Performance artist Gabrielle Wood felt no rush to burn off the baby weight before encasing her body last month in a cocoon of plaster. As a way of preserving her “postpartum figure” after her daughter’s birth, she coated her arms, legs, chest and backside in casts of plaster.When the plaster hardened, it resembled a curvy, flesh-colored suit of armor, with partitions in back. Early feedback from the project came from Wood’s younger sisters , who tried on her body cast (“I’m 5-foot-10 and 50 pounds heavier, and they’re 5-foot-2, so I called them my Mini Mes,” Wood, 33, says) and started to “giggle like maniacs.”
