Jeanne Claude aka Nana designates SEND, signs out, then shuts down her Module, semi-satisfied with O’Rourke’s first installment (of which there may be many), one uncovered titbit worth the initial lot:

CRUELTY TO AN ANIMAL / CHARGES DROPPED

          Why this is significant Nana cannot say, as she pads off toward her studio, to a work-in-progress mounted on a pedestal and draped by a swathe of silk, the shape implying a bust, its head and shoulders on a level with their half-clad creator.

            Whether spawned by normal means or manufactured, humans share a need to understand their parentage, grand parentage, great grand parentage, ad infinitum. People, universally, crave to trace their roots—flattered, fascinated, or scandalized to discover noblemen, artists, scoundrels, the search itself as important as results when tracing the family tree. Nana, in this regard, is no exception—though her investigation is fuelled by uncommon questions: Is she one of a kind? How, precisely, was she made? Are certain traits transmissible? Given her ‘anomaly’, could she reproduce herself? Queries on the Ultra Web have turned up leads, to date—from Intersex Societies to Health-Related sites, from porn to online freak shows. Yet nowhere has she encountered an anatomy quite like hers—analogous to a flower that botanists classify ‘perfect', meaning equipped with functional pistil and pair of stamens both.

            So Stuyvesant Fink is not devoid of compassion; such is Nana’s deduction, based on this singular arrest. Men of science typically treat specimens appallingly, which is not to say the youngster, once leaving high school, behaved any differently. Kindness early on, though, is a mitigating factor—Nana predisposed to admiring, if at all possible, him who gave her life. ‘Doctor Frankenstein, I presume?’ is a greeting she often imagines (hoping neither he nor she deserves the appellation ‘Monster').

            Slipping off its coverlet, Nana regards her work; indeed the head and shoulders of a human being, details indeterminate, masculine in dimension, its oil clay features vague, predicated, at this stage, on intuition solely—though destined, with reports, to grow more and more defined... if shy of representational—Nana Wolffmüller’s art dubbed 'surrealistic with a post-expressionist kink'. ‘Figuratively figurative’ a critic once described, in Arts Anonymous (after viewing Nana’s sculptures on exhibit in a small but prestigious Copenhagen gallery). Nuance is her passion, flirting with explicitness borderline pornographic, themes of sado-masochism among those she explores, what she sculpts and who she is a reflection of what she is and who she sculpts, this particular piece a possible point of departure.

            Nana stares intently where she intends to locate eyeballs, sockets already pressed into the malleable plasticene, adumbrated shadows forecasting character of him whose soul she would invoke, whose mind she seeks to fathom, whose motives she endeavors to expose and understand.
 

            Pinch by pinch, from a glob of body-warmed material to a nondescript armature of light-weight polystyrene, Nana’s dexterous fingers apply and smooth, layer upon layer, apply and smooth, until the chunky surface acquires recognizable shape and form, rudimentary cheekbones appearing first, apply and smooth, beneath them jowls, apply and smooth, above are depressions already sunken to accommodate  eyes framed by a pair of temples, apply and smooth, ears on either side, apply and smooth, one completely rendered, the other one indistinct, each additional lump and dent suggestive of a skull-supported structure, be it brow, nose, lip, or chin, apply and smooth, every press and smear endowing the surface with attributes of skin.

            Mounted on a circular base that rotates, the sculpture seems deficient somehow. Turning it, Nana regards it from behind. Typical of busts, the back holds no interest. In a flash of inspiration, this shortfall is solved.