Strike a Pose

The Mannequin Gallery in Burbank is where old mannequins go to die. And to be reborn. Walt Wilkey and Shelley Freeman, partners in life and the business, keep a stream of synthetic bodies moving back and forth between their store and clients, which include Tommy Hilfiger and the movie and TV studios.

“It is a weird business,” Freeman allows, rattling off a list of high-profile gigs: “White Men Can’t Jump,” “Melrose Place,” Kiss’s North American tour. “People ask us all the time if it’s creepy working in here, but for us it’s normal.”

“If I need something special they can take care of it,” says Brandt Daniels, assistant art director for “The Tonight Show.” “We had a special we did for the Super Bowl and they molded all the bodies into football poses.”

The tang of fiberglass and Bondo dust hangs in the air inside the gallery. Freeman sits behind a desk making deals amid dozens of unclothed mannequins while in an adjoining workroom Wilkey uses dental tools to sculpt custom orders. Collected primarily through department store liquidations, much of the gallery’s inventory has been made over by Wilkey. Because mannequins are modeled after, well, models, they tend not to come in a large variety of sizes. (Females are almost exclusively size 6s or 8s, Freeman says.)

For custom jobs, Wilkey fashions new body parts out of clay and makes a mold into which he pours fiberglass resin. In a pinch, he’ll cast arms, legs--even faces--from live models. He uses an airbrush to enhance the mannequins’ typically blank facial expressions. “Some people are selling a more high-end product, so we’ll do more arrogant-looking mannequins for them,” Freeman says.

Wilkey got his start repairing mannequins for department stores. His work is a continuation of a lifelong fascination with the human form. (He was sent home from school in junior high for making nude drawings in class.) Asked about the subject matter of his currentendeavors, Wilkey smiles shyly, shrugs his shoulders and gestures toward his inventory.

“Chicks.”