brown –– except for the the wood of the female trees. I had a double burl of Osage in the shop that looked for all the world like two big breasts. I guess it was inevitable: Marilyn Wood. Even now, half a dozen years later, her hair is still blond, while all the other woods have darkened off.
This emblematic scene from The Seven Year Itch is coin-operated. It works with a Kennedy half-dollar. Just stick Jack in her and turn the crank to make her skirts lift.

Actually the machinery is a bit cranky, and it takes some fiddling to get Jack to engage with her. I never was much good at figuring out the money part.