Roaming the world as Lady Liberty

Reporting from New York — 

It’s not easy being one of the most photographed women in the world.

There are the come-ons from men, like the celebrity who just couldn’t take no for an answer. There is the pressure to look perfect, flowing frock arranged just so and head held high as the sun threatens to melt your makeup or the rain soaks your ringlets. There is the physical strain of standing for hours on end as people stare in wonderment, occasionally tapping you to be sure you’re real.

And just try carrying that spiked headpiece and glowing torch — the trademarks of your fame — on board a plane nowadays.

But Jennifer Stewart, 52, takes it in stride as she traipses from sea to shining sea in her role as the world’s preeminent Statue of Liberty look-alike, a career that began with a chance comment from one of her art students. “Hey, Jennifer,” he told the Iowa native. “You look like the Statue of Liberty.” That was 24 years ago, but Stewart still grows giddy and misty-eyed as she talks about the monument, its symbolism and the responsibilities she attaches to her job.

“Let’s just say my heart beats a little faster when I see her standing there,” Stewart said as she rode on a packed ferry one day last week near the copper behemoth rising from New York Harbor. Like virtually everyone else on the boat, Stewart gazed transfixed at Lady Liberty and began snapping pictures. Stewart was not in character that day, and with her petite stature, blond pixie haircut and turquoise eyes, she looked more like Tinker Bell than the Statue of Liberty. Up close, with its full lips, straight nose and deep-set eyes, the statue looks more like Elvis than Jennifer Stewart.

But once Stewart climbs atop her carefully crafted pedestal in her green cloak, the homemade crown, torch and tablet in place, a transformation takes place. She becomes not just the statue’s look-alike but the statue itself, remaining stoic as occasional hecklers question her motives and butterflies land on her nose — determined to spread the spirit of liberty whether she is raising money for Sept. 11 victims, presiding over a morticians trade show or serving as a prop at a teenager’s birthday party.

“To this day, it humbles me greatly,” Stewart said of the overwhelmingly positive response she generated from people who, in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, dropped about $15,000 — much of it in $1 bills — into her bucket to support a fire station that lost eight firefighters in the terrorist attack. It was a turning point for Stewart, who until then had viewed herself more as a performance artist than a vehicle for raising social awareness and inspiring patriotism.

“It struck me then that you can buy hardly anything for a buck, but people wanted to help, and they did it by throwing a dollar bill into the bucket,” said Stewart, who feels that a big part of her job is reminding the masses — huddled or otherwise — that good comes from working together. “After 9/11, Miss Liberty took on much bigger proportions for me.”

Stewart, who grew up in Audubon, Iowa — population about 2,500 — and now lives in Brooklyn, credits her parents with giving her the skills that made her a lock to win a 1986 national Statue of Liberty look-alike contest. Her late father, Wayne, an auctioneer, was also a masterful jury-rigger. Her mother, Mardelle, is a seamstress. Stewart, nudged by her art student’s comment, used the skills they taught her to fashion an elaborate replica of the Statue of Liberty’s outfit.

“I never imagined winning,” said Stewart, who didn’t even know what color the statue was. “I viewed it more as an art project.”

An empty Cool Whip container was impaled on a cardboard tube to form the basis for the torch. A rectangle of Styrofoam was the tablet, and magnetic letters normally found on refrigerators spelled out the message that it carries in Roman numerals: July 4, 1776.

For the crown, Stewart made a plaster cast of her head and used strands of yarn from a kitchen mop to create the thick curls that brush the statue’s neck. But she was stymied over how to attach to the headpiece a tiara that would accommodate 25 tiny windows and provide a base for seven spikes.

The contest was less than a month away, and Stewart was ready to give up. “I thought, this is crazy. I’ve got to get back to my life,” she said. Stewart went to do a load of laundry and had an epiphany: The laundry basket’s flexible plastic was just what she needed to finish the crown.

An oxidized penny guided her in choosing the color to paint everything — once it had been sealed into place with glue — and in picking fabric for the dress. Stewart even painted her skin green, making her the obvious standout in a line of contestants clad mainly in white toga-like dresses with sparkly accoutrements.

“She has always been very creative,” Stewart’s mother said wryly during a recent visit to New York.

In a scrapbook, Stewart keeps the front page from the July 1, 1986, edition of the Des Moines Register, where the story of her win appeared. Months later, after moving to New York to attend graduate school, Stewart won two Halloween costume contests in a single night by donning her Statue of Liberty garb. The first contest netted her $1,000. From there, she and her then-husband grabbed a cab to the next event and won a trip to the Bahamas.

A New York restaurant called America hired her for regular gigs, leading to invitations to appear at corporate events and private parties. Between jobs, Stewart would set herself up in parks and squares, collecting money in a bucket as passers-by posed with her for photographs. Someone once dropped in a $100 bill. As time went on, the jobs became more frequent. Slowly it dawned on Stewart that this was no longer just a sideshow. It was a full-time job.

“She sort of inhabits Lady Liberty in that majestic, sophisticated way,” said Carl Schmehl, the creative director of Shackman Associates, an event planner that has been hiring Stewart since the early 1990s. Just last month, the firm hired her for an event at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I placed her right in the middle of all that gorgeous art, and it was breathtaking,” Schmehl said.

She was flown to Brazil to preside over the opening of a skyscraper, and to Japan for a corporate event. She accompanied the U.S. delegation that traveled to Singapore in 2005 to vie for the 2012 Olympic Games. Stevie Wonder ran his hands across her rigid curls and painted face. A famous TV personality, whom she refuses to name, insisted on a dinner date. There was a photo shoot that showed Lady Liberty in bed with Stephen Colbert, and no end of celebrity-studded parties, some of which could net several thousand dollars.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, corporate events were canceled, and Stewart was hesitant to appear to be profiting from the tragedy if she went out in costume with her bucket. Finally, she decided to do just that, with the proviso that the money collected would go toward her local Brooklyn firehouse. Her first day out, she collected more than $2,400.

“I knew this is what I needed to be doing,” said Stewart, who by then was divorced and living on her own.

Even with the post-Sept. 11 cancellations, and with the recent recession, the job has paid well. Stewart charges $900 for her first hour and $300 for each hour thereafter, with out-of-town travel extra. She has bookings lined up through September, and in the days before July 4 was fielding requests for appearances. Stewart, though, is taking this Independence Day off to attend a friend’s wedding in Iowa.

The emotional payoff is also lucrative, Stewart said. People clamor to have their photographs taken beside Stewart or simply stare, not certain until she moves that she is human. Sometimes even then they’re not sure. In Japan, a man thought an earthquake had struck when he saw Stewart move.

Even Lady Liberty can get restless, though, not to mention tired.

Stewart’s eyes dry out as she tries not to blink while in position. Her hips lock, and her back aches. Her right arm strains to remain upright, torch clasped firmly overhead. She worries about being knocked off her pedestal, literally. It happened while she was appearing in an episode of “Sex and the City,” when a cameraman backed into her. Working without an agent, she has to field all of the job offers that come in and diplomatically handle clients who argue over price.

Stewart is considering hiring an extra or two to stand in for her. She has also begun marketing “Libby,” a green pouch modeled on the Statue of Liberty’s face, whose first samples were delivered last month to the gift shop on Liberty Island. Eventually, Stewart said she’d like the character to be the vehicle for a project aimed at teaching children about democracy and liberty.

“I’d like to give back long after I’m gone,” said Stewart, who hesitates to say how long she envisions traveling the world as the Statue of Liberty.

Not so her mother, who offered: “As long as she can raise her arm.”

tina.susman@latimes.com