For Brea Makeup Man, Award-Winning Cosmetology Is a His Body of Work
James St. Angelo, 44, of Brea lately has been spending his time running around the Southland painting people from head to toe. Not on canvas, but on their bodies. Completely.
“It’s a whole new career opportunity for me,” said St. Angelo who works as a cosmetologist and barber in Brea. “I’ve been a barber most of my life and now I’m doing something out of the ordinary and something more satisfying.”
What that means is he has moved into the fantasy makeup world, transforming people from what they are into something different such as a snowflake, unicorn, monkey or horse by using various colors of water-based paint and an eyebrow pencil.
St. Angelo has gotten so good within the past year at changing people into something else that he’s crushed everyone else in fantasy makeup competition in Southern California, including winning the recent World International Nail and Beauty Assn. Fantasy Bal Mask 1986 championship at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel where he bested 34 others.
For that he got a four-foot trophy and an invitation to the world championship in Italy in September. He turned that down, saying he was too busy.
He also won similar awards at the 43rd annual Beauty and Trade Show in Long Beach and the Fantasy Makeup Bal Mask award at the California Cosmetology Assn. Holiday Beauty and Trade show.
His winning entry for the Anaheim contest was “Cally, the Calico Cat,” modeled by Carmen Medina, of West Covina who “had the right features and facial structure to carry out the theme,” he said. “It’s very important to find a model with features that fit the image I try to create.”
St. Angelo said it took two hours to transform Medina, wearing a body suit, into the cat theme. He said the makeup included $50 worth of fake fur and $50 for the washable paint he used.
“Every part of her body had to be done,” he said, noting that judges even inspected her palms and inside her ears to see if they were colored. “None of her flesh could show.
“I like the feeling of competition,” added St. Angelo, father of four, “because I know when it’s right and when it isn’t. I like to show what I can do.”
And the bottom line for St. Angelo is recognition from someone in the film industry so that he can use his abilities in motion pictures. “That’s my long-term ambition,” he said.
In the meantime he’s looking for a male model to fit into his next fantasy competition. He wants to make a man look like a serpent.
Hugging is becoming a lost art these days and that’s not good, says lecturer Greg Risberg, who spent nearly two hours showing doctors, nurses social workers and clergy at Care-West Fullerton Nursing Center how important hugs are.
He said a daily requirement of four hugs is necessary to maintain good health, eight hugs are needed for happiness and 12 are important for growth.
Risberg said hugs come in seven forms: The A-frame, one-sided, two-sided, shoulder-to-waist, shoulder-to-pelvis, shoulder-to-knee and compete hug and notes that the body doesn’t particularly care who it touches, just that it wants to be touched.
“Hugging is one of the best things you can do for yourself,” he asserted, pointing out that a person can tell how good a hug it was by the expression on the huggee’s face.
To illustrate his point, Risberg spent a portion of his time hugging the audience.
Of all things, Orange County doesn’t have a single store for “lefties.” And to think Aug. 13 was International Left-handers Day. But Mary Coley, who owns two left-handers stores in San Diego, said Orange County shouldn’t feel all that bad. “Besides our stores,” she said, “the only others I know of are in San Francisco and Boston.”
She points out there are some 200 million left handers worldwide and about 30 million in the United States “and where can they go to get something that fit them like left-handed cooking utensils?”
Acknowledgments--Margie Hilgenfeld Field of Anaheim, the first woman to serve as president of the Orange County Funeral Directors Assn., took a bigger step running for and winning a seat on the board of directors of the California Funeral Directors Assn.
