Michelle Linn – The Napkin Dad Profile
I am starting a new series – The Napkin Dad Profiles. There won’t be a timetable for it. I will post them when I have the material, hopefully once a month. It will be someone I admire and think has lived an interesting life. Some will be well-known I suppose, others won’t be. But whether you have heard or seen them before or not, I think you will find them worth getting to know.
Michelle Linn
I drew this during a lunch I had with Michelle at Laffa, the awesome Medi-Eastern restaurant in Tulsa’s Brady district. We had just come from seeing the ‘Oh, Tulsa! Biennial’ at Living Arts, in which I had two photo-collages, one of which was of her. I created a variation of the photo-collage (below) in the background of this napkin drawing.
Michelle has been in Tulsa a number of years, anchoring the Fox23 Daybreak News show, having most recently having come from a morning news position in Columbia, Missouri. She replaced a very popular anchor here in Tulsa, which is always hard to do, but has succeeded in winning over the audience with a natural mix of curiosity and joy about Tulsa and Oklahoma.
We had a great lunch, catching up since the last time we spent time together, back when I did the photoshoot for the collage.
The Morning Anchor – Visual Poem #8
Open Mind, Open Heart
As you can see, Michelle was up for anything in the shoot, trusting me no matter what I asked. What I asked included having her contort her face in all sorts of ways, having her lay down on the grass outside the museum and let me stand over her photographing her up and down, letting me take photos of her feet with one shoe on and one shoe off, (see below) and most amazing of all for a news anchor used to wearing TV lights style makeup, letting me photograph her with no makeup on at all.
This willingness to put herself in my hands creatively told me she is open minded and creative herself. Which I learned is true when we sat down to eat. She didn’t bat an eye at trying food she had never tried before. She didn’t bat an eye at sharing her dish and trying mine. In the gallery she looked at many different art pieces beside her own. She liked some more than others, some pieces she understood easily, other’s not so easily. But it was her wonder that was apparent, not her judgment. It’s probably one of the main reasons she is such a good reporter and anchor, especially for a morning show, since it requires a genuine openness and curiosity about people, places and things.
Michelle, no makeup
Half and Half
So, here was the creative & fun part of Michelle coming out. She modeled a bit with no makeup on while I took a series of photos for my photo collage ideas. As you can imagine, I take a LOT more photos than I end up using in my collages, so it took a while for me to be satisfied I had enough ‘before makeup’ pics. She then went into the ladies room to put on her makeup for the second half of the shoot. I was just hanging out looking at art work when she came out quicker than I thought and said, ‘Hey, I thought this might be fun. I only put makeup on half my face so you could take some of me half and half.’ How cool was that?! And so I did.
Michelle, half and half
The Individual
Her personal life is sort of like this. She is a hard working anchor on a local TV station AND a mother of 4 young children. She has a marriage that works really well, helping her juggle it all. Her husband, Bud, is a SAHD (Stay At Home Dad), doing all things domestic. It’s an unconventional lifestyle in the midwest/southern area of the country and isn’t always understood by family and friends. But it works great for them, and that’s what counts. No matter the initial opinion, they tend to win people over by the happiness and love in their relationship and how well their children are blossoming within the family structure they have created.
When we were done with that set she went back in and put makeup on the other side. Just the fact that she could do that so well was pretty amazing.
Michelle, with makeup
Portrait
When I ask a person to collaborate on one of my art/photo projects I try to spend some time creating classic portraits that they can use for whatever purposes they have in exchange for their contribution. Perhaps it is a head shot for a resume and CV, or maybe something for a husband or wife. In Michelle’s case, she already had head shots done by her station so this was done just for her personal use, however she saw fit. It ended up as her Facebook profile pic. I am very proud of that.
She’d rather be in the sun
The Sun Worshipper
One thing to know about Michelle is how much she loves the sun. One of the reasons she loves the morning shift on TV is that she is off in the afternoon, ready to hit the pool with her 4 little kids all summer long. There was a time during this summer when the news cycle went crazy and she had to work really long hours away from Tulsa. She was ok with it because it’s her job, but when it looked like it might continue on throughout the entire summer she started to hyperventilate a bit! She really wanted that summertime time before the kids had to go back to school! She got the balance back just in time and a true crisis was averted.
And finally, Michelle is always the epitome of professionalism, but that doesn’t means she doesn’t know how to be in individual in her style. She likes her color!
You can see Michelle at work by tuning into Fox23 (channel 5) Daybreak 6am and 10am.
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Drawing, photography and story by Marty Coleman
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