I don’t know which came first with this piece, the title or the first brush stroke. Sumo Wrestling has always fascinated me. Their status as heroes, celebrities and in a way – royalty. The first time I looked into the rituals of Sumo was in the late seventies. At that time my reference material was the entire Colliers Encyclopedia set that was on the shelf in our family room. On the same shelf was my first true crime fix – a copy of “Lizzie Borden, The Untold Story” by Edward Radin.

My very thin older brother, Greg, wanted to be a Sumo Wrestler for Halloween and needed help with his costume. I was his only hope. Really. I was going to cosmetology school and had all of the accouterment to not only make his but his friend Mark’s costume. I had an old wig I was able to cut to create top knots and also had every color of makeup in my kit. I only needed ivory and black. We had foam from an old gymnastics pad for the belts and a huge piece of black cloth to wrap the foam in and the rest we used for the briefs. It wasn’t really an official gymnastics pad, just a big piece of dark yellow cushion pad that was always around the house. We used it for extra bedding sometimes and it came in handy when we were practicing our high-jump rolls in the basement. I remember it was easy to cut just created a huge mess. The guys looked great when I was done and they looked just like the black and white photo from the encyclopedia.

When my sister or I find the photo of Greg and Mark from that Halloween I will post it here.