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Oct. 15--Angel Tolentino's breasts have some hard work ahead. The 36-year-old South Carolina woman is due to deliver her second child in February, and she plans to breast-feed.
That means the other important work Tolentino's breasts have been doing will be sidelined.
About 10 years ago, Tolentino began creating whimsical artwork using her paint-dipped mammaries. Printed on T-shirts, coffee mugs and other items, the orbicular art is available for purchase at www.breastpals.com. Tolentino says all profits from Breast Pals benefit breast cancer research.
The idea of the bust as brush hit her in 1995 as Tolentino watched her sister sponge-painting a wall. Breasts could do that, she thought. With no formal art training, she made some paintings as gifts, and a friend suggested she put her chest into charity.
And so Breast Pals was born ("Breast Friends" was already taken). All of Tolentino's work employs circles with bull's-eye centers. Some are natural pairs, such as the painting of a car, titled "Headlights," and musical notes on a staff, called "Double Ds."
Tolentino, however, does not have double Ds. She's a 34-B, which means she really has to put her heart into the paintings. She stretches canvas on a cookie sheet and then rocks it on her paint-coated breasts to stamp the impressions. Appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" several years ago, Tolentino withdrew behind an on-stage curtain to prepare a sketch of the host, complete with oversize, hand-drawn chin and great big boobly eyes.
Most of Tolentino's work has hand-drawn details, while some is almost entirely spheroid. "Booby Bear," for example, has 10 bosom brands, creating the body, legs, ears and face of a teddy bear.
That one, Tolentino said, was hard work. Besides the messy process (her husband, a cancer researcher and medical student, has helped her clean up), she has suffered for her art in other ways. Radio stations have asked for interviews, "acting as if I'm some kind of floozie," she said.
"I'm not. I'm just a girl trying to do good."
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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